Now a few ideas have been floated around on utilizing dual monitors in Renoise, most of them working with the floating/dockable windows that as far as I understand Renoise has always wanted to avoid. Well a simplistic idea came to me last night of a way to perhaps do it, avoiding floating windows and seeming like it should mainly be a case of reusing existing code so hopefully easier to integrate.
Basically you have what appears to be two instances of Renoise, one on each screen, each interacting with the same song.
You could then configure this however you want. Full-Screen Pattern Editor LHS & Scopes/Mixer/Automation RHS. Disk Browser/Sample Editor/Instrument Settings LHS & Spectrum/Instrument Editor/DSPs RHS. Full-Screen Specturm LHS & Full-Screen Mixer RHS. ETC ETC. You get the idea.
Problems? Would Renoise run it as one extended window? This would require you to have both screen at the same resolution (as far as I can see as a non-programmer anyway.) Would having two separate windows pose a problem? Can both be run in full-screen (F11) mode? Is this too similar to the floating/dockable windows Renoise wants to avoid? Would Renoise auto-sense a dual-screen set-up or what it be a toggleable option? How would the Display shortcuts work? (This one I think is fairly simple. As always you have a Focus so the shortcut applies to whichever screen has the Focused panel.)
But with a picture and very little wording it was hard it be sure he meant the same. Maybe I should of still posted it in that thread though… Did want the ideas put as clearly as possible away from clutter of other conversations though.
I got the impression in that thread that it was for expanded view and not double view but I may be wrong. Anyhow I am for both but the context of having two instances of renoise, it got me thinking a little outside the box
Maybe, that’s part of the problem of an image and few words. If you check his image it ties up with my idea and selecting Track Scopes, Pattern Editor, Automation / Mixer , DSPs (no upper panel.) Exactly the kind of arrangement this would allow, and any other.
Does bring up one question though. If you had Pattern Editor selected on both would you have a single or two scroll bars? I’m thinking two, although maybe more irritating in some nicely balanced circumstances it comes back to making it nice enough for everybody, including those with mismatched monitors and resolutions etc. Sure some people have huge amount of Tracks and Sends, this way you could have Sends always on the right and scroll through your normal tracks on the left or some such…
I think it would be nice to have them entirely independant personally. I like the idea of being able to have one widow with Pattern Follower enabled, so you can see what’s going on, the other with it disabled so you can edit a track which isn’t playing. Of course many will have other preferences. Still seems the most compact, Renoise-esq solution I can think of though.
I agree that independent sounds great. Guess kraken or taktik will have to say whether workable as a concept, or maybe someone else who knows for sure on these issues.
I guess in principle it must be somehow possible, thinking of multi player games?
I was confusing time line here with scroll . I think both could be possibly independent here, the focused renoise just plays from its time line.
I see BYTE-Smasher suggested this already in that thread, missed this before:
Ohh that brings in something I had never even though of which would be awesome for live. The ability to play from either half different patterns at the same time. I was initially thinking one would mimic the other, so if you navigated in on the other would follow suit, then my comment about having one pattern follow the other not broke away from this and I didn’t even think of the possibilities this could expand into.
Think that would be getting to complex though, at least to start, and certain things (such as pattern follow and song position) should be Global. At least for now…
This looks just about perfect and more or less how I envisioned it. Well, minus the minimize, close … buttons in the upper right on each screen… But that’s what you were talking about with independent windows I guess, instead of stretching one window across both screens?
I would say two too. You can already expand renoise to make the mixer fill both screens, and it doesn’t work very well with the screens being split in the middle imo.
Oh yes, +1. Pressing play on either instance would automatically play both instances in perfect sync. Doing alterations in one instance would automatically appear in the other instance as well. Oh yes, most def. +1.
That ‘double view’ thing would be really great. There is no need/want for two instances playing audio… As it would drastically affect performance. It’s just a matter of GUI synchronization (ie. the meters, playback position, etc… should be shared between both windows).
I suppose having multiple graphical threads (instead of process instances) would be lighter and more efficient too.
Yes i was just thinking about the detachable envelope Editor. maybe that makes the sampler a good candidate for a starting place for dual monitor systems. I already use a Touchscreen as a main screen but I wouldn’t say Renoise or really any other application is set out for good touch work. OSC and some pad may play better for that. though a detachable page for simple long throw faders with mutes and solo might be a good idea. I was just getting Duplex working with My Remote Zero SL MKI and I noticed that the very low parts of the channel faders had very large dB jumps in the interface. possibly due to the length of the faders and a 7bit linear thing.
really hoping for full dualscreen support in renoise.
for example, having pattern editor on one screen and pattern matrix on the other… that would really help me with arranging. I’m not comfortable with the current split-view, so I hardly never use the matrix because of that.
This isn’t a cool feature it’s a borderline requirement. My productivity peaked long ago and I could really do more with more real estate. Stretching across two monitors is not nearly as good.
. I think both could be possibly independent here, the focused renoise just plays from its time line.