How about an "AudioEase Snapper-like" for Ardour ?

Hi,

First of all I know there are many things to do, and I’m conscient on the fact that lots of work and efforts are made at the moment around the Ardour development.

But as an Ardour AND Protools user, I just want to talk about a great little soft that exist on Mac, Snapper from Audio Ease, that make working with audio files so much easier with a Protools environment.

For those who don’t know about it, just watch this :
http://www.audioease.com/Pages/Snapper/introducing-snapper.html

I don’t know a lot about programming, and how difficult to write a soft like snapper is (simple in appearance, but difficult to implement I guess), but if one day there could be an equivalent for Ardour, integrated with gnome or KDE, it would be just fantastic !

Cheers (and a big thanks to Paul and the Ardour team !)

Lcut

I alread tested snapper on OS X and it doesn’t work with Ardour, even though it should. I have not evaluated why it doesn’t work.

Writing a snapper-like tool would be a valuable contribution to the linux audio toolset but it is far from trivial. Not as complex as writing Ardour, but a lot more complex than I suspect most people would anticipate. I have a feeling that most people who might write it may feel more inclined to make Ardour’s own capabilities better in these areas.

HI,
as ProTools, Nuendo amd Ardour-ish user, I would like to say that the Snapper thing is something that Nuendo has from the 1.0 version. Nuendo has got a lot more to manage the files and is a very valuable side of that software to speed up the work, specially in audio-video post production. Its way to keep file organized is simply effective and every time I come back to PT, its inability to manage files is gives me a lot of headaches and waste of time.
I know that problably gives a lot of work to programmers, but that abiliy would give a big step ahed to Ardour, if embedded, and I’m sure a lot of post production guys will have a thought about this great piece of software.
Maybe this functionality could be activated just after a payment, like the AU functionality for Mac native.
I think it will worth.

I didn’t try Snapper with Ardour, because I use it at home on a linux platform.
It’s sad that Snapper don’t work with A, but like you said Paul, people would prefer to see/create such a feature directly integrated in Ardour.

As a semi-professional in post-production field, the day where Ardour will integrate :

  • AAF/OMF support
  • a video track
  • AU/VST support plugin
  • a Snapper-like tool -> (some of those features are already there but not yet integrated)

I will be able to switch to an Ardour-based system and also ready to pay for each of all those functionalities.

a) what would you actually do with a video track?
b) we already support AU on OS X. Its unlikely we’d ever add VST support on OS X unless someone can show more than 1 or 2 really good plugins that are (a) only available in VST format (b) have no alternatives
c) which features of Snapper do you like that you feel ardour does not currently support itself?
d) OMF support is not likely to ever happen. It is a proprietary standard that is cannot be implemented in open source software without extensive and painstaking reverse engineering.

a) Ok, sorry not exactly a video track but a video manager allowing to drive video datas to a specific output, like a cannopus for example (2 years ago I’ve done some post-production on a short movie with xjadeo and it was’nt easy to configure).

b) I agree with you VST support is’nt vital on OS X. But as a linux user I have to say that is essential to work seriously (I mean serious work can be made with LADSPA and LV2 plugins, but not in a professional workflow, in part due to their poor GUI, and the lack of a real big convolution reverb).

c) To me, one feature that is a giant step when manipulating audio files :

  • click an audio file in a files
  • waveform appears
  • select a portion
  • drag and drop this portion on the track you want in Ardour, or in the bin

So useful to choose some specific pieces of audio files in a large sound bank. And so quick !
I don 't think it’s possible to make such a thing in Ardour.

d) Ok, nevermind, when I’ll be a rich man I’ll bring money for that :wink:
Any chance with AAF ?
Or to develop an Open source standard ready to be use in all DAW ?

With a video track we could sync properly audio and video at different timecode than 00:00:00:00 that is not possible at the moment, in my experience.
OMF as a video track would be a very powerful and usefull to import audio session from video editing suites (Avid and Final Cut).

Both could be in the “Pay Per Use” side of Ardour, so it can maintain its Open Source life, and get some professional skill, that professional guy can pay (affordable) prices for more features (i.e. Digitranslator for ProTools)

It is certainly possible to sync video and audio with an offset in Jadeo. I do it all the time. I can’t say how to get it to output to a single output device easily,short of treating said device as part of your desktop and putting the window there. Sorry.

OMF support I would bet is much more complex than you realise. AAF IIRC is a more likely possibility, though not likely to happen soon either I would bet.

VST support on Linux is an issue in itself, primarily because the VSTs people want are not compiled for Linux, so native VST support doesn’t help much(And there are already other hosts that do this) so in the end you are depending on WINE or emulation. Far from ideal. Sad but true.

Interesting enough, PianoTe just realeased a version of their software with a native Jack Backend, whereas traditionally they supported plugins, so maybe it would be easier to convince people to port their plugins using Jack, who knows.

In the meantime however you might want to look at jconv sometime for a convolution plugin.

  Seablade

There’s also something similar to Snapper, called “audiofinder” but I never tried yet.

http://www.icedaudio.com/

Well, I’m trying it now with some success.
I can DnD from audiofinder to Ardour.