::fibreculture:: WebCT, Open Source and Beyond

[Hughie]

Gotta say, I tried Audacity and hated it, too.

Like Tama's students, I thought it would be great and free and all that stuff, but was sorely disappointed as someone who's both a Pro Tools and a Logic user.  Audacity doesn't even come close.

That said, I always recommend that my multimedia design students try out NVU (http://www.nvu.com) if they wanna do some work on their Web projects at home.  It's a little clunky but it gets the job done and I believe in exposing them to a variety of interfaces and solutions.

Which brings me to the real point for this post: I don't see why it has to be a "one or the other" choice - that's limiting the education and experience the students might recieve.  I'm all for using the commercial packages the Uni (UQ) provides - that's what the students will probably use if they get into commercial practice - and ALSO making them aware of the possibilities/benefits of FOSS.  I also use a blog AND Blackboard to teach them.

Carrying on as though these are mutually exclusive options strikes me as little more than techno-facism.  Wake up and smell the roses ...

Cheers,
Hughie



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Julian Knowles 
  To: Fibreculture List 
  Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 8:34 PM
  Subject: Re: ::fibreculture:: WebCT, Open Source and Beyond


  On 10/08/2005, at 7:04 PM, Tama Leaver wrote:


    Today I presented the students with a choice: we could either dedicate
    our lab time to learning a semi-professional audio editing tool which
    is already installed on the lab computers which students have access
    to 8am-10pm daily (and which requires a paid license to use elswhere)
    or use Audacity (an exceptionally good open source, multi-OS audio
    editor). 


  It's funny how people's experiences are so totally different!! For me, Audacity was the application which made me completely abandon the idea of solely using FOSS in any sort of serious production teaching situation. I found it to be lacking in almost every respect and 'exceptionally bad'. I wrote quite a detailed critique of it on a colleague's blog which resulted in some direct interaction with the developers. My main gripes were; the interface is very poor, all editing is destructive, it just can't cope with more than 2 tracks, it crashes frequently (under OS X), none of the effects run in real time (and the guis are not implemented), and there is no way of performing simple editing functions like defining a region or slipping audio clips around in the timeline - surely one of the most basic requirements of any audio editing tool? And.... somewhat curiously, it stores its files in a proprietary format.... (hmmm what was i saying about FOSS sometimes being more closed?)

  I think i made the comparison that it felt like an open source version of SoundEdit16 circa 1993 (the comparison in many respects is quite accurate), only it crashes a lot and doesn't have dog ears for a cursor! I feel like a crank... and I don't want to stop you from singing its praises if it is working for you but honestly, I can't endorse this application for production/creative work!!


    Without exception, the students chose Audacity and when
    asked why they all gave the same reason: they can use Audacity on
    their own computers now, and in the future, to do whatever they want
    and have skills which are useful (without extra cost) for their own
    media production elsehwere/when.


  My students were the opposite.. they found it like pushing the proverbial uphill. They ended up abandoning it and using cracks of commercial software on their home computers (some of these students had lost their work several times through no fault of their own). Actually, most of the students I teach use cracks obtained from P2P networks for their media production needs and are therefore less interested in 'legally free' but often quite crippled freeware. Whilst I don't support this position (as I've previously stated my comfort in paying for software that works), the reality is that they have very sophisticated production tools in their homes at no cost. This has been the case since the mid 90s when P2P/filesharing really took off. My experience is that students do not feel ethically obliged to pay for the software they use. P2P culture has, in many respects, weakened the notion that software is something that you might pay for n the same way that mp3 trading has weakened the idea that you pay for recordings of music that you like to listen to. That said, a small, but noticeable number of people buy licenses if they become serious users of an application.

  Here is a copy of my critique of audacity, which I think was originally posted to microsound. I feel like I'm negative posting this, but it is an honest assessment, I think. I tried to be positive about things where possible... By the way, just in case you think i am a complete crank, there are FOSS apps I use and actually like!!!



    From: Julian Knowles
    Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 5:31:40 PM Australia/Sydney

    After this morning's email reading, I was genuinely enthused to do the rounds of the open source community in a renewed search for an audio editor/production environment which could at least be a viable substitute at the low end for teaching purposes. I seriously want to find one.

    I downloaded 'Audacity', because open source geek friends keep telling me that it's 'great'.. It is platform agnostic, open-source, free, and supports VST plugins.... Sounds good so far.. I then spent the last 2 hours mucking around with it.

    Man... what a disappointment. It has about the same level of functionality as SoundEdit 16 on a Mac from the early to mid nineties, albeit with proper undo. Here are some of its limitations

    1) No real-time FX.... only file based processing with a 2-3 second preview. GUIs for VST plugins also not working at present, resulting in very non-intuitive parameter lists and generic faders.

    2) No 'region' capturing, or clip based editing... you have to chop into the waveform and do copy/pastes to make a simple loop.. no way of slipping clips around in a track - you can only slip the whole track in time.... very SoundEdit 16, very primitive, unusable.

    3) Every time you import a new audio file, Audacity creates a new track. This is annoying. There is no 'audio clips bin' like most basic editors and no dragging and dropping of clips into the timeline from a 'library', which is a fairly basic requirement for any sort of editing.

    4) You can cut and paste selected audio from one track to another, but when you paste, Audacity automatically butts the copied audio up against the previous and you are not able to paste at a point beyond the end of the previous audio, nor slip the pasted audio in the timeline after you have pasted it. The only way of creating a gap between the previous audio and the audio you wish to paste is to 'generate silence' from a menu before pasting. Once you have done this, you still can't easily vary the silence gap or slip the position of the pasted audio. To shorten the gap (bring the pasted clip earlier in the session) you have to select some silence and 'delete' it.... then the pasted clip slips back closer to the previous.... You can't do proper editing this way and you will end up tearing your hair out fairly swiftly!!

    5) There is no such thing as a cross-fade edit in a track. This makes cutting and pasting audio between tracks unworkable. To achieve cross-fades (even small ones) you need to use two tracks and write volume automation on the outgoing and incoming audio. I cannot see how you are able to do any real editing in this kind of environment. Even simple 2 track editing becomes difficult.

    6) No video clip import/sync

    7) No midi file editing or playback, or support for VST instruments

    8) A frustratingly clunky volume automation editor, where you can't nail the break points properly without zooming in to micro level.

    9) No decent navigation keyboard shortcuts, like for example jumping to the beginning or end of a selection when zoomed in, or parking the cursor at the end of a clip etc... or selecting from a point to the beginning or end of a clip. The basic editing necessities aren't there - you need basic keyboard shortcuts for navigation and selection... if you are expected to shift click, drag and zoom everything, you will go completely crazy in a short space of time.

    There are a couple of good things, such as support for 96khz/32bit, capacity to have files of different sample rates in a session, mp3 and ogg vorbis export, 'batch like' processing for exports and an undo history list - but that's about it.

    Some may say... well what can you expect for a free, open-source tool? Well, fair enough, the price is right and the politics are too, but the truth of the matter is that I would find this tool almost impossible to deploy into even a beginner's lab, as it lacks the simple features which allow people to grasp some of the basic principles of non-linear audio editing and production. Herein lies the frustration of the exercise, I think. It is difficult to generate enthusiasm for open-source tools if the experience is a really frustrating one. As for me, I would rather use the lite version of Bias Peak over this for simple 2 track editing tasks, and i really hate Peak. I might use it for some ogg vorbis or mp3 exports.. but that would be it.






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