Lock pan and volume in tracks

[cheyrn]

I repeatedly bump pan or volume in my efforts to move tracks around and I usually can't figure out what is wrong for a while. Unless there is already a way to lock them, I think that would be a useful feature.

This had to have been thought of, but I wish the forums were not divided by OS.

[steve]

No there is no way to lock them, so I've moved this to the "Adding Features" part of the forum.

[kozikowski]

This had to have been thought of

Yes and it's more serious than you think. If you bump the pan slider on a mono track, Audacity will create a stereo track in the background and not tell you.

I wish the forums were not divided by OS.

That would be too much of a time waster for the elves. Remember, there's no large, well funded corporation here, it's just a bunch of volunteers across many time zones. Having to strain all postings into groups before we answer them is a time waster. As it is, many people post in a generic forum with System Specific questions and we have to start digging for information wasting even more time.

The forum has stunningly fast response times, but that only works if you help us out a little.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/Docu ... tions3.pdf

Koz

[Edgar]

I repeatedly bump pan or volume

This is probably one of the most commonly requested modifications that I get. My solution is not great because the change is not immediate – one must close and reopen Audacity for it to take effect.

pan.png (133.41 KiB) Viewed 2251 times

Here you can see I have added controls to turn Pan, Gain & Snap To On/Off.

[waxcylinder]

+1 for Lock pan and volume in tracks

I've been bitten by this in the past too

[Gale Andrews]

If you have only just recently knocked the sliders, you can Edit > Undo.


Gale

[steve]

+1 for Lock pan and volume in tracks

Would that be a global setting (all audio tracks) or a "per track" setting?
How would it be shown in the interface? Would the controls disappear, or be greyed out, or just not move?
If the user inadvertently locked the sliders, how would they know that they had done so, and how would they know how to unlock them?

[Edgar]

Would that be a global setting (all audio tracks) or a "per track" setting?
How would it be shown in the interface?

If I had it to do over again (and no one has complained about my current solution – that I know of – so I don't) I would make it "per track", put the controls in the Track Info Panel's right-click context menu, and change the thumb's disabled image (#include "../../images/SliderThumbDisabled.xpm") so that it had the traditional red circle w/ slash bar superimposed (or use a locked padlock image).

[steve]

I would make it "per track

So what would be the default when a new track is created?
If the default can be configured, where would that option be?

I think it is important that we learn from our experience with the "Snap To" control.

[Edgar]

I would make it "per track

So what would be the default when a new track is created?
If the default can be configured, where would that option be?

I think it is important that we learn from our experience with the "Snap To" control.

As Steve knows, I lean in the opposite direction from the Audacity Team Leaders when it comes to Preferences. I believe in giving the user as much control over the program's look-and-feel and operation as practical. Audacity's preferences are already quite extensive and the Team Leaders are firmly opposed to extending them.

I would change my current checkboxes so that they controlled what happened by default when a new track was created.

It turns out that changing the knob when disabled was trivial:

disabled.png (1.36 KiB) Viewed 2235 times

Currently my code uses this image for the disabled knob on all horizontal sliders (as I recall, Audacity uses no vertical sliders but it is easy to draw a new vertical disabled knob if needed). I am not lobbying for this particular image; I might try my drawing skills at a padlock – red, anti-aliased & locked.