My particular use-case is that I’m using Ardour in my music degree, and for the audio production units I need to provide screenshots of sessions for the marker to see my process. Also, sharing huge screenshots of projects is cool and shows off how capable Ardour is at managing larger projects
Obviously it will be a bit trickier than the mixer feature, which (I presume) just uses the current res and keeps going until all the strips fit, while an editor window screenshot will have trickier decisions to make.
I’d suggest that perhaps it uses the current on-screen zoom/resolution (ie 1:1 pixel scale) and the caller (I’m envisioning a lua binding, a gui can come later if demand warrants) specifies the time range (maybe default to begin:end). It then renders all the tracks and automation ranges at their current visibility and sizes, extending the canvas in x and y until the timerange and visible lanes all fit.
Here’s a screenshot that I assembled in the gimp from two screen captures (I had the window open across three screens to get the width, then captured top and bottom halves of the editor rows, and cloned empty areas of the mixer and region strips on the sides to extend them down).
Yep once someone scripts the lua similar to how it was done for the mixer screenshot IIRC No need for working on Ardour’s code, just some of the lua I believe.
I think it will require a function in the c++ code, that’s how x42 did the mixer one - adding a specific function for the mixer ui to render a screenshot, and expose that to lua. I couldn’t see a similar function in the current codebase for the editor to support the same, and it will be at least slightly tricker, I expect (but perhaps not overly so). I’d happily write the lua script once the function is available.
That’s a shame, I was hoping that the mixer feature was hooking into an underlying ability of the graphical toolkit which might be straightforward to apply to the editor window - ce’est la vie!
I’ll stick with glueing screenshots together I think I might be able to create a virtual desktop larger than my monitors as well, which might be another option for getting more screen realestate for a single screenshot.
well, if you’re on Linux/X11 that can be done easily using “Xephyr” (if you are on *buntu, Mint or the like, type in sudo apt install xserver-xephyr to get it), e.g.:
P.S.: on my system, the '-screen WxH" option to set size seems to be ignored. Nevertheless, using “-resizeable” you can resize the window to whatever size you need (also larger than the actual display it’s running on).
but it’s kinda messy (if playing at home - I had to run it twice, then to undo it I have to run xrandr --fb 1920x1080 --output GPU-0.DVI-I-1 --panning 1920x1080 and then re-run my normal xrandr --left-of.. stuff again).
So I think I will try out xephyr soon and see how it goes - looks like a good gadget to have the toolbox
