Loop crossfade feature would be good for ambience (in 10.1)

[mattdowning]

As you're inviting feature requests through this forum, here's my first one: A crossfade feature would be nice for looped cues. It would work well on ambient effects such as rain, wind, background hubub and chatter etc.

Ideally you could introduce a variable crossfade length between a few milliseconds and a few seconds.

Matt

[Mike Daniell]

Could you give me a bit more detail, Matt? Are you refering to having two cues running simultaneously, both looping, and being able to cross fade from one to the other and back again, several times? Do both cues keep running or is the cross-fade to terminate the cue being fade-out?

[Martin]

If I could chip in here, I THINK what Matt means is a crossfade between the end and the beginning of the looping cue.

I have found that the loop works just fine for uneven sounds like rain or a telephone, but when used with a smooth sound such as wind or gently lapping water, there is a definite 'jump-cut' at the point where the track loops.

I get around this in the old way by making up a long track using my sound editing software but it would be nice if SCS could handle.

[Nick]

I'm pretty sure that's what he means as well - it would be a highly desirable feature, and makes loop points much easier to set and hide. It is commonly available in DAWs which offer a looping feature (like protools), whereby you can loop a sound x number of times to make a longer sound region. This of course is easy for DAWs as they are not processing live. They are generally crossfading a very short (100ms?) section. I am not aware of any live playback software (with the possible exception of Ableton Live) that can do this - so it may be quite difficult to realise, but we'd all be very impressed if you did!

[Mike Daniell]

I get the idea now. That would require some extra processing as SCS would effectively be playing two parts of the same file at the same time for the duration of the cross-fade. I'll see what I can do.

[kharney]

I have had the same problem but I found that it could be rectified by moving the beginning and end points of the file a couple milliseconds in either direction. Given that you can move those points .01 seconds at a time the problem evenually resolved itself and the loop was seemless but it did take some work to get it right. Could be a good temporary fix to the problem. Also when you record the file to be used you can put a fade on the beginning and end of the file and run it to the end and restart at the beginning.

[NylonOxygen]

Mike,

I agree with these guys. I do use ProTools, so I have a lot of power to do editing on my own. The audible dropout that occurs at the loop point in SCS makes the repeat function unusable sometimes. My director actually told me that the loop was audible and I had to create a 10 minute rain sound in ProTools as a fix. I've tried moving the repeat point around in the file with mixed results. Having the ability to put in a crossfade between the in and out point of the loop would definately solve this for me and save me a lot of work! I'd be among the impressed users if you could pull this off!

Here's an additional idea regarding loops - could we have a "Repeat From" field added in addition to the "Repeat at?" So we'd have a loop-start-point and a loop-end-point. For example, I have a single sound with thunder and a rain bed. I'd like to be able to, in one cue, play the thunder and loop the rain. So, I'd like to start the cue at the beginning of the sound file, play to :55, then go back and repeat from :15 seconds after the start of the sound file.

I do know that I can do this NOW by making it 2 cues - one for the thunder, crossfading to a second auto-activated cue that starts 15 seconds into the same file. But if this function was in one cue it would be less confusing for the operator and less total cues. Usually i'm not running the sound- i just set up the cues and the stage manager runs sound for the shows.

Thanks for reading this - hope it's clear.

Jason

[Mike Daniell]

Jason,

Loop start and end points are now available in SCS 9 - see separate announcement on SCS 9.

Seems like there's a lot of interest in the loop cross-fade requirement. I've worked out how to implement this but I haven't done an 'impact analysis' to determine how much work is involved. I'll look into this for SCS 9.2.

Mike

[NylonOxygen]

Mike,

Thank you thank you thank you for the loop points. And the play list cues look AWESOME! I looked at screen shots and I'm really impressed! I'll be ordering the upgrade as soon as the run of the current show we're on is through.

And thank you for listening to the request for crossfades between loop points. The fact that you are willing to listen, figure a way to do it, and respond speaks to your commitment to your users.

Hopefully your idea works and isn't too hard to implement!

[escrge]

I believe there might be a possible work-around in version 9.2. In 9.2, Mike has indicated that a loop feature should be available for the playlist cue.

If you create a playlist with two cues (both being either the same sound file or two identical sound files with different filenames if a sharing issue arises) you should be able to crossfade both files, then loop them.