XT Software

jhuk · Post by **jhuk** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 4:18 pm

Hi,

I love the Freeze function, it's enabled me to continue working on material that my machine couldn't otherwise handle. However it's insistance on freezing entire track/channel lengths has a certain drawback: time! I noticed that this topic was mentioned earlier this month but with no follow ups..
Some kind of selection based freeze is really needed to allow users to grab and freeze selected track sections within the few looped bars that they are currently working on, rather than entire track lengths otherwise things rapidly become unworkable.. (..wanna try freezing a 10 channel mix lasting 8 minutes??).
Pretty soon I'm going to be spending more time Freezing than working..
..Help!

Regards,

JHUK

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:15 pm

So you want a workaround to a workaround? (ie. in my opinion, Freeze in any host is a workaround, but a useful one!)

Selection-based freeze would likely be more complicated than you think!

jens · Post by **jens** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:24 pm

the ideal solution is if the host recognizes how many different parts a track contains and then to only render each part once and to replace the old clip with the new (frozen) one - that way you can still arrange your track as before - this is the perfect freeze I wish more hosts (including eXT of course) would support...

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:35 pm

The tricky part is the management of DSP routing for the non-frozen parts. In order to save CPU, which is the whole point, plugins would have to be loaded and offloaded on demand, according to the regions set by the freeze process.

In theory, it's definitely possible. Heck, almost anything's possible in theory. I just think it'd be harder to implement than one would initially suppose.

jens · Post by **jens** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:38 pm

Lunch Money wrote:The tricky part is the management of DSP routing for the non-frozen parts. In order to save CPU, which is the whole point, plugins would have to be loaded and offloaded on demand, according to the regions set by the freeze process.

exactly - and that's why I think the requested/suggested feature is not a good idea - however the request/suggestion I made is the perfect solution...

- it's much quicker

- it often saves a lot of disk-space

- it's much more flexible therefor you have to un-freeze and re-freeze much more seldom

All sequencers should have a freeze function like this...

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:42 pm

You mean clip freeze Jens?

jens · Post by **jens** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:48 pm

Andrew Vernon wrote:You mean clip freeze Jens?

yup - as it is in Sonar and no-other host - all the individual clips are frozen and then you can still drag the frozen 'clips' (='parts' in eXT's terminology) arund, copy them, delete them and what not which is highly logical as they're normal audio clips - 'freezing' is nothing else than automated rendering - why has it always to be so unflexible and uncomfortable? I don't get it...

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:56 pm

Ah, OK, I misread what you had stated, Jens. It IS an elegant solution, provided the clips are of a manageable size. I will often do things like record acoustic guitars all in one take, resulting in a track-sized clip.

But, as long as the end-user is smart enough to break down into smaller clips himself, it could still be VERY useful, indeed!

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:57 pm

Yeah I agree.

jens · Post by **jens** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 6:11 pm

Lunch Money wrote:Ah, OK, I misread what you had stated, Jens. It IS an elegant solution, provided the clips are of a manageable size. I will often do things like record acoustic guitars all in one take, resulting in a track-sized clip. But, as long as the end-user is smart enough to break down into smaller clips himself, it could still be VERY useful, indeed!

actually the size of the clip doesn't matter at all - just to make sure - it's automatic, not an option - e.g. in case you've got one clip/part that is as long as the whole song then the freeze-file is in Sonar just as as long as in eXT but you can still move it around - and if you got two clips which both have half the size of the song apart from a eight bar long gap in the middle the two frozen files are in Sonar eight bars shorter (both together) than the one file in eXT and you can still move them around...

...however you turn it - there are only advantages but not a single disadvantage!

R.A.W. · Post by **R.A.W.** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:09 pm

jens wrote:
Andrew Vernon wrote:You mean clip freeze Jens?
yup - as it is in Sonar and no-other host...

you forgot about live

jens · Post by **jens** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:14 pm

R.A.W. wrote:
jens wrote:
Andrew Vernon wrote:You mean clip freeze Jens?
yup - as it is in Sonar and no-other host...
you forgot about live

the last version I tried was 4 - seems I'm a bit behind the times

jhuk · Post by **jhuk** » Wed Nov 30, 2005 2:26 pm

Hi,

Hmm, interesting comments. Yes the "Clip Freeze" idea is a nice one. Essentially having "source" Parts and then sequencing Frozen "copies" along a track in the order required. ..But that's been a common principal anyway, (at least with midi/sequence data) since the late seventies: here's your bank of source patterns (clips), arrange them in any order, however many times you need, and there's your song.. to put it in simple terms.
Frankly I'd welcome any approach that frees me from having to Freeze entire tracks, ..everytime. The XT Freeze initially looked like the perfect solution but in practice I find it becomes unusable very quickly due to the time it take to freeze entire (and expanding) tracks.
Lunch Money I think you may have slightly misunderstood my suggestion. There will be no loading or unloading of plugins "live" as you will be dealing with either live or frozen tracks at any one time, not switching from live to frozen in realtime..
Ok, you loop the few bars that you are working on (remember?) at any point in the composition. Then you freeze out the tracks that you don't need to adjust.., keeping "live" the fews tracks that you do.. and you only play within the looped section.
Jens, this is not as clever as the Clip freeze idea... so that probably makes it the simplest, easiest to code and quickest to implement within XT then ..? Frankly I'd be happy with it today and the Clip freeze tomorrow, just ANYTHING really!

JHUK

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Wed Nov 30, 2005 4:28 pm

No, I didn't misunderstand. You misunderstood my response.

Since the thread is bumped, though-- surely you can just solo the few tracks you're working on? Muted VSTs don't process audio and therefore don't consume CPU cycles.

Now, I can see how you might be just looping a frozen region, which is cool and all-- but if this gets implemented, there WILL be people who want to press 'play' and have the timeline move through un-frozen parts into frozen parts and back out again, so the issue has to be addressed.

Greg

jhuk · Post by **jhuk** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 5:12 pm

Okey dokey,

Well, misunderstanding/s aside.. Yep, I've muted/solo'd tracks in XT's sequencer.. and I'm still running out of CPU. Time for a new computer? ..Well I was hoping that's where the Freezer would save me .. and allow me to keep up the quality and compose against the "big picture" rather than a couple (no kidding) of lines. That's the whole point of the Freeze option right? We're kinda going in the opposite direction with muting, surely? (Though occasionally needs must..)
There's been a commitment to Freeze in XT (Hurrah!) so
lets encourage it to become a great, usable, flexible feature.
Like the Clip-Freeze thingy, the idea of shifting smoothly from frozen to live and back again is pretty sweet actually..
How about Clip Freeze, Loop Freeze and "Freeze-Thaw" (..?) options all within XT. Fabbo!
All this can (and should) be addressed, but we've got to start somewhere. Jorgen are you out there?

Regards,
JHUK

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