thcilnnahoj's Forum Page

First impression is favorable here. 🙂

Off the top of my head:
– Drag and drop would be very welcome. For dropping devices into the chain like you would on the track header, and also to drag-rearrange them (click and hold on the selector button?).

– I think it will be more usable/less confusing without gain/pan faders directly inside the Group Panel. Maybe when the big meter comes around it could be accompanied by a little mixer strip with the mixing grid?

– Personally, I’d like it better if the track, and especially the device menus would open up directly below the buttons, like everywhere else in Podium, instead of to the right. I can see why it would cause some inconvenience, though.

Also, the menus appear in the wrong place when using a floating inspector/new inspector window. Plus the inspector window can be resized far too much! 😮

Edit: Hmm, as I like to use bright track colors, I find the GP looking a bit strange now. Applying the track color to the controls (like on track headers) would make them more immedeately readable and would also make the shadows look less unnatural, too. Track colors might of course clash with selection/record/bypass colors, but shouldn’t that be the user’s responsibility? 😉

@Zynewave wrote:

Well then, try the new beta5 🙂 . This only happened with 32-bit floating point sounds.

Will do! 🙂 I’m always astounded by how short-lived bugs are in Podium, once spotted.

@Zynewave wrote:

I assume your mono file is about -10 dB from full scale. If the mono file is normalized, then the waveform should use the full height of the navigator.

The reason I only show half of the waveform (actually it’s the full min/max range wrapped around the baseline), is because the waveform usually is symmetrical around the baseline when you look at it zoomed out. So by cutting away the redundant half you get twice the resolution for showing peaks.

I think you wouldn’t get many files recorded hot enough to use the full resolution during ‘normal’ production, assuming you don’t work with Apple loops exclusively! 😳
Still, you’ve convinced me – the additional display resolution is definitely preferrable.

Incidentally, would changing the scale from percentage to dB be only a matter of renaming the labels, or would this require some more tedious work?

@Zynewave wrote:

@thcilnnahoj wrote:

Will the sound markers be stored somewhere outside the arrangement, like in the accompanying mini file?

They are stored in the wav file using the standard cue list chunk. This has always been supported in Podium, but up till now it was only the sound editor profile with the transport toolbar that had the marker region.

That’s good to know. It was well hidden before. 😉

@Zynewave wrote:

@thcilnnahoj wrote:

And can you tell us what type of curve the fade commands use? It looks a bit steeper than equal power.

It’s equal power, meaning ~-3dB midway in the faded segment. You can verify this by using the pencil tool to draw a line at the top of the wave editor, and then apply the fade on this waveform. Don’t play this waveform though!

I’m relieved to know that I was mistaken, as I believe equal power would be the best choice in this case.

I think this has led me to another bug (beta 4): If I try to draw a line at the very top, it snaps to the bottom instead, and it seems this only becomes visible at some zoom ranges. Drawing lines at the bottom works fine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byP1O8HWLCs
I can’t (rather don’t want to :shock:) verify if it’s only a visual flaw.

Also, the undo for adding a marker just reads “new event.” If it’s not too much work, I think it should be renamed for clarity.

Edit: Oh, and I always wonder why the navigator only displays the top half of a waveform.
It’s good for stereo files, but I think the remaining space could be better utilized for mono.

A recently conducted investigation (:wink:) yielded two crashes and one bug. Tested with Podium 221 and 222 beta 2.

1- Crash when horizontally resizing the floating note editor too far. Grab the right hand window border and drag it all the way to the left. The sound and curve editor seem to be immune, since you can’t downsize them this much.

2- Some(!) audio files seem to confuse the sound editor. The editor doesn’t update the waveform display when you select a different event, but shows the correct wave again if you make a selection or zoom. The files were all 32-bit float, 48 KHz WAV. I also let Podium create new .mini files a few times, to no change.

I’ve made a quick video of these two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0vdmfJOVL4 (Note the ‘bass’ wave is always displayed correctly.)

3- The other crash seems to be related to the scalpel tool in the sound editor, but I can’t reproduce it well enough yet. It randomly happened three times very soon after I made random ‘cuts’ in an audio segment, and then just moved the mouse over various other interface elements.
By the way, does the scalpel have a real use in the sound editor, besides drawing saw and square waves? 😉

I also have to say that since you added the ‘stretch’ element, the joined edit toolbar buttons look very nice!

@Zynewave wrote:

@thcilnnahoj wrote:

[…] That’s a mouthful! :-#

That’s because they are using the same editor profile. Besides the settings you find in the region dialogs, the profile also logs the “last used” size of resizable panels. So if you have two editors open showing the same profile, the last resize action will determine the size used the next time the editor is opened.

I realize it’s the same profile – I though it was a bug because it doesn’t seem to work the other way around (SWE’s velocity region assuming height of EE’s region). No biggie! 🙂