waveform recording with no active inputs

[mr_salty]

Hi, I'm well acquainted with the "recording is only possible when at least one active input device is assigned to a track" message, but for some reason Waveform has stopped showing that message when it should. I couldn't find any setting that controls that, but I'd much rather it warn me instead of recording nothing - I was quite dismayed when I missed a take last night.

I'm not sure when this started happening (within the past month or two; I've been using Waveform for 4-5 years now), and AFAIK I didn't change anything in my setup. It happens both on existing projects and if I open a brand new project. It doesn't matter if I have an input assigned and not armed or no inputs assigned at all - it even happens if I open a new project, delete all the tracks, and press record. It also happens if I go into settings->audio devices and set it to "<< none >>"

Has anyone else run into this or have any ideas?

(Waveform 13.1.2 on windows 11)

[Peter Widdicombe]

I didn't think about it, but did test. 12 DOES work as expected, and pops that message if no track is armed for recording.

13 (at least default config?) merrily goes into record with no warning. I even disabled retrospective record, thinking that might have affected something, but it doesn't. That does appear to be a condition that has somehow stopped generating an alert.

[talby]

I think you should send a bug report about this to the developers. For doing so, enter to your account on the Tracktion site and follow on to the support page.

[FigBug]

This is a feature, you can no start recording with nothing armed and then use "record enable" on each input to punch in and out.

[talby]

@Figbug, sorry, I do not understand you.
"you can [no] start recording with nothing armed", this makes sense, if you mean [not] and is what mr-salty was used to. But I understand him, that [now] in WF13 it is possible, and then the recording is recorded to nowhere and lost. So you might mean [now].

"and then use "record enable" on each input to punch in and out." this us what I do not understand, neither with [no] nor [now], probably because I am not a native english speaking person. Could you explain it in other words what you mean by this? Do you want to say the recording without any armed track is enabled because there exists [now] a possibility to punch in and out somewhere else which is not the track? Then, where is punched in and out? Then there should be the record somewhere stored und should not be lost? Then mr-salty should have a chance to still find his recording from yesterday night?
Sorry, I didn't get it.

[pough]

Then, where is punched in and out?

This would probably be easier to show than describe, but I hate working with video.

The punch in and out is like the old-school manual method. Press the record enable button on the input at the left of a track to toggle recording in the middle of the recording process.

By the way, retrospective record still works as long as you have an input selected on the left.

[Peter Widdicombe]

That's a bad typo, with no / not / now having very different meanings...

I suppose the advantage of the punch in and punch out, are that you get just the little portions you intend when you punch; but that probably doesn't work when you're "running solo" but might if recording for someone else.

Almost easier to just record a second overlay in the track, and slice/toss what you don't want; although you would presumably then have a LARGE recording on disk that you only want little portions of. You can't just delete it, from what I gather, because the slices are only pointers to the full recording.

[mr_salty]

Thanks for digging into this and the explanation! I don't have 12 installed anymore but thinking about it, the last time I did a lot of recording I was using 12, and this could very well be the first time I made the mistake since I upgraded.

The punch in/out thing makes sense, although in my case I'd rather have the warning to stop me from doing something dumb... so I think I'll file a feature request to provide an option and see what they say (maybe there is one already but I couldn't find it). It also seems weird you can start recording without even having any input assigned to any track, although I played with it and confirmed that you can assign inputs while recording is in progress - I'm just not sure why you'd need to do that.

[Peter Widdicombe]

Ugh. Caught me today. 9 minutes "recording" an un-enabled track, and my retrospective set to just 2 minutes. Need an option to set it "the old-school way" B-(