Sequence Markers (visual utility)

[Nahkranoth]

Speak for yourself, will ya? I don't care for skaven, this feature is FTW!

Moreso, FTWWTF!!!

And to clarify my undoubtedly stupid shout to Skaven:
It was impossible to me to make more or less realistic guitar tracks at the time. And something was stopping me from using Slayer VSTi until I heard Skaven's "LoR", which was a demo for this VSTi.
Glad this post made you laugh, psishock

[Skaven]

Um... I hate to usher, but how high is this on your to do -list?

Sometimes I need to export a looping wave, and this requires me to disk-write the tails of all the instruments (fadeouts, delays, reverbs), then cut and mix them to the start of the sample. If a Marker was inserted to the .wav file at the end of the song (marked in the Sequence by me, of course), it would make this process quite easy.

Could also give an "Insert Marker between each pattern" checkbox option in the Wav Export menu? On wav export, it would then automatically put a marker between each pattern, and in an ideal case it could also add the pattern number and name in the Marker name (.wav metadata supports named markers and regions).

I already know you can give patterns a name, but I practically don't use that ability, because you must click a pattern in order to see it,

I find it very useful and use it a lot. The pattern names are also visible in the Tree View's Sequence folder, making them very easy to browse.

[Saga Musix]

At least it wasn't on my todo list yet, and I guess neither on Relabs'.
For situations like the one you described, I "usually" (well, that really doesn't happen too often) just calculate the length of one pattern in samples, stick the last pattern in front of all other patterns and remove it from the WAV again. But I guess that's a bit beside the point...
Automatically inserting markers in exported WAV files sounds quite interesting, though! I might look into that.

I find it very useful and use it a lot. The pattern names are also visible in the Tree View's Sequence folder, making them very easy to browse.

Heh, I think there are not too many people who value the treeview that much and have helped improving it.

[Skaven]

just calculate the length of one pattern in samples, stick the last pattern in front of all other patterns and remove it from the WAV again.

Oh, um, I'm not mathematically inclined... how do you do that? Especially if the pattern uses "groove quantization" (changing speed or tempo every second row), or does some other tricks with the tempo in the middle of a pattern.

Automatically inserting markers in exported WAV files sounds quite interesting, though! I might look into that.

It may take a bit of research to find out how to write markers into .wav metadata, but they're very useful. Many sample editors (like Sound Forge and Wavosaur) also allow you to insert markers to .wavs.

Heh, I think there are not too many people who value the treeview that much and have helped improving it.

Well, I just hope the improvements you've made have been useful to someone else than me, too.  :oops:

[Saga Musix]

Oh, um, I'm not mathematically inclined... how do you do that? Especially if the pattern uses "groove quantization" (changing speed or tempo every second row), or does some other tricks with the tempo in the middle of a pattern.

Hehe. I've chosen a fairly trivial way for that. :lol: I usually first render a sequence of x patterns and divide the number of samples that are in the output by x to get the length of a pattern. That works well enough for the rare cases where I really need it.

It may take a bit of research to find out how to write markers into .wav metadata, but they're very useful. Many sample editors (like Sound Forge and Wavosaur) also allow you to insert markers to .wavs.

OpenMPT can already store convential loop markers when saving samples from the sample tab, so I guess it shouldn't be much more work to sneak "normal" markers into the WAV export code.

Well, I just hope the improvements you've made have been useful to someone else than me, too.  :oops:

Well, at least I tend to use some of them every now and then.

[Saga Musix]

Ok, here's something to try out...
http://sagagames.de/stuff/mptrack.exe
Let me know how this works for you. This should add sample-exact markers at each pattern transition when rendering to WAV. The feature cannot be disabled yet, that will be added later if anyone thinks it's necessary. I suppose that I could also add names for the markers if it's necessary (something like "Order 1, Pattern 13: SomePatternName"). If we ever get the original request (sequence markers) into OpenMPT (which might take a "bit" longer, since it's a bit tricker to implement ), those marker names could also be added of course.

Edit: I have just tried the new position markers on a pattern animation by Jakim, it looks quite crazy... :lol:

[Skaven]

Sorry for the delay... got caught up in stuff. But I just tested it, and this is already really helpful with exporting stuff. Expecially if you want to make a "tail wrap loop" to the pattern. Awesome. Thanks! ^_^

If people don't want the markers there, most sample editors allow you to delete them all with a single command. But I think most people will actually find this useful.

(didn't someone even request a command to add markers within a single pattern, with special commands?)