hi!
I was observing Renoise development for a long time and I decided to buy it as for me it seems that is one of the best trackers around. Great work guys!
However, for me it seems it lacks one of quite important feature. Actually, I was using non-linear video editing software a lot in the past (like AVID, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere). And the idea comes directly from such software. There we are able to mark some certain fragment/track/effect of the movie to be pre-rendered for preview. For example I was able to successfully cut and edit full HD material on a very old machine using this feature as I pre-rendered all my effects before playing.
It would be very nice to have such feature in Renoise. It is something like combination of “Render selection to sample” feature, however more sophisticated. So how does it work in general?
Firstly user selects tracks or places marking them that they should be pre-rendered. Rendering should be done automatically before playing. Pre-rendered data is stored in the temporary folder. So for example if I put a lot of computationally expensive effects on one track it should be pre-rendered every time I change something and played (mixed with other tracks) from already rendered file. Of course it is clearly visible (hearable) that pre-rendered part is little bit different as draft one, but we have in mind that it is a preview. The idea behind that is quite simple. Instead of user who have to select, right click, render to sample, mute tracks with VSTs/effects, add another track, put “rendered-to-sample” instrument and also having in mind that before final render we have to remember to mute rendered-to-sample tracks and unmute computationally expensive ones - the Renoise should do it for us automatically.
For example:
On track 1 I have many effects and it is not possible to play this track with others as CPU usage goes very high. So I mark this track/notes to be pre-rendered before playing (for example using “dark blue” color). Then I hit play. Renoise shows me a dialog “rendering preview”, and it renders all such marked places for me automatically. When rendering preview is finished, it starts playing normally, however taking pre-rendered data for final mix instead of realtime mixing effects.
When I hit the “play” button again, already pre-rendered data should be taken from the temporary folder for such marked places. However if I change for example just one note on such track, after I hit “play” that track should be pre-rendered again. It is obvious that first pre-render takes longer time before play, but it allows us to use as many effects as we would like to have and also gives us free mind as we do not have to play around with “render selection to sample” all the time.
I hope you understand it a bit, it is very nice feature in video-editing software I’m using a lot. I was surprised that it is not implemented in the Renoise. I know - somebody will say that “come on you have render-selection-to-sample, don’t bother”, my answer is simple: “yes, but should I click and mute/unmute/remember which tracks were rendered to sample or should it be done transparently by the software?”
I assume this is not so complicated feature, and as I’m also a programmer I think it could be implemented quite easy. Just we have to remember where to store preview and when to play/render it
cheers!