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The Eight Wanderer

Summer is upon us. Just before heading south on vacation, I would like to leave this place at some decent state, so don't expect major features since last time iteration.

Qtractor 0.0.4.675 (Eight Wanderer) has been pre-released!

As said, nothing much here, as I've been busier with my other linux-audiuo "cutie"-suite of applications which were subjects to a mass Qt4 migration.

Nevertheless, the change-log might be of appreciation for the curious:

- Main toolbar tempo spin-box gets loose from keyboard change tracking (Qt >= 4.3); custom spin-box compilation fix for Qt 4.1.
- Illusive but nasty Connections/Patchbay item tooltip crash bug has been hopefully fixed (Qt >= 4.3); QComboBox::editTextChanged() signal replaces old QComboBox::textChanged().
- Combo-box setup history has been corrected on restore, which was discarding the very initial default (factory) contents.
- Make debian package build depend on libqt4-dev; win32 console flag is back to qmake project file.
- MIDI instrument selection (e.g. on track form) gets fixed and improved.
- Sorting method for the connections port list has been refactored; potential crash bug fix on connections sorting method.
- Messages class accessor methods constness fix.
- Got rid of some autoconf redundand thingies on configure; late debian changelog update.
- Desktop categories update: AudioVideo.
- README correction.

The preview source tarball and openSUSE 10.2 RPMs can be pulled from here:

http://qtractor.sourceforge.net
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor

as usual,

Cheers && Enjoy,

Comments

Good work, congrats!

It seems Qtractor's growin' very well.

I've found a couple of problems:

- no preview/monitor in midi tracks, midi-out seems workin' just when playin' or recordin'.

in the piano-roll:
- when 'playing' the virual keyboards on the left, the notes are selected in the right side.
- it's hard to work with controllers like volume, when it's necessary 'to paint' a line (i.e. fade-in)...this way works just for velocity.

Then the right locator of the Tascam doesn't works, but I belive this is a us428control developer (s) problem! Maybe you can knock at the door near yours! ;-)

Hope this helps.
Keep the good work.

Cheers.

AB

ps: still no way to post messages in your forums.

rncbc's picture

AB,

Thanks for your interest and asking.

- no preview/monitor in midi tracks, midi-out seems workin' just when playin' or recordin'.

That's right. MIDI track input monitoring is only active when the track is armed for recording. On the other hand, it is always on for the MIDI input bus(es), at all times.

Also note that all track input monitoring honors the corresponding MIDI channel events that get through, and again only for those tracks that are armed for recording. The meter monitor just signals the events that will be effectively recorded in the armed track. This behavior is fairly consistent in design for both MIDI and audio tracks: track monitoring is only effective when record-ready and during recording, of course.

in the piano-roll:
- when 'playing' the virual keyboards on the left, the notes are selected in the right side.

Yes, if I understand correctly, you can only play ad-hoc notes on the virtual keyboard that stands on the left of the piano-roll, and that is only effective over the small rectangles that depict the piano keys (roughly). May I ask what you have in mind to see this as a problem, or am I just missing the point?

- it's hard to work with controllers like volume, when it's necessary 'to paint' a line (i.e. fade-in)...this way works just for velocity.

Ah that's in the works. The MIDI clip editor (aka. piano-roll MIDI editor) is not finished. These holidays I'm planning to add some progress on the following, in no particular order:

At the MIDI editor front:
- Basic MIDI effects over all or selected MIDI events: quantize, scale, transpose, normalize, randomize/humanize.
- "Drawing" edit mode of continuous events, as an easy way to edit velocity and controller values in a step-wise mode, with fewer mouse clicks that is.
- Map the key note and controller names to the current MIDI instrument definition.

And at the global session level:
- Audio export: faster-than-realtime mixdown of audio tracks/clips to a single audio file.
- MIDI export: concatenate and merge all MIDI tracks/clips into a single MIDI file.

Hope that answers to some of your questions. Feel free to ask some more.

Cheers.
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela

P.S. The forums are not working because I'm being sloppy with this drupal thing :) I'll look at it ASAP.

Hi Rui,
thank you for reply.

It seems I didn't explain very well, sorry.

- track monitoring is only effective when record-ready and during recording

Ok but I meant the the midi-output doesn't work for monitoring/preview:
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/7926/qtractor01pw5.jpg

You can see that there's no output on in the right side of the mixer (midi-out). Qtractor is recording but there's no way to hear except when is in 'play' mode.
Usually sequencers work in some kind of midi-thru mode: when a track is selected or armed for recording, there is an output, too. So it's possible play other tracks and practice, for example.

About the piano-roll (seems I need some English lessons ASAP!!!), look here, please:
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/4750/qtractor02jw0.jpg

Sorry, the mouse pointer isn't visible, but I selected the notes from the left of the red line, not from the right side. Obviously it's not a major bug but the 'selection zone' should be only at the right of the red line.

- "Drawing" edit mode of continuous events, as an easy way to edit velocity and controller values in a step-wise mode, with fewer mouse clicks that is.

Can't wait! :-)

Did you planned some kind of instrument definition files (like Rosegarden .rgd or Muse .idf) for external synths and expanders? Or it'll be possible to import Rose/Muse files for to map instruments in the future?

Thanks.

Cheers.
AB

rncbc's picture

Yep, no MIDI-thru yet..

You have to do it over the connections, as a shunt/parallell path to your MIDI synth, for the time being that is. Many users have been arguing about this function, therefore I must raise it to the top of Qtractor's implementation queue ;) chalked!

Re. your second issue, I'm afraid I'm either misssing what's the exact question or failing to reproduce the trouble, but have no sweat! I'm sure you're right, because I'm on vacation atm. and can't just bear with all the details. Please be gentle with me ;)

Ah, instrument definitions are those of Cakewalk's; you can grab some of the standard ones from here ftp://ftp.cakewalk.com/pub/InstrumentDefinitions/, provided you have the right hardware ;)

Cheers,
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela

It seems that the Ninth 'something' (king? queen?) will be awesome! :-)

Obviously I don't have the right hw...but the .ins works good.
Just wonderin' how you run Cakewalk in OpenSuSE!!! ;-)

Thanks again.
Enjoy your vacation.

Cheers.

rncbc's picture

Aha, spoiled the weekend hacking some consolidation on the pass-thru thing over audio and MIDI buses. That is, audio and MIDI (pass-)through options are already available, being a common and consistent property of both audio and MIDI buses, provided those are set in duplex mode (input and output).

This opens the way to have direct monitoring of what's being recorded, whitout having to resort on redundant workaround connections.

Currently on CVS HEAD (qtractor 0.0.7.754+)

Enjoy.

If i reopen a session the midi channel changes to "10"
I use qsynth 0.2.5 with qtractor cvs from today (082807) on Ubuntustudio.

rncbc's picture

Oops. You're right. MIDI channels seem to get back to its original as from the first SMF that gets loaded on a track. Thanks for pointing this simple one in. I'll take care of it ASAP.

Expect to have it fixed today :)

[UPDATE: Now fixed on CVS HEAD (0.0.4.689) - this one was easy but lurking since long ago...tks]
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela

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