[LAU] [ANN] Qtractor 0.4.7 - The Furious Desertrix is out!

Rui Nuno Capela rncbc at rncbc.org
Thu Sep 30 17:50:00 UTC 2010


It's TYOQA (The Year Of Qtractor Automation:) what else?

But wait, there's three months to go yet. Meanwhile, the foundations
have already been laid and one can now tell that a rocky milestone is
ready to get bumped. Ouch!

  Qtractor 0.4.7 (furious desertrix) is out!

Release highlights:

- MIDI learn/controller mapping for all plugin parameters (NEW)
- Extended Clip fade-in/out WYSIWYG curves (NEW)
- MIDI resolution overflow (FIX)
- MIDI tempo standard base on quarter-note (FIX)
- Extended MIDI controller mapping for mixer/tracks (NEW)
- Audio metronome gain control (NEW)
- Mute/solo tracks while looping (FIX)
- MIDI Clock support (NEW)
- Audio clip import while looping (FIX)
- MIDI track bank-select/program-change transparency (FIX)
- VeSTige headers included for native VST plugin support (NEW)
- JACK transport sync support (FIX)
- Clip tempo-adjust tool (NEW)
- Audio tracks auto-monitoring (FIX)
- Transport back/forward stops on loop points (NEW)
- MIDI tracks redundant mute/solo (FIX)

See also:

  http://www.rncbc.org/drupal/node/235

Website:

  http://qtractor.sourceforge.net

Project page:

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor

Downloads:

- source tarball:
  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.4.7.tar.gz

- source package (openSUSE 11.3):

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.4.7-1.rncbc.suse113.src.rpm

- binary packages (openSUSE 11.3):

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.4.7-1.rncbc.suse113.i586.rpm

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.4.7-1.rncbc.suse113.x86_64.rpm

- user manual (nevermind outdated):
  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.3.0-user-manual.pdf

Weblog (upstream support):

  http://www.rncbc.org

License:

  Qtractor is free, open-source software, distributed under the terms of
the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.

Change-log:

- While moving multi-selected MIDI events around the clip editor (aka
piano-roll), with help of keyboard arrow keys, that is, was not clear
which one was the so-called "anchor" event, the one which positioning
gets honored for snap-to-beat business. Not anymore: the anchor event
now defaults to the earliest in time or the one the user's last
point(-click)ed.
- MIDI control observer pattern implementation has sneaked in, making it
ready for the so-called and long-awaited "MIDI Learn" feature and
arbitrary MIDI controller assignment, for plugin parameters in particular.
- MMC DEFERRED PLAY doesn't cause transport state to stop if currently
rolling (mitigating bug #3067264).
- Audio clip merge processing might have been skipping a few initial
frame blocks, now fixed.
- Clip selection and plugin parameter hash optimization.
- Anti-glitch audio clip macro fade-in/out fixed again.
- New clip fade-in/out slopes (curves) are introduced, partially adapted
and refactored from those easing equations of Robert Penner's fame.
- Clip fade-in/out non-linear slopes are now shown as actual WYSIWYG curves.
- Escape key now closes generic plugin widgets as ever found usual
elsewhere.
- Picking nits: unselect current track when clicking on any gray empty
area, also accessible from a new menu item: Track/Navigate/None.
- A nasty and deadly MIDI resolution overflow has been finally fixed,
allowing for long MIDI sequences (1h+) to load correctly on 32bit
machines from now on (was perfectly fine on 64bit though).
- MIDI editor selection hash optimization in face of reasonably huge
event sequences.
- MIDI controller mapping finally refactored to support some other MIDI
event types than just CC (0xBn) ones.
- Nitpicking fix: corrected main track-list (left pane) display when no
track is currently selected.
- libX11 is now being added explicitly to the build link phase, as seen
necessary on some bleeding-edge distros eg. Fedora 13, Debian 6. (fixing
bug #3050944).
- New audio metronome bar and beat sample gain options.
- Progressively, the observer pattern is being finally introduced,
targeting all potentially automation controls and widgets as plain
ground-zero for the (ultra-)long overdue automation feature.
- MIDI controller mapping of still non-existing tracks were being
implicitly assigned to the last, highly numbered, existing track. Now fixed.
- Moving from old deprecated Qt3'ish custom event post handling into
regular asynchronous signal/slot strategy.
- Muting/soloing tracks while playback is looping was leaving current
audio clip out-of-sync whenever that same track is later un-muted on any
other preceding clip. Now hopefully fixed.
- MIDI Clock support makes its first appearance.
- All tempo (BPM) calculations are now compliant to the MIDI
conventional equivalence between beat and quarter note (1/4, crotchet)
as common standard time division.
- Automatic audio time-stretch option is not enabled by default anymore.
- Standard warning Apply button is now only shown when dismissing dialog
changes are actually valid.
- Make sure non-dedicated metronome and player buses are properly reset
and reopen when changing regular audio buses (hopefully fixing bug item
#3021645 - Crash after changing audio bus).
- Hopefully, an outrageously old bug got squashed away, which was
causing random impromptu crashes, most often when importing audio clips
while looping and play-head is any near the loop end point.
- General standard dialog buttons layout is now in place.
- Fixed main track view off-limits play-head positioning.
- Main tool-bar Time and Tempo spin-boxes, may now have their colors
correct, as for most non-Qt based theme engines (ie. Gnome). Green text
on black background has been and still is the the intended aspect design ;)
- MIDI file import and internal sequence representation has been changed
to be inclusive on all bank-select (CC#0,32) and program-change events
which were previously discarded while honoring MIDI track properties.
Interleaved SysEx events are now also preserved on their original
sequence positions instead of squashing a duplicate into the MIDI bus
SysEx setup.
- Attempt to include the VeSTige header by default, as for minimal VST
plugin support.
- JACK transport support has been slightly rewritten, in fact the sync
callback is now in effect for repositioning.
- The MIDI clip editor (piano roll) widget won't be flagged as a tool
window anymore.
- A tempo adjustment tool is making inroads from the menu, as
Edit/Clip/Tempo... (factory shortcut: F7).
- Audio tracks auto-monitoring is now effective on playback.
- Make sure to ask whether a dirty MIDI clip should be saved, upon
resizing or stretching its edges (fixes bug #3017723).
- Backward and Forward transport commands are now taking additional
stops on loop points.
- Attempt to optimize track solo/mute redundant transactions, in special
regard to MIDI track events which were being duplicated on soloing and
temporarily muted on unsoloing.


Cheers && Enjoy (be happy!)
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno capela
rncbc at rncbc.org


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