On Sun, Oct 28 2001 at 12:44:15pm -0500, Paul Davis wrote: > Frankly, no. Once again, there are two different levels of operation: > working with specific samples, and working in an audio sequencer. > [...] > Compare these issues with the relatively simple task of taking the > code to an existing waveform editor and using it within a system like > Ardour as a dedicated "region editor".
We want to be able to do sample-editing directly inside ardour so that we can hear the results of any edits within the context of the mix and so that we don't have to "save/open/edit/save/open" everytime we need some waveform editing, right? Well, correct me if I am wrong, but I can only see two kinds of edits: editing an EDL or editing directly a *wave file* that belongs to an EDL. Paul has written before on this thread that "the audio data may not be on a (single) file" or something to that effect; I believe this is not correct. Sure, the actual data resulting from the combination of files+EDL doesn't exist on disk, but I see no reasonable way of sample-editing it. The only thing you can reasonably expect to be able to sample-edit are the wave files that compose the diskstream, and that is a much simpler thing to accomplish, since these are real files on disk (unless they are generated in realtime some way, but in this case you wouldn't be able to sample-edit the stream anyway). Now, here's what would be nice: ardour calls the wave editor and asks it to edit file X; from now on, this file is *removed* from ardour's EDL. Now, when ardour wants to play the mix, ardour asks the editor "send me the data corresponding to time XX:YY:ZZ thru AA:BB:CC" corresponding to the original regions of the file (in other words: play the file starting at XX:YY:ZZ and stop at AA:BB:CC). Now the "correct" diskstream is rebuilt with this data and processing may continue. When editing is finished, the editor saves the file, and ardour puts it back in the EDL. If I understand things correctly, this should be easily done if the editor works with JACK. The (hard to solve) problem is that a single file may appear simultaneously on two different regions, which means the editor should be able to "play" two (or more) parts of the soundfile simultaneously. In fact, I believe this is what Josh Green was talking about in his message. The only other solution I see (besides using a built-in editor for ardour) is to create a temporary file, call the wave editor on that file and temporarily substitute the original file for the temporary file on ardour's EDL; when the editor is finished, substitute the original file with the temp file. This is clearly an ugly hack, uses a lot of disk space and only works if the audio editor acts directly on the original file it is fed (and doesn't create a temp file on it's own - I believe may of them allow that method of operation), but makes life much simpler for ardour and the editor (meaning, I guess Paul can implement it in 1 hour of work if he feels like it ;-). See ya, Nelson