Feature suggestion for OpenMPT

Waxhead · December 16, 2005, 14:08:24

I have a rather psyco suggestion for OpenMPT me thinks.

If I'm right most of those of you who use OpenMPT for music saves each track out to a wav file and polish it in a soundeditor (e.g. Audition).

What I'm suggestin is that in some far future version ModPlug would have the abillity to show a waveform for each track at the bottom of the screen perhaps or maybe exchange the classic trackview of notes and effects with the rendered sampledata (possibly with a mixed mode with faded sampleview under all the notes and efx).

Why is this useful? Not only does it look super ultra hyper mega cool but it might be real nice to set a startpoint for a effect like for example a phaser and a stop point with fading etc... This way you could edit sound with splines and stuff thus giving far more control than a "normal" tracker.

Personaly I always think it's much more easier to se the sound as a waveform than in notes. The feature I suggest is not that far from the editing options in Audition just in case anyone didn't understand what I meant.

Maybe someone else have some other views on this?

rewbs · December 16, 2005, 14:17:25

We'd need some kind of real-time rendering support if you want the waveforms for VSTis and post plugin-processed samples.
Glad you mentionned "far future".

It terms of presentation, I like the way ReViSiT does it:

LPChip · December 16, 2005, 14:17:48

I've already asked in the past for an ability to turn MPT into a mixing/mastering tool, but it just takes too much changes and goes away from the trackers concept. To counter-act the principle, Rewbs added the option to export individual tracks to wave, so you can load them in your audio editor and go on from there. It will probably be CPU friendlier that way either.

rewbs · December 16, 2005, 14:19:42

Yes.

Quote from: "LPChip"Rewbs added the option to export individual tracks to wave

Actually that's Ericus' work.

LPChip · December 16, 2005, 15:12:46

My bad.

I'd like to make clear that when i've posted my post, Rewbs post wasn't visible yet. It kinda looks stupid now

Waxhead · December 16, 2005, 16:13:21

- Rewbs:
Hey this was almost 100% like I was thinking of , The ReViSiT screenshot was as close as possible!!!

But please take note that it could have been very nice to have a "standard" horizontal view also at the bottom also.

- LpChip:
regarding CPU power. I have a 933Mhz P3 machine who I use as my mainmachine and I quickly run out of processing power when starting to add effects into my songs. But when you are considering the pleaseure of beeing able to shape the song "realtime" instead of exporting each and every track to a soundeditor and try the effect / trick there ... well I think using a little more CPU power (as an option) is not that bad!

And what exactly do you mean by MPT going away from the trackers concept? IMHO OpenMPT is far away from the good old trackers anyway. the day it supported plugins and plugins are not saved as part of a module the tracker conept is allready blasted as far as I'm concerned.
However this does not need to be a bad thing. Everywhere around you things are getting optimized and modernized each day , so why not trackers also? I agree that a tracker should look and behave as a tracker but adding some more fancystuff doesn't neccesary hurt it. I may be wrong about this tough...

LPChip · December 16, 2005, 22:48:20

Well, to me a tracker is like a text editor that has a grid and the ability to control sound using that grid.

I agree that using VST's and VSTi's is not exactly what used to be in a tracker, but take into considderation that Stream Tracker was able (using stm files) to make your own adlib sounds by setting some parameters. In some way, you can define this as a VSTi too. Except, that was buildin, and a VSTi isn't. If you look around, you'll see that most trackers nowadays has support for VST and VSTi effects. They're quite similar when it comes to how OpenMPT works and what features it has. Adding this wave option is one if the items that steps away from this "grid" and it isn't in the other trackers either (with exception of revisit, but is that really a tracker?)

This is why I commented that it goes away from the tracker feeling. But I guess that it is inevitable to move to a fancy audio program that can't be defined as a tracker anymore.

Waxhead · December 17, 2005, 01:48:25

Maybe I didn't explain propperly? I'm not talking about removing the grid and it should be very important that the graphical stuff is represented in the grid also. So that in case you drag volume around with a spline control or something like that you should get the updates in the grid also! IMHO I think this is a nice way beeing able to edit in two ways... you can test stuff quickly by dragging around and if you need to finetume it you return to the grid and make the adjustments there... So you see the grid and the graph should not be independent - it should just be "another view".

Hope we didn't misunderstood eachother

Faceted · December 18, 2005, 06:13:56

Maybe I'm missing the boat here, but would it be feasible to add an embedded sample creating/editing feature to modplug tracker? It's not completely unrelated to what the original poster asked.

I really don't have any idea how much work that would take though. It would be nice to not only be able to create your tracks in modplug but also to create your samples with it too though, wouldn't it?

If it doesn't happen, I won't be disappointed but it would be a nice feature. Maybe a drag and drop editor where you essentially plot points and then tell it how much time you wish for
that to represent, and have it interpolate the remainder of the wave file/sound from that? Or is that not useful to anyone else? (or is it too hard to make/take too much time?)

LPChip · December 18, 2005, 13:06:52

Quote from: "Faceted"Maybe I'm missing the boat here, but would it be feasible to add an embedded sample creating/editing feature to modplug tracker? It's not completely unrelated to what the original poster asked.

I really don't have any idea how much work that would take though. It would be nice to not only be able to create your tracks in modplug but also to create your samples with it too though, wouldn't it?

If it doesn't happen, I won't be disappointed but it would be a nice feature. Maybe a drag and drop editor where you essentially plot points and then tell it how much time you wish for
that to represent, and have it interpolate the remainder of the wave file/sound from that? Or is that not useful to anyone else? (or is it too hard to make/take too much time?)

Its already possible to do this, but its not that easy. A better sample editor will probably come some day. For the better editing, I'd suggest to use an external audio editor.

To make a sample, you can use the select and trim/cut to change the shape of your sample. Its possible to make a sine sample or square wave or other basic samples with this.

Then combine these sounds in the pattern editor to form a new sound. Add VST effects over it to give it more texture, and then save your song as WAV. You can load this new wave file as sample and there you go, a new sample!

Sam_Zen · December 19, 2005, 02:47:56

As I'm in favour of small programs that does a specific job neatly, rather than huge apps claiming to do everything, I don't see any priority in OMPT having fancy mixing options, or a detailed sample editor. Basic tools like normalizing or reverse, ok, nice to have, but for a special editing of a sample I just run another program.

Waxhead · May 07, 2006, 11:56:51

Sam_Zen is actually bringing up another question here. In my opinion ModPlug should have an option to reload changed samples.
You load a sample in modplug and you use it. You then edits the same sample in a external sampleeditor and when you save the changed sample modplug should offer to reload / replace with the "new" sample.

Snu · May 07, 2006, 21:39:50

hmm, i suppose there would be two ways to do this, one would be to simply have mpt 'draw out' the channels as it plays them, which could then be shown in the channel. advantage would be that it would work for vst/vsti, disadvantage would be that it would have to play through the part you want to see first.
second option, which i like better but im sure would require more work, would only apply to sample channels, and would be a sortof 'graphical audio mixer', where mpt could do a very quick very low quality (what would be needed to look good? like 6bit 5khz?) mix of the samples in the channel, and display it graphically in realtime.
how hard would this be to do, rewbs? could the mpt sound engine be used for this by any chance? or would it need a seperate engine specifically optimized for this?

i probably could have said all this better, but im tired...

Sam_Zen · May 07, 2006, 23:57:24

Quote from: "LPChip"added the option to export individual tracks to wave, so you can load them in your audio editor and go on from there.

If I interpret 'tracks' as being pattern-channels here, then that 'individual' is new to me..!
Already in the old MPT it was possible to save only channels 4 - 7 of a song in a seperate wavfile, by muting the other channels. But 2 channels was the minimum.

Quote from: "Waxhead"The ReViSiT screenshot was as close as possible!!!
But please take note that it could have been very nice to have a "standard" horizontal view also at the bottom also

I've always used the method as you mentioned before. The tracker for the construction, the wav-editor for the production.
This view of ReViSiT is nice indeed. Because it follows the 'vertical' characteristic of a pattern as the score in time, which is definitely more suitable on a monitor than horizontally, like on paper.
That's why I question your use of the term "standard".

Quote from: "Waxhead"I quickly run out of processing power when starting to add effects into my songs.

What if you have realised more power for realtime effects, and then you want to add any visualization ? New machine again ? etc.
Fortunately I'm not troubled by these things, because I can't afford more power, so I have to accept the limitations and make the best of the potentials available. So if I try to use something that causes stutters, I don't use it anymore.
As LPChip stated, the grid is the core of it. And it is quite efficient in its generation. Not so with graphical rendering.
Another aspect beside power : I like my pattern view with as much screen as possible. So new things will 'eat' that.

Your suggestion for an option to reload a changed sample is ok.

Quote from: "Faceted"it be feasible to add an embedded sample creating/editing feature

I notice a kind of diffusion here about 'sample creating' and 'sample making'. The latter meaning a modulation of an existed, imported sample. But the existing one first had to be created as a file.
Which leads to my notion that 'sample creating' could mean 'recording some piece of sound and save it as a sample'.
In short : A 'record' button added to the sample-tab would be nice.