[LAA] Qtractor 0.4.7 - The Furious Desertrix is out!

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.sr… - binary packages (openSUSE 11.3): http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.4.7-1.rncbc.suse113.i5… http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.4.7-1.rncbc.suse113.x8… - user manual (nevermind outdated): http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.3.0-user-manual.pdf Weblog (upstream support): http://www.rncbc.org License: Qtractor is free,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(a)rncbc.org