30 Mar
2012
30 Mar
'12
4:05 a.m.
On Thu, 2012-03-29 at 18:29 -0700, J. Liles wrote:
[...]
Currently, when you drag n' drop an external audio
file into a Non-DAW
timeline (as opposed to recording it from within Non-DAW), the file
remains external with its path recorded
in the project's journal. Using a symlink for this would be better in
*at least* the following two ways:
1) Allows archiving scripts etc. to discover and import the external
source *without having to understand the Non-DAW journal format*
2) It would allow Non-DAW to import external sources *without having
to update (or break) any existing references*
I cannot imagine any argument that could propose that these are bad things.
Me neither. Well, not a good one, anyway :)
If all Linux Audio software dealt with external
references in this
way, archiving/export would be much less problematic.
Yep. I arrived at this via the experience of actually doing it - a
special magic solution seems feasible when you've got blinders on and
are just thinking about an SM program, but when you realize this can
cross-cut all the way from inside a generic library for loading standard
file(s) formats, through a plugin, through the host, through the session
manager, it's clear links are the only way. It can be hard enough to
get saving right *without* making the load all weird.
It's not a "YOU MUST DO THIS FOR NON SESSION MANAGER", it's a "you
should do this because it makes external file references manageable"
However, I would also like to offer an interesting
little statistic...
I, personally, have hundreds of projects representing terabytes of
data, and in all that I don't have a single project which refers to
anything external to its project directory. This is something that
only effects certain users who make extensive use of sound-clip or
sample libraries. Not people who just do plain old
recording/synthesis/mixing. So let's try not to make a mountain out of
a mole hill. What is the actual percentage of users who have
references to external files *and* a strong need to export their
sessions? I suspect that it is in fact a very low number.
Certainly true for recorded audio files, sharing those between programs
is pretty esoteric (and if you're doing it, as Fons says, you "know what
you're doing" anyway). In the greater scheme of things, though, using
sample banks and such is certainly not nichey.
When you do work with such things, it really sucks to not have a
reliable way to roll up a finished piece so it will actually work in the
future.
Plus, being able to easily share full sessions and collaborate and stuff
is cool and open sourcey :)
Furthermore, in addition to the plain old symlinks, a
truly robust
solution might also store e.g. SHA1 hashes of external files, so that
any mismatch is detectable.
Good idea. Certainly can't hurt to know, though computing a hash of
some files might be extremely expensive...
-dr