suges.
ZynewaveI’ve started experimenting with offline bounce recording, and need to figure out how to integrate it in the UI. I’ll appreciate your input on how you prefer to work with offline bouncing.
Solution A:
You arm recording on desired bounce tracks just like how you set up realtime bounce recording. Instead of pressing play to record the audio, you select a ‘bounce record offline’ menu or toolbar button. This will show a progress dialog with an abort button. All audio is muted during this. Once completed, the bounce recorded tracks will be switched to the bounced audio.
Solution B:
In the track properties dialog is a new ‘bounce record plugins offline’ option. When enabled, activating the B track button will start an offline bounce recording with a progress dialog. Only the selected track is bounce recorded, and there is no need to arm bounce recording like in solution A. Instead of the individual track properties offline option, a global option could be added to the preferences dialog. The offline option is necessary since there are some plugins that will not behave as expected when rendered offline.
Solution C:
This is an extension to the previous solution B. There is an additional ‘run bounce recording in background’ option in the track properties or preferences dialog. When this option is enabled, pressing the B button on the bounce track will start the bounce recording in the background, with no progress dialog. You can continue working with the arrangement and queue up more background bounce tracks. Playback is not interrupted. The bounce recording is indicated by a semi-lit B button, and the audio is gradually filled in the bounce track audio events. Once the bounce recording is completed the track is switched to play the bounced audio, with no audible glitches. This solution is quite tricky, and will require a further week of development. The background bouncing will be achieved by internally creating a new instance of the plugin during the bounce recording. This can be problematic with many plugins, such as plugins that require a lot of memory and has a long load time.
Frits
sugesOption A please! Seems the most straightforward.
PodianerOption A seems to be the way I’d prefer. It’s not very different to the way bouncing already is implemented, and the user can decide for each track individually, as I have understood, how he wants to bounce.
I must admit that this feature is the ONLY thing, that has kept me from working with Podium on difficult projects this far. Frits, when you have done this, you will make many users happy, and much more people will enter the world of Podium!! 🙂 At least I will be happy!
Max
MaxI vote for ‘A’ too. It seems to be the most flexible. And as far as I know even some “big” sequencers still can’t bounce all the tracks of the project in a separate files automatically.
Podianer
Max
Wow… The namesake?! 
PodianerBecause of Podium’s hierarchic structure, you can do this on each track, including the master track, right? Or am I missing anything, Frits? That would be very a comfortable freeze/bounce solution for single tracks AND the complete mixdown..
ZynewaveBecause of Podium’s hierarchic structure, you can do this on each track, including the master track, right?
Right. The offline bouncing will be able to bounce record multiple tracks simultaneously, just like realtime bouncing. Offline bouncing will of course exclude any communication to audio and MIDI interfaces, so only plugin and audio tracks will be bounce recorded.
PodianerGreat!!!! 🙂
acousmodI vote for A too, which seems to be simpler.
And why not also add a new file option with something like “bounce entire project to”, with the possibility to save the file where we want ?
It will be straightforward for the final render / export stage.
super_crunchy@acousmod wrote:
And why not also add a new file option with something like “bounce entire project to”, with the possibility to save the file where we want ?
Excellent idea, this will be the equivalent of “Export project to WAV” that others hosts have. I think for new users, the lack of this option can be confusing
I like solution A as well, except my suggestion for the bounce online option would be this
On first click of the B button on a track, the bounce OFFLINE option is enabled
On second click of the same B button, bounce ONLINE is enabled (and the B button would change, maybe it would become 50% transparent red instead of 100% transparent red). On third click, bounce recording is turned off. So basically it’s a three way toggle
duncanparsonsI prefer A as well. Seems more transparent, rather than having to dive into property boxes, etc. I understand the idea of taking this away from the normal interface, but I think it would involve too much skirting around to try to acheive what you want, when a point and click will do it.
I really like the idea of C, but like you say, there would probably be problems. At work I’m able to use a 2.5GhzP4HT machine, which is nice, but my laptop is a 1GhzP3. The C option would lock everything out until the offline bounce is done, the suddenly all would be well…
Also in terms of drawing people in, a non fiddley method of doing the bounce is probably the best way forward.
I think the tri-state ‘B’isn’t a bad idea either 🙂
DSP
ZynewaveAt work I’m able to use a 2.5GhzP4HT machine, which is nice, but my laptop is a 1GhzP3. The C option would lock everything out until the offline bounce is done, the suddenly all would be well…
No it wouldn’t. The background bouncing would run in a low priority thread, so the realtime engine would not suffer from any ongoing background bouncing except from the extra memory required by the background engine plugins. The UI would not be blocked in any way either.
MaxI’ve been thinking about solution C some time and now I understand that it can be an extension to the solution A as well. Imagine an option in Podium preferences to choose between ‘direct’ offline bounce (all audio is muted, progress dialog on the screen), and ‘background’ offline bounce (playback is not interrupted, working with arrangement is not interrupted) – that’s all the difference.
super_crunchyI’m very excited about the offline bounce. It’s a feature that most other hosts have, and although I’ve gotten by ok without it, I’ll definitely be using it when it arrives. Great way to bounce even when CPU use is maxxing out. Good luck Frits!
PodianerHere’s the same!! 🙂
MaxI’m wating for offline bounce too. The only thing that makes me sad is that I’m going to buy Creamware soundcard, and Creamware DSP FX & synths are not support offline bounce. 😥