Extreme time stretching software (realtime)

[blortblort]

Good news:
I ported paulstretch to audacity and I put the source code of the patch here:
http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paul ... _audacity/

If you want to get paulstretch in the official distribution (i.e. you are not a developer who is able to compile it, and want to use it), please write here to the audacity developers:
http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2457

Using paulstretch in audacity, lets you to resize only certain portions of the audio like this (original).

Paul

Thanks again for this, Paul.
I'll be bumping this regularly.
while i know there are a great many of us that would like to see this stretcher in vst, it may be that *this* way is the best way to go...and seeing how you DO have the audacity patch done...and audacity is free...I'm hoping enough kvrians will be able to convince the audacity team that there IS interest in having the patch added to their official release soon.
Either that, or I'll have to learn to code meself...

[blortblort]

bbbbuuuummmpppp for paulstretch/audacity patch (see post above)


may have to start it's own thread on this...Am I the only one interested in this? Surely not!?

[sinkmusic]

Hi
Nice.
Does it works only in AUdacity, or is there any chance to be able to use it as a vst plugin ?

[blortblort]

I don't know if Paul has any plans for a vst... I know many have asked...but I figure since the audacity patch works NOW- why not request to have that added to the next revision of audacity? heck, I've been using the paulstretch standalone app for long enough- just having the convenience of it in an editor AND to be able to affect only portions of the file- that's worth way more than free
do I sound too enthusiastic?

[jinxtigr]

I'm not at all sure it makes sense to try to put such a radical time-alterer into essentially a streaming format. How is a VST supposed to extend the track it's on to 30 times the length?

For Mac people who like the sound of this- definitely check out SoundHack by Tom Erbe- http://www.soundhack.com/freeware.php

The part to do this is called Phase Vocoder

[blortblort]

I'm not at all sure it makes sense to try to put such a radical time-alterer into essentially a streaming format. How is a VST supposed to extend the track it's on to 30 times the length?

good question! kinda seems like making an extreme time stretch in "realtime" is an oxymoron, really

[Alien Leg]

It should work like the Melodyne Plugin.

[paulnasca]

Hi.
I noticed that there is possible to vote for inclusion paulstretch in audacity, here:
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... ew_Effects
(see "Extreme Stretch").
If you want paulstretch in audacity, please vote for it in that page.
Here is described how you can vote:
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... e_Requests
(see "Voting" section).

Thanks.
Paul

[spacedad]

voted.

[blortblort]

voted!... we're up to 8 now....
please vote on this folks! very cool feature to have on a nice free tool like audacity. Just to remind folks- this feature, will allow for (non-realtime) stretch of non-contiguous portions of a file. serious practical and FSU applications to consider here. This is worth your time to vote
thanks again, Paul for making this possible!

[visa tapani]

I'm not at all sure it makes sense to try to put such a radical time-alterer into essentially a streaming format. How is a VST supposed to extend the track it's on to 30 times the length?

I agree, but there would be one giant advantage of having paulstretch as a VST - it could be used for non-realtime processing in any host that way. For example, in Cubase I could just paint a sector of a newly recorded piece of audio, select 'process with plugin' and apply paulstretch to a segment of it. It would be immensely powerful to incorporate this into the host workflow. However, I'm not sure how easy it is to make a non-realtime VST effect. It would probably require some kind of workaround, like recording the sound into a long buffer, and then processing the result...

I'd also like to take this opportunity to suggest some workflow-imrovements for the standalone version:

1.) Drag-and-drop of files from explorer to the program.

2.) When rendering to audio file - remember last folder and last file type! Now it defaults to C:/Program Files/Paulstretch/ and .ogg everytime, which is a royal pain if I want to stretch numerous files successively and render them all as .wavs somewhere far from my c drive! Also, it could default to the file name of the input file, or possible "<input file>(1)" or something. It would be even better to give an option for either "remember last folder" or "default to folder of input file"...

Well those two spring to my mind at least - they would significantly improve the workflow of Paulstretch.

Anyway, thanks for the great tool, I use it a lot!

[visa tapani]

Oh yeah - I was thinking about how to do a VST effect version of the plugin, and dblue's Stretch came to my mind (http://illformed.org/temp/dblue_Stretch_v1.1.zip). It's essentially a time stretching VST. AFAIK it works by buffering the audio into a buffer (of user-adjustable length) and releasing it stretched when the plugin is triggered. I think Paulstretch could be made into plugin with the same principle...

[blortblort]

hi visa-tapani! I 100% agree! yours are some great ideas for Paul's extreme stretch tool, but that tool itself is NOT what is being voted on here.
Presently, we're addressing the request to implement the extreme stretch tool's capabilities into the free Audacity DAE ... and by doing so, that implementation will yeild benefits that the present stand alone extreme stretch tool simply does not yet have (...like being able to take a file and stretch only a small portion of it, for instance)

seriously- I would LOVE to see your suggestions implemented to the present tool, but for what it does and for the price, I can live with the status quo...but with this built into Audacity, it does sort of eliminate the need to even use the standalone .... sooo.... let's all vote for this inclusion and we can all use Audacity's file handling with the Paul's Extreme Stretch capabilities!

as for the issue of turning this into a vst- I don't have the technical knowledge to speak to that issue really... but I'd venture to say that while dblue stretch kicks major ass, i don't think it operates the same way that this tool does...so I'm inclined to say that extreme stretch (simply by virtue of the fact that it CAN do such extreme stretching) couldn't really feasibly be implemented as a realtime vst. It may always have to be implemented as some sort of scripted offline/non-realtime process tool and if so- that would have to be implemented specifically to the DAE in question.
(again- I say let's take advantage of the opportunity to have this added to a free DAE like Audacity ...we're up to nine votes now! )

[visa tapani]

hi visa-tapani! I 100% agree! yours are some great ideas for Paul's extreme stretch tool, but that tool itself is NOT what is being voted on here.
Presently, we're addressing the request to implement the extreme stretch tool's capabilities into the free Audacity DAE ... and by doing so, that implementation will yeild benefits that the present stand alone extreme stretch tool simply does not yet have (...like being able to take a file and stretch only a small portion of it, for instance)

Yeah I do realize that, but since I'm not an Audacity user, I might continue to use the standalone anyway if my feature requests were implemented. Well, I registered and voted at the audacity wiki anyway, since it is a cool prospect.

However, my true wish would be to have it as a VST. To be able to use it in whatever the tool of my choice would be - Soundforge, Wavelab, Cubase, Sonar etcetc. Now that would skyrocket the usability of it...

as for the issue of turning this into a vst- I don't have the technical knowledge to speak to that issue really... but I'd venture to say that while dblue stretch kicks major ass, i don't think it operates the same way that this tool does...so I'm inclined to say that extreme stretch (simply by virtue of the fact that it CAN do such extreme stretching) couldn't really feasibly be implemented as a realtime vst. It may always have to be implemented as some sort of scripted offline/non-realtime process tool and if so- that would have to be implemented specifically to the DAE in question.
(again- I say let's take advantage of the opportunity to have this added to a free DAE like Audacity ...we're up to nine votes now! )

Well of course the VST version should have limits to the extent you can stretch the material. The hyperstretch mode should be off course left out alltogether (as it is now, you could theoretically stretch a 20 sec clip to last 600 years ). The maximum stretch time should probably be limited to something like 50x and maximum buffer size to ~2 min. This would at least be fine with me, since I rarely go over 20x - the character of the original material is just lost and the end result is uninteresting mush.

Of course dblue's stretch utilizes a completely different (and much less CPU intensive) algorithm, but what it shows is that it can be done. It allows a maximum buffer size of 60 sec and maximum stretching of 220x . Now Paulstretch is much more CPU intensive, so it probably couldn't be used as a realtime effect in practice for a while. However, AFAIK there is no technical problem why the VST effect couldn't be build - then the user should understand to only apply it as offline process.

[TheD20]

Thanks for this Paul! It sounds amazing!