Re: [jokosher-devel] Volume fades UI

["Laszlo Pandy" <laszlok2 gmail com>]

On 18/09/06, Jono Bacon <jonobacon gmail com> wrote:
> Laszlo - are you still OK to look at this? If you are having Internet
> problems still, do you want someone else to look at it?
I only have internet when I'm at school so discussion on the mailing
list is useful. I started hacking on the audio fade gui but I have
stopped short of cleaning up all the audio fade code because I don't
like the current interface for moving the red line.

Jono, you are right about having the control points on the red line
because right now, if you make a fade point there is no way of
changing it, once the selection has been cleared.

Another problem with the current gui is that when you select a portion
of audio and drag either of the fade markers up or down it creates a
diagonal line between the two selection points and lowers the audio in
a straight line on either side. So if I make the left fade marker 75%
and the right one 50% all the audio before the selection will be 75%
and all the audio after the selection will be at 50%. This is crap
because in my mind the point of a selection is because you only want
to modify that particular portion of audio. The only thing this is
really good at doing is fades at the beginning or end of an event
(like fade in or fade out) because in that case there is no other
audio on the left or right.

I am trying to think of something which would be better. Here is one
idea: Instead of having fade markers on both sides of the selection,
have one in the middle. Then when you pull down the fade marker it
will make a V-shape volume fade which comes down from one side of the
selection and back up to the other side.

Obviously my proposed idea is pretty crap as well, but I want to get
out ideas for the easiest to use and most powerful interface for the
audio fades. With our audio fade interface it should be really easy to
do the following:
* Linear fade in or out at the beginning or end of an event (maybe a
special button in the drawer for this?)
* Make the selected audio portion quieter/louder than the rest of the event.
* Same as above but with smooth fade on either end so that the audio
level doesn't jump.

Hopefully we can find the ultimate user friendly solution, or maybe we
will just have to have a crap gui so we can get the code for
gnloperations into 0.2, but feel free to run with it until I get back.

Cheers :)
Laszlo