Integrated fade shape, and fades

[Lists]

I'm experiencing an issue with integrated fade shapes, which are not part of my usual workflow, but are becoming important on my current show.  Often we begin a piece of music at a hotter level, drop it's level down with an absolute fade on the master, and the try to go back an tweak the integrated fade curve.  It feels like adjusting the integrated fade curve causes the master to jump back to the original level - is that the correct interpretation of what's going on?  any suggested workarounds?

Thanks much.

Charles Coes
cco...@gmail.com
"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" -John Maynard Keynes

[Chris Ashworth]

As it currently works, changing the fade will not change the live volume. For threading reasons the fade curve is copied and a copy of that data is passed off to the thread which is running the fade. To hear the new fade curve you’ll need to stop the cue and start it again.  (It can be started from any loaded time, not just the beginning of the cue.)

-C

[Lists]

Hmmm. that makes some sense -but we definitely experienced, at least once today, that adjusting a point on the integrated fade curve we had a large jump in volume on a cue whose master fader was set far lower by an absolute fade.  I'll do some more scientific testing to confirm tonight.

Thanks much.

Charles Coes

cco...@gmail.com
www.charlescoes.com
"Man is an antientropic creature; he is a random-to-orderly arranger and tries to perceive patterns in all things." R. Murray Schafer

[micpool]

I'm a bit confused as to what is being discussed here, INTEGRATED fade envelopes (sometimes referred to as integrated fade cues) or  fade curve shapes?

Mic

[micpool]

Autocorrect error

sometimes referred to as integrated fade curves

Mic

[micpool]

If its curve shapes, adjusting a curve shape while a fade is running terminates the fade cue immediately and restores the original level of the cue.

Mic

[micpool]

Sorry, just tried it again pulling the curve down and it's doing something more complicated. The level does change though. Up if you are moving a mid curve point up and down if you are pulling it down, so not to the original level, but to some level to do with the modified fade cue.

Mic

[Lists]

integrated fade shapes.

Charles Coes

cco...@gmail.com
www.charlescoes.com
"The right to express ideas, good ideas, bad ideas, crazy ideas, impossible ideas - this is the most precious right that the individual can have." - Dalton Trumbo

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[micpool]

On Saturday, July 18, 2015 at 12:55:51 AM UTC+1, Charles Coes wrote:

integrated fade shapes.

Does that mean custom curve shapes  or integrated fade envelope?

A pedant. 

[Lists]

The menu calls it an integrated fade shape.

Charles Coes

cco...@gmail.com
www.charlescoes.com
"The right to express ideas, good ideas, bad ideas, crazy ideas, impossible ideas - this is the most precious right that the individual can have." - Dalton Trumbo

[micpool]

Ah, I am glad I asked then, because I was referring to what happens when you adjust the curve in a  fade cue (and I think Chris might have been too)

The integrated fade shape menu item is only applicable to Audio cues (or the audio part of video cues)

The Tools Menu item for fade cues is Copy fade shape.

Adjusting an integrated fade envelope on a running audio cue can result in level changes but not in a predictable way. As far as I can see if you move the curve somewhere near the running cursor in the waveform the level will change once, either up or down and any subsequent movement anywhere on the curve  won't do anything until the cue is re run.

Mic

[micpool]

OK Assuming we are talking about an audio cue and adjusting what is referred to in the tooltip in the inspector as 'Integrated Fade Envelope" and in the Tools Menu as "Integrated Fade Shape", I have replicated Charles's problem.

It happens every time an integrated fade envelope is adjusted with the cue running. What happens is the level immediately snaps to the level set at the END of the fade curve and no further use is made of the fade curve.

(It has nothing to do with any subsequent fade cues)

The 2 attached screen recordings demonstrate this

Mic

[Lists]

That behavior doesn't match what I experienced which was an increase in level.  the end of our integrated fade shape was at a reduced level from teh beginning. it is possible in my case that it restored to the level at the beginning of the integrated fade *.

Another fade oddity - this time with fade cues.  With live fade preview enabled we ran a relative fade early that was dipping a group to -infinity on the master fader before stopping.  the relative was stopped with the stop hotkey, leaving the audio file running at an inaudible level.  i went back to the last absolute fade that targeted the running audio cue, attempting to reset the level by twiddling the master fader.  this didn't bring us back to the previous level.  Adjusting the master fader level on the audio file itself did bring us back.

Charles Coes
cco...@gmail.com
"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" -John Maynard Keynes

<Changing envelope raises level.mov><Changing envelope drops level.mov>

[micpool]

On Saturday, July 18, 2015 at 2:38:55 AM UTC+1, Charles Coes wrote:

That behavior doesn't match what I experienced which was an increase in level.  the end of our integrated fade shape was at a reduced level from teh beginning. it is possible in my case that it restored to the level at the beginning of the integrated fade *.

 

Retesting the same workspace that I took the screen recordings from a few hours later, I am now getting a different behaviour as well, where the level change doesn't seem related to the end of the fade. (When I first reopened the workspace there was no level change for a few goes either)  Clearly, this is a complex thing.

However, it seems that neither the integrated fade envelope in an audio cue, or curve shape in a fade cue is behaving as Chris describes in his earlier reply in this thread, and in both cases there is an unexpected behaviour including abandonment of the envelope or fade if they are touched while active.

For setting up integrated fade envelopes I find the (default) P Key Pause to be very useful for: pausing/ adjusting a section/ clicking before the adjustment/ unpausing to review……repeat as neccessary.

Mic

[micpool]

On Saturday, July 18, 2015 at 2:38:55 AM UTC+1, Charles Coes wrote:

Another fade oddity - this time with fade cues.  With live fade preview enabled we ran a relative fade early that was dipping a group to -infinity on the master fader before stopping.  the relative was stopped with the stop hotkey, leaving the audio file running at an inaudible level.  i went back to the last absolute fade that targeted the running audio cue, attempting to reset the level by twiddling the master fader.  this didn't bring us back to the previous level.  Adjusting the master fader level on the audio file itself did bring us back.

The trick with undoing any fade action is the often forgotten (or never discovered)  Revert Fade Action (Tools Menu,  for fade cues, shift cmd R). Which is so useful I often like to have it on a single key hotkey in a workspace.

The reason you didn't get your original level back, isn't odd. The group the cue was in had been faded, so any adjustment with live fade preview on the cue within that group would have been relative to the new group level. To see what I mean put an audio cue in a group, adjust a fade that targets the  group then adjust the fade that targets the individual cue.

Mic

[micpool]

Relative fades with live preview are a bit tricky anyway. If you preview a fade level, then execute the fade, the level you end up with is the preview level - the fader value, i.e a double gain change.

And while we are  on the subject if you are in a fade cue with a custom curve, if you press 'reset to default shape', it resets your custom curve but also takes  you back to the standard S curve window.

Mic

PS A thing I find very useful when trying to work out what happens with fades in test workspaces is to:

Turn the output device volume quite low!!

Use an audio cue with a 0dB Tone

Insert a meter plugin on  Cue output FX insert 1+2

You can then see the precise effect of various combinations of absolute and relative fades, see how live preview works in various scenarios, etc.

Mic

[Lists]

Right- but the difference in behavior between an absolute fade master volume (still altered by the relative fade) and the audio cue master volume (no longer altered) feels like a breakdown of the logic.  

Also, in my opinion, an absolute fade should be absolute if it was the last adjustment made, not altered by relative fades.  As it stands, once you've used a relative fade in a cueing structure you cannot using the core cues (putting scripting aside here) in qlab restore a state where absolute fade cues are accurate, they will always.  That's a bit frustrating, i would hope that the absolute cues would be, well, absolute.

Charles Coes
cco...@gmail.com
"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" -John Maynard Keynes

[Chris Ashworth]

Also, in my opinion, an absolute fade should be absolute if it was the last adjustment made, not altered by relative fades.  As it stands, once you've used a relative fade in a cueing structure you cannot using the core cues (putting scripting aside here) in qlab restore a state where absolute fade cues are accurate, they will always.  That's a bit frustrating, i would hope that the absolute cues would be, well, absolute.

Consider using a relative fade on a cue list that is your pre-show music. You begin fading out the list, but then the next track starts to play.  With the above logic, the absolute volume of that cue would override the relative fade, and the cue would come in full volume, thus making it impossible to safely fade out the pre-show list.

-C

[Lists]

but in the case you describe the last cued adjustment would be the relative fade wouldn't it?  The audio cue volume establishes a volume that is modified by the relative fade. otherwise the relative fade isn't relative to anything...

consider hotkey that adjusts a cue list in +/- 2 db increments, triggered by hotkeys used an indeterminate number of times, there is no way to force the list to a known, absolute volume ever again without interrupting audio.

[Chris Ashworth]

Bah, you’re right, I was getting my example confused.

The actual proper example is if there are absolute fades used within the cue sequence which you want to fade out.

So, currently, if you have a cue sequence of *anything* (including absolute fades) you can guarantee that you can take it all to silence with a relative fade.

This would remove that guarantee, although I’m prepared to believe that it would be more useful to have an absolute fade work the way you describe than to have this guarantee.  It’s been something we’ve been debating internally for a couple of months.

-C

[Lists]

as is probably apparent from my late coming to these fade related realizations I almost never use the relative fades in my usual workflow since the addition of the panic with fade time.  

I feel like if you need to fade out a running cue sequence it would be reasonable to say that you should have to use relative fades within the sequence.  It makes mixed absolute/relative fade workflows trickier, but tilted toward the absolute fade, which feels preferable to me.

I do think that the live fade preview works wrong at the moment - where an absolute fade's level is effected by any relative fades that have been run, but an audio cue's level isn't.

Charles Coes

cco...@gmail.com
www.charlescoes.com
"Man is an antientropic creature; he is a random-to-orderly arranger and tries to perceive patterns in all things." R. Murray Schafer