New Tool: Mixer Snapshots

Renoise Tools
1

[s]Ok, finally i have something for you to play with. Help me find bugs and report them in this thread. This tool will not be published on the tools page until i have it feature complete, which means that this is a preview release version, which works though. :)

Features:

Store and reload mixer snapshots, which can contain pre and post values, which is the default selection. Further enabled can be track mute and solo states, complete dsp chains, track delay and track routing. You can find the preferences under “Tools -> Mixer Snapshot Preferences…”. To start working with the tool, open the mixer view and open the context menu. There you’ll find the “Snapshots” menu which allows you to manage snapshots, reset the pre and post mixer values, store new snapshots and also to manage them. This menu is also dynamic, each stored snapshot is added as menu entry there. A checkmark next to a menu entry means, it’s currently the active one and cycling forward or backward starts from this entry. You can also find keybinds for managing, storing and cycling snapshots, and the reset mixer values dialog in the keyboard bindings options of Renoise.

The manage dialog allows you to use the following keys:

  • Arrow up and down moves in the snapshot list.
  • Home and end allows you to quickly jump to the beginning or end of the snapshot list.
  • Del will delete the currently selected list entry.
  • Enter when renaming is not active will load the currently selected list entry.
  • Enter when renaming is active will confirm the renaming operation.
  • Space will store a new snapshot.
  • Arrow left and right will free cycle to the next or previous snapshot.

Current limitations:

Snapshots aren’t persistent yet.

Things which would be nice to have in the future:

I will try to add track and dsp device monitoring, but no promise on that. So far i haven’t found a way to identify them in a reliable way yet, so this will have to wait.[/s]

This tool is discontinued now.

2

thanks

i just assigned keybinding for store to ctrl+f1,and manage to ctrl+1

and i saved track 1 solo and track 2 solo(as 2 snapshots)

but when i press manage(keybinding)and choose from the dropdown menu,nothing happens?

3

Use the mixer context menu if you want to recall snapshots. The manage binding only allows you to rename and delete snapshots, not to recall them.

4

when you say mixer context menu???what do you mean excactly?? :huh:

5

Click with the right mouse button in the mixer and then “Snapshots”. Each stored snapshot creates a menu entry there named “Snapshot %date% %time%” by default, click that entry to load it’s settings.

6

ahh yes thanks,now thats clever

just a shame the snapshots gets deleted,but future versions will take care of that hopefully :D

im gonna testdrive this tonight beatslaughter

7

Great tool and great scripting.
There’s a small ‘error’ on Mac where the snapshots timestamp is H07 M28 S43 PM instead of 07:28:43 PM or whatever (are seconds needed?).
Here the snapshots are also deleted if you do press OK in the preferences.

Trying to recall a snapshot I get

  
'/Users/epc/Library/Preferences/Renoise/V2.6.0/Scripts/Tools/AS.Beatslaughter.MixerSnapshots.xrnx/' failed to execute in one of its menu entry functions.  
  
Please contact the author (Unknown author) for assistance...  
  
std::logic_error: 'invalid active_preset index '0'. valid values are [1-14].'  
stack traceback:  
 [C]: ?  
 [C]: in function '__newindex'  
 [string "do..."]:22: in function   
 main.lua:789: in function 'load_snapshot'  
 main.lua:834: in function <834><br>
<br>```

</834>
8

This is not an error but on purpose. Renoise is unable to display the “:” double point and would split the menu further, which is not intended. The seconds are needed too, since each menu name has to be unique and the script is designed to save a snapshot only once a second to circumvent this.

When pressing OK the snapshots have to be rebuilt because the saved content of the snapshots changed. A missing feature currently in that dialog is, that saving the options should only be done on OK, not when canceling or simply changing them like it’s at the moment.

[quote=“epc, post:7, topic:29309”]
Trying to recall a snapshot I get

 '/Users/epc/Library/Preferences/Renoise/V2.6.0/Scripts/Tools/AS.Beatslaughter.MixerSnapshots.xrnx/' failed to execute in one of its menu entry functions. Please contact the author (Unknown author) for assistance... std::logic_error: 'invalid active_preset index '0'. valid values are [1-14].' stack traceback: [C]: ? [C]: in function '__newindex' [string "do..."]:22: in function main.lua:789: in function 'load_snapshot' main.lua:834: in function <834> <br>```

<br>[/quote]<br>
<br>
This means one of the plugins has returned a preset index of 0, which shouldn't happen though. I will add an extra check for this in a few minutes.<br>
<br>
</834>
9

just wanted to tell you that this works really well for what i have used it for so far.only mute-unmute stuff.

but its really a downer that he snapshots gets deleted,is this a limit in the scripting or is it intentionally?
i know this is a preview release,and i hope it will be possible to have them saved,so you dont have to make all new snapshots every time you start renoise

but so far atleast for mute-unmute i havent had any problems

will also test some of the other options later tonight when i have music time :drummer:

10

It should work fine, as long as you don’t use the track dsp chain restoring. I have just found a bug in Renoise i think, which comes in the way.

Saving is planned for some time, but Renoise doesn’t offer anything yet to store the snapshots into the song. I have an idea for a custom solution though and if it works as expected i will update the tool to support this. For now i just want to have the saving/restoring core stable, especially the DSP chains.

11

"“Further enabled can be complete dsp chains, . You can find the preferences under “Tools -> Mixer Snapshot Preferences””

do i understand this correctly,that with this it would be possible to have all your favorite dsp-chains saved as snapshots,so you would be able to apply them to any track you would want??

i think i noticed the bug you mentioned you have found in your earlier post

i got a error when trying to opening a saved snapshot of a dsp-chain

i think you already knows whta this about.but heres a image of the message

12

This would be doubling functionality already present in Renoise. You can save DSP chains already and load them.

The snapshot saves all effect devices in all chains including VST effect settings. So when switching a snapshot you’re basically swapping all devices at once to the stored values, similar to a screenshot of the mixer and all it’s devices and values. Imagine you’re ready composing and start a mixing session. It’s not unusual to try different compressor settings, filters, EQs or whatever. If i’m somewhat happy i’m storing a snapshot. Of course i can’t live with only sounding good, but want to improve further the sound, so i’m starting to fiddle again on all sorts of sliders and simply store a few snapshots inbetween. At some point i can try out all those different sounding snapshots simply by cycling through them and decide for the best sounding one. Often the last edited version isn’t really the best and one has overdone things quite a bit, so one has the possibility to revert to an earlier version without saving a new song for each try.

To make it a bit less hassle free i’m trying later to find a way to clearly identify a track and a device, to be 100% sure that it’s the source of my stored parameters. A user can add/delete tracks, rearrange them and also do the same with devices. The problem is now that the Renoise API notifies my script that something has happened with the tracks or devices, but not exactly what. The harder part seems to be now to find that out ourself. The tracks or devices don’t offer a unique value to identify them though, so my current ideas weren’t reliable enough to restore values safely back with good conscience.

Yes, that’s the showstopper currently and the reason i’m not providing a download anymore.

13

ahh yes reading through your above reply,that makes much more sense,and is certainly much much more usefull
that im gonna use for sure,i myself goes through alot of my favorite device chains,and i got my own favorite settings for each one of them,so to be able to set up comps,eqs,filters etc with different settings and have those as snapshots would sure be less hassle.

one thought is there a certain limit for numbers of snapshots you can make??it would make sense if there wouldnt be.

really looking forward to using this tool more

14

No limits on how many snapshots you can store.

15

thats good news,i have tested your tool as good as i can as it is now,and it works great for mute-unmute,pan

would be nice if you could save those snapshots so you would be able to use them in future projects,but i think you also have that in mind,when the current bugs are fixed.

also havent tested dsp chain stuff at all.

16

hi beatslaughter did the problem you had with the dsp chain get solved in beta 3??

17

Yes, i’ll add a new preview download soon. Started to add a few morer things, which are partly half complete and i want to finish these first before.

18

awesome,looking forward to it :yeah:

19

A new version is now available, added free cycling of snapshots, manage dialog is not modal anymore and can be controlled with the keyboard, also it’s now possible to load from the manage dialog. See the first post for a more indepth description.

20

Cool, will dl and have a look! :)