Waveform Drawing in Add Automation panel background

[sgoff]

This feature request concerns the "Add Automation" popup panel—which opens when one right clicks on an automatable parameter slider and selects "Add Automation Settings" or "Edit Automation".

It would be super useful if, when one opens the panel, in the background of the panel there were a rendering of the waveform from the input file for the process chain. In the event that there is more than one input file feeding any given process, the waveform that is shown in the background of the Add Automation panel could be a simple sum of the input waveforms.

This added visual reference would be very helpful for the purpose of adding automation based on any discrete transient events that might be present in the input audio file. Presently, with no visual reference, you are left guessing and checking if you are trying to add automation events that coincide with specific audio events in your input audio file.

I've included a mockup of what the new panel could look like, below.

[j-p-higgins]

This has been requested several times and is something I will look at for the 0.5.0 update which will focus on overhauling automation. The issue with this is that many processes drastically alter the timing and dynamic envelope of the waveform. So unless it is the first process in the thread it may or may not be actually helpful to see the waveform. I am not currently sure of the solution to this but it is something I will be looking into

[sgoff]

Ah! Apologies if this has been suggested already. I did a readthrough of the "ideas" category in the discussion page, but I'll admit I probably could have been more thorough. I must've missed the feature requests. Is there another place I could check for duplicate feature requests? I'll be more thorough in the future.

As to the caveat you mentioned, understood.

Indeed, processes that affect the time of the audio, as a whole, or which add, subtract, or otherwise alter transient events present in the base audio do pose an issue and limit the usefulness/implementability of the requested feature, without special consideration. The displayed background waveform for any given "Add Automation" panel would likely need to be pre-rendered based on the output from any preceding process blocks in its chain, and given that processing is not instantaneous, this would be cumbersome depending on how processor intensive those preceding blocks were.

Maybe the implementation could (at least at the start) only have the option available to display the waveform (presented in the same area as "save automation" and "cancel") as a clickable UI element. Activating it would trigger the running of all preceding process blocks in the chain, if any were present, and use the resulting waveform as the one displayed. At least this way, if a waveform display was not wanted, one wouldn't need to suffer through the processing time unnecessarily. But, if a background waveform was wanted, sitting through the processing time would be worth the wait.

And, I suppose in cases where the Add Automation panel was being opened for a parameter on a process directly following a single input file block, with no preceding processes, the base input file waveform could be used. And in cases with multiple input files, the different waveforms could just be shown summed.

[j-p-higgins]

I am not sure if there is a specific feature request for this open right now to be fair I was just saying it is something other people have been asking for. In general feature requests should be made in the issues tab using the feature request issue format. The discussions page is more for general chat. There are also a lot of feature requests made on the discord. As I say this is something I will be looking into but not for a little while

[sgoff]

Ah, gotcha! I'll check out the Discord. Exciting!

Of course, I appreciate any work you put into this project, and understand that these sorts of things take time. So, absolutely no rush intended.

And, for sure I'll peek at the "issues" tab in the future to make sure no similar feature requests have been made, and leave any non-duplicate feature requests in the issues tab, as well. Thanks for being gentle as I learn the ropes :-)

Shall I delete my prior misplaced feature requests, and add them in the appropriate place (after scanning for any already requested)? Happy to, if it keeps things more all in one place for you, and cuts down on noise. Thanks again for all of your hard work! :-D

[j-p-higgins]

No need, I'll sort through them tomorrow and make a big request that references to your requests here directly so you won't have to retype anything

[sgoff]

Thanks so much! Looking forward to checking out the Discord. cheers!