[linux-audio-user] Survey about exporting audio sessions

[Robin Gareus]

Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2007 at 11:45:34PM +0100, Robin Gareus wrote:
> 
>>> - Do you export once in the end, or do you do tests in 
>>> between?
>> export once when finished; then usually bounce the same with different
>> export-options..
> 
> That's what I have been doing, too.
> 
> 
>> Sometimes there's a preliminary mixdown or rare "exchange-exports"
>> (bounce all tracks and re-import as new project)
> 
> Please explain why and how.

easy, to import it into other DAW systems. - eg. have a friend work with
the same material.

possible issue: stereo-tracks. usually I use all mono-tracks in ardour.
(sometimes I'm annoyed that I can't pre-insert stereo-effects, but it
retains flexibility to export/reimport the timeline - bounce all tracks
 sometimes with sometimes w/o automation & effects.

i rarely have more that 16 tracks, so I do it by hand,
sed(1) does re-import - but thats a whole other story :)

This scheme is waste of hard-disk /tmp space, though. who cares?

>>> - Do you work with stereo and/or multi-channel?
>> stereo and 5.1 (in my case: 6 mono output tracks)
> 
> Do you create both stereo and 6 x mono from the same sessions?

no not with ardour, its either one or the other.

multi-tracks masters: I usually prepare the session, bounce all tracks
and do panning + automation somewhere else where I pay for the
Dolby-Logo and surround-studio-monitor :)

there is software to make stereo from 5.1, - it just eludes me.

> How do you go about creating 6 mono output tracks?
> Do you see an alternative to 6 mono output tracks?

AC3 ? :-)

- mmh no not really. I can give each mono file an appropriate name that
any technician will understand.

I dunno about standards that media-players support. - but it comes down
to naming or arranging jack/alsa ports (-> what does mplayer do if it
detects N audio channels? )



> 
>>> - Wishlist items?
>  
>> It would be nice to have an export mode to glue mastered [ardour]
>> sessions together for making seamless continuously playing CDs of
>> separate song-sessions! (select overlay/x-fade tracks? , graphical cue
>> edit ?, no more hand-tweaking .toc files!) - there's surely some
>> software to aid that purpose already that you can build on.
> 
> So basically it would start with chaining a bunch of mixdowns?

actually I'm no longer sure it this should be a feature of the export
dialog, anyway..

my first idea was indeed a popup-timeline, with whole ardour-sessions
(songs) as blocks in a timeline to:
 -  nudge whole session(s)
 -  concatenate session(s)

then one can use the merged session for all kinds of flexible x-fades
and put location markers in the timeline for CD-creation.

Most of the time it comes down to the following transitions:

* one of the song fades in/out -> I usually don't fade all the tracks,
but keep a few of them and to fade later..

* both songs have an abrupt end or beginning, there's usually one or two
extra tracks added to the session staring a few seconds before the end.

> Don't you need a timeline and all the options given by Ardour's editor?

to gain full edit power, yes. for the common cases sth. like the x-fade
dialog might suffice!

a CD-build dialog might be nice, that let's one re-arrange the
track-order on the CD..

the only time I did this before, I exported 3 tracks to stereo wav,
launched rezound to concatenate the files and make the fade-overs.
CD.toc was generated with vi :)

rezound offers great loop-playing features that come in handy when
positioning the sessions!

>> Also it would be great if the A/V offset could be (optionally) written
>> in the file's header when exporting eg. WAV files. - I've made a similar
>> feat. request on ardour-dev and there's something already in the queue
>> for importing file's offsets - but that's not due before the
>> post-MIDI-merge.
> 
> There's a standard for A/V offsets in WAV headers?

it actually supports cue's, chuncks and even playlists:
eg. http://www.sonicspot.com/guide/wavefiles.html
- but not that many players know about that.

> What would be needed on the GUI side, format, number of digits ...?

dunno, maybe only a radiobutton:

 * no wav chucks //< current default
 * one wav chuck with global-session offset //< what I'd like sometimes
 * make a new wav chuck on every location/marker //< ???