[CLOSED] Cakewalk 2021.09 Early Access [Updated to build 114]

[Noel Borthwick]

4 hours ago, John T said:

This is pretty tangential to the actual functionality that's been built this time around, I know. But just throwing this in:

What would improve my working life, vastly, on a near-daily basis, would be the ability to queue up multiple projects for export. So a list of projects would load, export with current settings, automatically close, then automatically load the next, and so on.

I can see that's outside the scope of current developments, but it seemed like a natural place to float the idea.

 

You export multiple projects on a daily basis?

Export queues are designed to be per project. We don't plan to build multi project export as a function. That said, in the future it may be possible to do scripting operations to achieve something similar.

[Keni]

Ooops...

 

Somethings wrong. I may try repeating it.

I was running build 111 and ran the update to 112. At the end of the update Cakewalk locked up trying to start. I tried to force it shut using task manager, but it would not respond and I proceeded to reboot. That got it out of memory.

I ran the rollback though it was labeled release 1 and it successfully brought me all the way back to 2021.06. From here running the updater already downloaded for 111 brought me back to 111...

I'm hesitant to try running the 112 installer again? Anyone?

Guess I'm gonna rollback again to 2021.06 then forward to the first EA as tasks are not working here in 111

 

Edited September 4, 2021 by Keni

[Will.]

14 minutes ago, Keni said:

I'm hesitant to try running the 112 installer again? Anyone?

 

No problem here. 

[Keni]

So far, a few bad things here...

First chance to try running tasks with 111 and I get empty files? That's a first.

Straight export works fine.

 

Note that I was using the option to update task to current settings for each task as I have been.

[Keni]

Something wrong here for sure...

I downloaded a fresh copy of the 112 update (in case my prior was corrupted) and it successfully ran bringing me to 112.

The Tasks are exporting empty files using the reset to current settings option. Export manually works fine as expected.

 

I'm gonna rollback to 2021.06 then forward to the 099 which was the last place all was working here.

 

[Keni]

Sure enough...

Rollback to 2021.06

Forward to 2021.09.099

All is well and tasks function as expected.

So my issues are in both 111 & 112

 

Something for tasks running via update to current tasks is my immediate guess. I'm gonna try creating new tasks and see if that isolates it a bit?

[Keni]

Nope.

Something more fundamental.

I created new tasks in 112 and ran them. Resulting fines are again empty.

Running export works fine. Something broke for me in 111 & 112 and tasks no longer work. Output files are created with the correct names and destinations but they are empty.....

 

 

[Keni]

Verified again...

 

Rollback /forward to 099 and all works well...

111 & 112 Broken. Tasks Not Working Correctly.. No audio in output files....

 

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

7 hours ago, Will_Kaydo said:

In  EDM you sometimes end up with 8 AUX tracks within the project just for a single source. 

Will_Kaydo I do not understand how you end up with 8 AUX tracks ☺️ ..I have written EDM tracks that have been used professionally but I don't use AUX track at all -my learning years with the DAW precedes AUX tracks . What do you use them for and why up to 8 on a single source ??  Do you have an example to listen to ?

[John T]

1 hour ago, Noel Borthwick said:

You export multiple projects on a daily basis?

Export queues are designed to be per project. We don't plan to build multi project export as a function. That said, in the future it may be possible to do scripting operations to achieve something similar.

Yes. I know it's a fairly fringe use case. But among the things I do is post production on audiobooks, and a project queue for exports would be incredibly life-improving for that. It's not unusual to do a bunch of corrections on a whole book, and then need to export the full thing. And the generally most efficient way to work is one project file per chapter. To be able to queue all that up and walk away would be amazing.

 

[Keni]

Just now, Milton Sica said:

@Noel Borthwick 

This started to happen on 111 and continued on 112.

Tasks generate empty files.

Executing one by one after recovering its parameters, command EXPORT works.

There was a setback.

 

A setback?

 

Some dot got misplaced in code somewhere in the 111 update and has persisted to the 112...

 

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

@Noel Borthwick

Hi Noel

I have been testing and I think this may be a bug. The Tag Filename Builder doesn't seem to work if you use "Folder " as the Tag

But if you use Track Name , it picks up the Folder name instead ( if all the Project Tracks are within Folders )

Hope that makes sense ☺️ 

[Noel Borthwick]

14 minutes ago, John T said:

Yes. I know it's a fairly fringe use case. But among the things I do is post production on audiobooks, and a project queue for exports would be incredibly life-improving for that. It's not unusual to do a bunch of corrections on a whole book, and then need to export the full thing. And the generally most efficient way to work is one project file per chapter. To be able to queue all that up and walk away would be amazing.

 

Got it. That would be a task better suited to scripting as mentioned.

[John T]

Just now, Noel Borthwick said:

Got it. That would be a task better suited to scripting as mentioned.

Yes, very likely. For one thing, intuitively, it doesn't make sense to do it from inside a project.

[Keni]

59 minutes ago, Milton Sica said:

@Noel Borthwick

 

I think I figured out where the loss might be.

I opened a project that had been saved with 99 and ran the tasks.

I ran the tasks and received empty files.

I recalled each task and saved it again using version 112.

The tasks were performed in full, as in 99.

Maybe something was lost in the 111 and 112 that does not pay attention to some detail in the execution of the tasks generated in the previous version.

Wasn’t the case here.

I created new tasks in 112 and they export empty.

 

[Terry Kelley]

Deleted. I'm behind in the thread.

Edited September 5, 2021 by Terry Kelley

[Keni]

8 minutes ago, Milton Sica said:

In fact, it's more than I could see.
In the same project I created another task already in version 112.

While the previous ones are correctly executed, the new task generates an empty file.

Something in the path of passing info into the task. So the old tasks contain valid instructions, but the new ones are not picking up the data while managing to output... nothing but a filename.

 

Might be a helpful pointer for them?

 

[Panu Pentikäinen]

19 hours ago, msmcleod said:

A higher buffer size will be faster at exporting, but at the expense of using more memory.

Setting it to zero will default it to the playback buffer size.

Is the memory consumption that big deal? Today it should not be an issue except in older laptops.

I would like to see Cakewalk optimizing buffer size automatically behind the scenes. Now there are a dozen buffer size combobox items available but nobody knows which setting is the best and why.  From end user's point of view buffer size is too technical and does not fit in Cakewalk's modern UI design principles which clearly tries to target Cakewalk for beginners and home studios. Those folks do not need understand why some buffer setting is faster and other is slower. Audio Export module could test the best buffer setting while user is setting filename and other options. On a laptop: less memory usage, on high-end PC: use as much RAM as needed.

 

 

[Panu Pentikäinen]

Export Audio Toast message is on the top of other programs and it won't disappear automatically.
Suggestion: make it disappear automatically and at least keep it on the top of other Cakewalk windows but not on the top of other programs.

 

[Noel Borthwick]

1 hour ago, Panu Pentikäinen said:

Is the memory consumption that big deal? Today it should not be an issue except in older laptops.

I would like to see Cakewalk optimizing buffer size automatically behind the scenes. Now there are a dozen buffer size combobox items available but nobody knows which setting is the best and why.  From end user's point of view buffer size is too technical and does not fit in Cakewalk's modern UI design principles which clearly tries to target Cakewalk for beginners and home studios. Those folks do not need understand why some buffer setting is faster and other is slower. Audio Export module could test the best buffer setting while user is setting filename and other options. On a laptop: less memory usage, on high-end PC: use as much RAM as needed.

 

 

The reason why we don't do this behind the scenes is because like audio latency, there are cases where it can affect sound so we don't want to second guess the user. Some plugins will render differently and then users will complain that their bounce sounds different. 

 The higher buffer size doesn't play such a big role in memory consumption, but it plays a huge role in speed and CPU load. While it may not be very noticeable in small projects,  with 400 or 500 tracks and lots of clips for example, it can be the difference of whether you can export in real-time or not. 

>>Those folks do not need understand why some buffer setting is faster and other is slower.
Shall I rename the field to something esoteric like export acceleration? :)

Re memory consumption the main change in 09 is that when you export the entire mix with all tracks it no longer duplicates the project in memory which uses a lot of memory and setup time.  In large projects this will make a big difference because it now exports directly from the main project loaded in memory.