Bugzilla – Bug 1840
Most effects fail silently when no audio selection
Last modified: 2019-08-09 09:28:46 UTC
1) Create a project with a short audio track as the first track and a longer audio track as the second track. 2) Click on the first track 3) In the selection toolbar, set the selection to start after the end of the first track, and end before the end of the second track. The wrong track is selected, so the effect would reasonably be expected to error. The only built-in effects to show an error are "Amplify", "Click Removal" and the"Get Noise Profile" stage of "Noise Reduction". The "Repeat" and "Truncate Silence" effects act on the empty selection. All other built-in effects fail silently. Only tested on Linux but I expect this is the same on all platforms. This is arguably an enhancement to handle user error better, but imo the inconsistency from one effect to another is a bug (user input is not handled in a planned way).
on Mac with 2.2.2 Beta - with Amplify I don't get an error message Rather, the dialog is popped up - but the OK button is grayed-out - I can select the allow clipping and the OK becomes availablele - but clicking on it produces no error. Others on Mac appear to be as Steve describes
(In reply to Peter Sampson from comment #1) On w10 2.2.2RC1 with Ampl,ify it is similar to Mac - but here when I click OK I get the error message "Value overflow"
What I would expect to see in these circumstances is the "Friendly educational error message" that you get when there is no selection but just a zero-length cursor position - the "No audio selected ..." message
The same effect can be seen just by crating an empty track. 1) drag a selection in it - and you get the silent fails abd others as Steve reports 2) click in it and then you get the "Select the audio ..." error message
Residual of Bug #1934 is a use case of this involving Nyquist Prompt
This is a bit of a fringe case - do we really need this is an open Bugzilla entry? The user should be able to see quite clearly that they have an effectively null selection
(In reply to Peter Sampson from comment #6) > The user should be able to see quite clearly that they have an effectively > null selection Not so simple for VI users. I agree that this is a relatively minor issue, hence the P5 rating.
I would add that it is also a question of principle, i.e. should an effect be allowed to fail silently due to an error condition or should it refuse to run like Amplify does now.
Testing on W10 with audacity-2.3.3-alpha-315-84d57170054857ff97919c7a2c9cf33b1f2c6053 And testing onmacOS 10.14.6 with 2.3.3 alpha jc006 of 08Aug19 On bothe platforms this noa appears to work properly - wity a "no-selection" error meassgae for all effects, including, Repeat and Truncate Silence.
