Idea For Long Samples

how about when you enter a sample play command into the pattern editor it shows when the sample will end at a given speed/bpm as per the attached & badly photoshopped image? -

where track three is the longer sample with the lengh shown by the down arrows - this i think woulf be very usefull and a little bit towards decent audio tracks in renoise?

maybe, or maybe not but i think it would be good

i like the idea,of some kind of visual,to show where a sample ends
this gets my +1

LOL, I wanted to make a post with the same suggestion next days! :) I REALLY miss this feature.

+1

Also suggested in the past. Initially seems useful and applicable but when a speed command, a pitch shift or other pattern commands are used along it would become complex.

yes i can see how this can become quite complex quickly,but im sure taktik can find a way

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think to be really sure what is going on on a track at a specific point in time, Renoise would have to render the whole song up to that point. So whenever you change something…

I’d expect it in combination with track freezing, but without it, no way. And believe me, I’m more about the visual gimmicks than music haha, nobody wants features like this one more than me :D

what’s the point of this really?

to get some sort of visual about where samples ends,i for one would really like to see this feature,it would be a BIG + and would also help speed things up abit for the way i work in renoise

Actually one of the most obvious differences between trackers and horizontal sequencers is that in trackers you don’t visually see where a sample ends, while in sequencers you do.

In the other hand in some situations the visual length of samples in sequencers can be fake, for example when the pitch of the sample is fluctuating.

In contrary to my earlier post here, I’m not quite sure how much it would help me to know where a sample exactly ends when using trackers; with short sample it won’t help at all. Also when I’m using long samples I have to manage them carefully so I’d always know where the sample should nearly end.

Anyway, if such a feature would be ever implemented I’d like it this way:

Nice picture, Ashkan.
Actually, I think Renoise is not far away from knowing where a sample would end during playtime.
For example, if I click on a certain sample position in the sample editor, Renoise shows me the approximate sample offset. So I think Renoise can calculate how many rows in a pattern a sample would occupy being played at a constant speed. For different pitches, I imagine that it would have to consider (divide by?) the custom pitch value. And this way Renoise could also retriger long samples at the correct position. So you wouldn’t have to replay your song from the point where you triggered a long sample only to know how it would sound together with the other elements three patterns later.
But well…this is a user-view on the issue. I better go to sleep again :)

It would work if the sample doesn’t have an envelope…

But again, it’d have to be treated as an ‘audio track’ the way other sequencers do. In Energy XT2 you can load up a huge wav file and wherever you start the song, the sample starts there, but it won’t work if that sound is triggered by midi.

Also, if you look at aero studio, they have something ‘sorta’ like this…there’s a blue bar inbetween the tracks you can see that shows how long the note plays…

Idk…so many decent ways to handle it…who knows…

Here’s a slightly different screenshot, with a waveform display instead of color-coding.
I’ve used the space left by the instrument number:

Note: this wouldn’t work with normal samples! Imagine that you loop a pattern or block, with a long sample being triggered in the middle. Then, Renoise would still play the sample when the cursor moves to the beginning of the pattern/block. So this is really only good for visualizing audio-tracks.

I’d rather see that renoise ‘handles’ long samples better…
so that samples that last longer than one pattern, don’t need
to be played from the start to be audible in the mix…

I don’t see the point of seeying where a sample ends because
if you’re well into your own track, you already KNOW this, that’s why
you put the sample in the track in the first place, right?

On second thought, I’d agree. Having a visible waveform, or any indication of length, could be very CPU-intensive because of the many ways you are able to manipulate samples (forward/backward, pitch, etc). Most sequencers simply don’t offer these features, so with those sequencers it’s obviously much more simple to display samples.

Also, we don’t show notes played with a VST instrument in a different way than a sample, now do we? :huh:

+1 from me. Like others say - I’m sure Renoise is on it’s way towards some kind of indicator for sample lengths. I like Danoise’s idea, and would find it particularly useful for using lengthy speech samples with offsets. Audio tracks are clearly the way forward though.

I’ve got one word for you: Screw this, we need audio tracks.

Admittedly, that’s 2 words, however, you get my point.

audio tracks would be the ultimate way to do this

i could be track freez and freezed track could by shown like wave form until you unfreeze it

danoise, that screenshot looks HOT.

but I gotta say, this seems like it should be a pretty low priority to me - I’d rather have efforts focused on things like poly-patterns, modulatable envelopes, non-snapped automation curves, etc.

that said, allow me to indulge myself ;) how about if the “tail” was just a block but it changed length dynamically - that is, it’s based on the current pitch. one tail per note column.

that would save extra rendering and it would look cool too! that way, if the pitch of the sample increased (through envelope or slide commands), the length of the tail would decrease and vice versa. seems like this would be simpler as Renoise just have to figure out where the sample would end based on the current pitch. it’s just simple multiplication, right?

I don’t think it’s that simple - imagine you throw in a Bxx command to reverse playback direction, or make the pitch glide from note to note. I’d like to see how Renoise would handle that in realtime, it would require massive pre-calculation!!

But it’s still usable with freeze-tracks, as serumas pointed out ^_^