Automation thin-out?

M.F · February 26, 2019, 11:35am

Now after little donation I’d like to ask, is there a method to reduce automation points?
Deleting those one by one is not very fun…

paul · February 26, 2019, 2:25pm

Ardour already thins recorded automation (i.e. during a write pass) to what it believes is the “correct” density. There’s no additional operation you can invoke to thin it even more, or to “re-thin” it after the fact. You can adjust the “thinning factor” used in Preferences. If you add automation points manually, Ardour will assume that you know what you’re doing.

x42 · February 26, 2019, 5:06pm

A quick way to delete them is using shift + right-click (general delete operation). If you have lots of them, that’s still no fun though.

A Lua script can do that.

Paste the following to Menu > Window > Scripting ; edit the script as needed, and click “Run”. This example It thins automation of the fader-automation of all selected tracks:

github.com

Ardour/ardour/blob/master/scripts/s_thin_automation.lua

ardour { ["type"] = "Snippet", name = "Thin Fader Automation" }

-- --TODO--
-- For a fully fledged EditorAction this script should
-- offer a dropdown to select automation of all paramaters
-- (not just the fader)
-- see scripts/midi_cc_to_automation.lua and
-- scripts/mixer_settings_store.lua
-- Thinning Area should also be a numeric-entry or slider

function factory () return function ()
	-- get selected tracks
	rl = Editor:get_selection ().tracks:routelist ()

	-- prepare undo operation
	Session:begin_reversible_command ("Thin Automation")
	local add_undo = false -- keep track if something has changed

	-- iterate over selected tracks
	for r in rl:iter () do

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M.F · February 26, 2019, 6:05pm

Thanks for the Lua script, I think it will do finely!