I’m wondering if there are any ideas on the table for incorporation of a source/destination based editing model for Ardour? I’m a classical engineer, and have used many tools based on this model of editing. My recent exploration of linux based systems has been really positive, but I find myself bumming about the fact that I’ll have to keep my windows partition alive to run Pyramix just for the editing! The source/destination model dates back to soundstream in the 80’s, and through Sonic Solutions up through Pyramix and Sequoia today. The ability to make 4-point edits is crucial for all us classical engineers, and I’d love to see it in a linux-friendly tool like Ardour!
Congrats on all the great work! I’m glad to be getting my first chance to play with Ardour!
It is a requested feature in Mantis, there I think is some discussion about it there, but it has been a little bit since it was brought up so I don’t remember much of it.
The main discussion about it was on the ardour-users mailing list. Fons Adriennsen has come the closest to persuading me of the importance of this style of editing, though he has still not been 100% successful in that effort.
It isn’t high on anyone’s list of priorities. Ardour is, however, open source, so find a programmer who is motivated by the task, money, some other factors or a combination of them all, and the work could get done.
Speaking most naively, not having heard of source/destination destination editing until this post, couldn’t you emulate it fairly well by putting all your sources in separate tracks lined up synchronously and one empty destination track. Then just cut out regions you want from the sources and drag them to the destination track. Seems like hardly any more difficult than what is demonstrated in the link I posted above.
A few years ago, I had a long discussion with a professional editor at a trade show. Together we sketched up a “source/destination” editing dialog on the back of a napkin. Here’s the result, for posterity:
The basic idea was that the traditional DAW editor window is not well-suited to the job of 4point editing. This dialog is an alternative view that provides the important 4point editing features. The nice thing is, it can be ignored by those users who don’t understand or care about it.
Nice idea, but the x-fade thingy is maybe a bit overblown. Automatic crossfade + some manual adjustments in the destination track afterwards is enough for me.
Here is Sequoia’s take on it (from 2011): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh-j3jblSfQ very quick and user friendly. Used this every day when I worked at a local radio station some years ago.
/Björn
Let me re-iterate that the source/destination range selections would likely happen on the regular editor window, with the proposed dialog only providing the channel mapping, overview, and more esoteric functions that aren’t easy to do with a mouse.
Strictly speaking, the video only shows 3-point editing, not 4-point, right? There is only an insert “point”, not an insert “range”. Although I agree that for many (most?) use-cases, you only need 3-point anyway.
4-point is most often talked about in classical editing circles, where it’s not so easy to visibly make cuts. So the proposed dialog helps you audition the starts and ends of your cuts without jumping around in the main window.
I think managing the source/destination tracks is a lot more convenient from the proposed dialog. The tracks don’t necessarily have to be in order, and you can arm/disarm individual tracks to copy without changing your layout.
The split source/destination views has one big advantage: you can zoom and pan them separately, and have a high degree of confidence that what you want to happen, is happening. Perhaps the proposed dialog needs to have an edit canvas embedded in it for the “destination” side.
Something to think about is multitrack editing (eg. drums), how it should tackle tempo/meter maps (+automation) and how s/d-editing with midi-tracks should look like.
/Björn
queller: the “advanced editor” is a very sensible crossfade editor. The most important features are the ability to jump to next crossfade, audition the crossfades, and trim their length and location. I like that they don’t focus too much on the “shape” of the crossfade, as I’ve found this a very secondary issue compared to the location&size of the crossfade.
Jumping from fade to fade is somewhat complicated by Ardour’s different layering model. Crossfades are part of each region, and you can theoretically have 2 or more crossfades in the same area. This provides some cool possibilities but makes “jump to next crossfade” trickier.
Great to see so much discussion on this topic! I’m definitely an advocate for 4-point editing, and can vouch for it’s efficiency, especially for classical multi-track editing! Great to see many citations regarding Sequoia, and I’ll just drop another note for Pyramix- if you’re in the classical biz and haven’t used it yet, you should definitely explore!
4 point source/destination is a critical tool for fast aural analysis of edit/insert points. With the right combination of ‘macros’ (available in both pyramix and sequoia), one can edit an entire symphony from hundreds of takes with the display turned off! The right combination of efficient keyboard shortcuts make the edits go incredibly fast, and the technical aural skill of editing this way comes directly from the lineage of tape editing, but is much faster with these tools!
If anybody sees/hears of any developments, link us up on this thread! Thanks!
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