show beats and time until next marker

[m0dB]

Show the number of beat and/or time until the next marker, inside the waveform.

also_show_time.mov

The digits are rendered using a texture (generated on the fly), for two reasons:

• adding a dark blurred outline so the text is readable even when displayed on top of the waveform (similar to tv subtitles).
• efficiency

The display can be configured in the settings:

E.g:

Looks like this:

[m0dB]

I pushed a wrong commit. correct now.

[fwcd]

Neat, will definitely have to play around with this PR once I find some time. Just curious, how does this handle markers that are slightly off, i.e. not sample-perfectly aligned to the grid? (My library has quite a few of them since I tend to have quantization off) Are the beats rounded or floored?

Would be awesome if this were configurable too, e.g. whether to show beats and/or time, perhaps even the size/opacity. I could imagine the UI getting a bit noisy with too much text (especially with the time).

[m0dB]

That's a good question! I only have my markers on the beat 😄

It uses Beats::ConstIterator Beats::iteratorFrom(audio::FramePos position), which does std::lower_bound, so floor. I think this makes sense also conceptually for markers that are not on the beat. After all, it's until the beat that contains the marker.

[ywwg]

I have been thinking about exactly this sort of UX addition, thank you for working on it. In my own head, I was thinking about putting this information in the overview rather than the waveform itself. Right now if the mouse is over the next marker, I get a bunch of useful information, including time left until that marker. What if we always showed that information for the next marker in the track? And then the user could choose between beat counts and time counts. That would keep the big waveform clear of numbers.

As written, from a UX perspective, I would prefer the numbers to be at the top of the play marker, not right in the middle where it visually crowds the waveform display.

[fwcd]

I think this makes sense also conceptually for markers that are not on the beat. After all, it's until the beat that contains the marker.

Maybe we could count full beats relative to the next marker? That would take care of the issue, regardless of how misaligned they are. Though that might become challenging with variable grids.

By the way, on an unrelated note, being able to turn quantization on only for setting markers (but not start/stop or jumping to them) would be really awesome.

[ywwg]

I think we could round the beat count if the marker is not exactly on the beat.

[daschuer]

Thank you. Some comment.

[Holzhaus]

That looks really nice, thanks. I also love that you seem to have the habit of adding Screencast to your PRs so that it's easy to see the result w/o checking out and building the changes.

One easy improvement I can think of when looking at the recordings is to not center the information vertically. It's a bit hard to read with the signal in the background, so I'd suggest to align them them at the top where the bg is black (at the bottom it would conflict with hotcue labels).

[m0dB]

I have added options in the settings dialog to configure what is displayed (none, beats, time, beats + time, beats + time (multiline)), where it is displayed (top, center, bottom), and the font size.

[ywwg]

do you have more you want to do before marking this as ready for review? I think in general people like the feature idea!

[m0dB]

do you have more you want to do before marking this as ready for review? I think in general people like the feature idea!

no, I think it is ready for review, once I resolve the conflicts with main.

[m0dB]

This is now ready for review.

[JoergAtGithub]

The preferences option appear for all waveform types, but the feature works only for the allshaders GLSL waveforms. Either disable the settings for the unsupported waveform types, or add support for all waveform types.

[JoergAtGithub]

Is it the intended behavior, that loop end is considered as marker?

[m0dB]

The preferences option appear for all waveform types, but the feature works only for the allshaders GLSL waveforms. Either disable the settings for the unsupported waveform types, or add support for all waveform types.

I am definitely not going to add support for all waveform types, but I will disable them and add a "Requires GLSL waveform type" label. Thanks for spotting this, I was planning to do this but forgot about it.

EDIT: DONE!

[m0dB]

rebased on main (had to resolve some conflicts with @acolombier 's slipmode code) and added @daschuer static_assert suggestion.

[m0dB]

@daschuer wrote

Thank you for this nice feature. And thank you for the extra efforts polishing the code.

You are welcome. And the suggestions, both for code quality and for feature improvements, were much appreciated.

[daschuer]

OK, than lets integrate it!