14 Nov
2007
14 Nov
'07
11:16 a.m.
On Wednesday 14 November 2007 02:49, Mark Constable wrote:
Audacity has it's aup format files that could be
useful.
The .aup format was the first thing I looked at. Audacity itself is
not scriptable enough to use in a headless web application, but its
format seems to be a pretty straightforward XML EDL.
No reason why anyone can't "fork" the
current piece and start a
new one from a particular point of the old ones evolvement.
Right, and while forking is usually a bad sign in the free software
field, I would hope the culture that springs up around the kind of
tool we're talking about would see it in a more positive light.
Bingo, I've been looking around for a torrent
based server/client
system that handles revisions and delta updates but it doesn't
exist.
T'would be a great project for anyone into deeper coding. I'd
go for Git as the revision backend with a C/C++ torrent lib OR
perhaps a distributed rsync client/server system.
I don't know that any of CVS, SVN or Git will be suitable for what
we're doing here. Keep in mind that this system would most likely
never be receiving any patches at all, just new tracks and EDLs.
It's similar in concept, but still something that hasn't really been
tried before as far as I know.
On Wednesday 14 November 2007 02:59, Mark Constable wrote:
Perhaps a judicious compromise between using MIDI,
where
feasible, and vorbis test tracks (again, where feasible) and
only relying on flac'd wav tracks towards the end of the
pieces lifetime when it comes time for mastering.
That works great when everyone's purely an electronic musician, and I
participated in some "email GM files across the Atlantic" projects in
the mid-90's, but I personally enjoy using real instruments along
with all the samples and virtual synths. Often I start with a guitar
or bass riff, and in those cases it's going to involve a waveform
from the very first track I lay down.
If I compose a melody by humming it or playing it on the piano or
something, sure, it'll start out as a MIDI file (or XM module, if all
I have on me is my Nintendo DS, or in the past a Buzz machine or
whatever) but I don't just compose in a single way. Having listened
to some other people's posted songs, I have a feeling I'm not alone
in this.
In any case, I think using any existing binary diff tool would be
basically impossible for a structured file like a MIDI file, and
difficult at best for FLAC files. Again we'd end up needing to write
something new that would be of limited purpose outside our community.
I think if someone wants to upload a new fragment of a track,
a "patch" if you will, he or she needs to just upload that segment as
a new track and the software would let them cut it into the track
they're "patching", again using an EDL.
We're already talking about requiring FLAC uploads and that means
using the native file formats of Audacity, Ardour, Aldrin or any
other commonly used tool in a traditional CVS/SVN environment is
probably not going to work; it'd be up to the contributors to
maintain the original guide track they're working from (click track,
previous mixdown, or whatever) and export a FLAC track that they
could upload to the project and then tell the web app where it needs
to go (its offset, I guess.)
Rob