Re: [Traverso-devel] Request for comment: tracks folder views

[plutek]

Excerpts from Remon Sijrier's message of Wed Jun 16 15:06:26 -0400 2010:

> In other words, are the views of a sheet in sync? Or can they have their own 
> work cursor, zoom level, playhead position and so on, independent of each 
> other....
> Or should both be possible ?

hi remon!

afaik, other DAWs make the playhead and work cursor independant of any view 
facility. this makes sense because we are usually thinking about a particular 
spot in a song, and checking various aspects of the mix at that timeline 
position -- different "views" on a given sound-instant, if you will. also, it 
means that one can logically continue playback while switching views, without 
the playhead jumping to some other position which happens to be associated with 
the second view.

ON THE OTHER HAND....

this is another area in which traverso can provide what looks to me like a very 
useful alternate way of working. if views are able to define completely 
independant "viewports" into a project (i.e. different points in the timeline, 
sets of tracks, zooms, work cursor positions), then we have an extremely 
powerful and efficient way of bouncing between various aspects of a song, for 
purposes of contrast and comparison. as i think about the possibilities of such 
a facility, i am struck by how useful it could be. it's simply an extension of 
the whole "non-linear" editing concept -- just as we can currently make a track 
"look into" arbitrary bits of various soundfiles as it plays, so this "views" 
facility would allow our brains to easily "look into" various arbitrary bits of 
an entire song or project as we work on it.

i say we need both options for the playhead. maybe something like a "lock 
playhead to view" toggle -- when the playhead lock is ON, there is an 
independant default playhead position associated with each view. if you play 
audio with the playhead "locked", it returns to its default position for the 
current view once playback is stopped. then, if you switch to another view with 
a "locked" playhead, the playhead jumps to the current 
locked-playhead-default-position for that view. if, otoh, the new view has an 
"unlocked" playhead, then it assumes the last known position of the playhead in 
the previous view.

i think we can keep zoom and work-cursor-position independant for each view, 
and only have the playhead possibly affect multiple views. this may be getting 
fuzzy...let me try to re-state it:

- we define various views, which show a certain amount of the timeline (i.e. 
zoom and position), and a certain number of tracks
- we can toggle any view's playhead to "locked" or "free"
- when playback is started, the playhead of the current view, and any other 
"free" playheads follows playback
- when playback is stopped, if the current view has a "locked" playhead, it 
returns to it's locked-playhead-default-position (the position it was at when 
it was toggled to the "locked" state)
- when playback is stopped, any "free" playheads stay at the stop position
- we can toggle the playhead of the current view during playback, to free it or 
to set a new lock position
- if we switch views during playback, behaviour depends on the playhead state 
of the destination view:
  - locked playhead: playback jumps to the new view's 
locked-playhead-default-position, and continues playing from there
  - free playhead: playback continues along the timeline from where it was at 
the time of the view switch

we would probably also need "free playhead in all views" and "lock playhead in 
all views" functions. the latter would make the 
locked-playhead-default-position for all views equal to the current playhead 
position of wherever we happen to be.

then, i'd say, whenever we jump to a view, the playhead position (as determined 
by the above logic) gets centered, while the new track-view, zoom, and 
work-cursor take effect.

that all sound quite useful to me, but am i missing some conceptual or logical 
flaw?

 
> Another question: all sheets are placed in one tab widget now. So each sheet 
> has one tab. If sheets can have multiple views, should these views also be 
> added to this tab widget, or should a sheet have it's own tab widget, so an 
> additional row of tabs for the views the sheet has.

i'd avoid using more vertical space, if at all possible. as suggested by 
another email, view-tabs colour-coded by sheet might work.

thanks again for all the thought and work you're putting into this software, 
remon!!

cheers!

-- 
.pltk.