It depends what you mean by "standard".

As I understand it, the original specification allows for all kinds of metadata, including:

* a cue-points chunk <cue-ck>. Each cue point has six fields, including one for the name ("dwName"). (I'm paraphrasing section 3-27, page 61 of "Multimedia Programming Interface and Data Specifications 1.0", IBM Corporation and Microsoft Corporation, August 1991 which is available here).

* a playlist chunk <playlist-ck>, the <play-segment> of which includes a field for the length of the section in samples ("dwLength") and a field specifying the number of times to play the section ("wLoops"). (Section 3-29, page 63 of the same document).

* an associated data list, which includes a label chunk and a note chunk. The label chunk <labl-ck> allows you to name the cue points identified in <cue-ck>; the note chunk <note-ck> allows you to attach text/comments to them. (Sections 3-29 & 3-30, pages 63 & 64).

...However, the extent to which these aspects of the specification are implemented by different applications is anything but "standardised", as far as I can see (I've posted about this before, both on KVR and elsewhere).

It's not an idle enquiry. I'm asking about markers and loop points for three reasons (apologies in advance for a long post!):

1. I've got a portable recorder (a Zoon H4n) that I use for making live and field recordings. Pressing the record button during recording inserts a marker into the file. Which can be very useful later if you want to find one particular bit of an hour-long recording. Unfortunately, not all audio editors recognise these markers!

2. Many software samplers have some kind of built-in waveform display that allows you to set the "start loop" and "end loop" points of a sample. But it's often easier to do this kind of thing with a dedicated audio editor (better display, ability to zoom in, better file handling etc.). (For instance, you can use Wavosaur to insert loop points in .wav files and sfz player will recognise them). Not all audio editors allow you to do this.

3. The ability to insert named markers in files and use them as "signposts" can be very useful...but only if applications recognise them, of course. For instance:

A colleague sent me some audio files of guide recordings and asked me to add my contributions. Which I did...but I also changed the structure. So when I sent the files of my parts back to him, I embedded labeled markers to identify where the different sections ("1. Intro", "2. V1", "3. Cs1" etc.) now began. I thought I was being helpful, and it's simple to do using Reaper, but it didn't work. I assumed - naively, as it turned out - that his host (Nuendo) would be able to identify the markers, even if it couldn't read the labels. But I was wrong: Nuendo, it seems, can't even do that (see here)

A free cross-platform audio editor that features a thorough implementation of the metadata provisions of the .wav spec would be a thing to behold. Seriously.

I think the loop indicator was behaving correctly i.e. when looping was on, the indicator was present; when looping was off, it was absent.

(I can't be sure now because having enabled VST plugins it crashes before I can do anything, including disabling VST plugins. If I have any time later I'll uninstall and re-install and check it out)

Markers or cue points are mentioned along with regions but I don't think that part has been implemented yet?

I'd hope at least to see markers in existing recordings, and be able to add new ones or drag existing ones to new locations.

The only keyboard shortcut I have found is "q" which does a kind of instant zoom in and out. Down the track some more would be good, maybe "m" for marker, "i" and "o" to mark selection start/end points on the fly, and so forth.

Configurable keyboard shortcuts are always handy but maybe that's too much to ask for at this stage.

Wait, what?!!
How can you zoom in a specific frequency range?

EDIT: Oh, I got it now.

hello,
just tried now, cool.
this is possible to import/export .flac format ?

To import flac files (or any supported files) just open a file.

To export flac, you have two ways:
1 - File > Save As
2 - File > Export (in others tab)

I highly second this!
The big advance of setting loop points in a dedicated audio editor: All samplers will recognize them!
IMO such a function is a must when you plan to prepare files for useage in a sampler.
In addition, I'd love to see a function to add x-fades to your loop points, so one could as well add loop points to somewhat more critical material (fwiw, WaveLab does that extremely well...).
From what I know, currently there's no freeware editor doing these things even remotely properly (OK, there's loop finder for OSX, but it's pretty bad to handle...).

- Sascha

new beta (13) arrived recently - is there any changelog of some sort available anywhere?

Yes, loop point editing is a really important feature for Mac users since there is currently no free editor that does this properly (that I am aware of).

But on the whole, Ocenaudio is shaping up to be an excellent editor. Great work!!

Peace,
Andy.

Is there a way to change the default folder when the File>Open menu item is clicked when starting Ocenaudio for the first time? It would save quite a few navigational clicks, if this could be defaulted to a favorite path.

A new version (beta 14) is now available.



New features include regions and markers, snap to zero crossing, bypass effect preview, join audio files, TTA audio file support, RAR file support and iPhone Ringtone creation.

+1 for the setting of loop points

* It would also be nice to have the program intelligently find all loop points and allow me to cycle through each and choose the best one. ZeroX Seamless looper did this, and it is VERY useful.

+1 for x-fades for loop points.

All of these things are very important for instrument multisampling, and are the features I use the most.

Thanks!!!!

--Sean

The latest beta does ...



Thanks very much for this. Mac users now have a free audio editor with loop point editing. Brilliant!

Peace,
Andy.

Cool! I didn't read carefully enough... How about the other two things I mentioned? I didn't see that they were added...

* It would also be nice to have the program intelligently find all loop points and allow me to cycle through each and choose the best one. ZeroX Seamless looper did this, and it is VERY useful.

+1 for x-fades for loop points.

--Sean

Great to see this ongoing development - thanks for keeping us updated.

Is there - or will there be - the means to save regions and markers? At the moment if you lovingly create some, then save and exit, they are gone when you reopen the file. That's a bit of a problem.
Last edited by Ozpeter on Mon Feb 27, 2012 5:23 pm; edited 1 time in total