Bugzilla – Bug 566
Enh: Feature to import files end-to-end in one track
Last modified: 2018-08-20 11:51:53 UTC
Now a tedious manual operation. 25 votes on Wiki Feature Requests. Has many uses including project recovery if automated recovery does not work. A very useful enhancement would be to import the multiple files (or even a single file) at the cursor position. A Nyquist plug-in is available for feature comparison (http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?p=151858#p151858). This can import multiple WAV or AIFF files end-to-end from a directory or from a list of files, starting from either time zero or from the cursor position.
(In reply to comment #0) Why not release the plug-in, to test the waters?
(In reply to comment #1) > Why not release the plug-in, to test the waters? Do you mean, ship the append-import plug-in in Audacity? Possibly one argument against is that the feature would be more discoverable in the Import Menu (or as e.g. a checkbox in the "Select one or more audio files" window.) Steve knows more than I about the limitations of the plug-in. There may be memory limitations to the number of files to be imported due to Nyquist. I suggested on the Forum that the plug-in should be Wiki published but this has not happened.
(In reply to comment #2) >> Why not release the plug-in, to test the waters? > Do you mean, ship the append-import plug-in in Audacity? Yes. > > Possibly one argument against is that the feature would be more discoverable >in > the Import Menu (or as e.g. a checkbox in the "Select one or more audio files" > window.) I did not suggest this as optimal. As I wrote, the suggestion is to test the waters, with something we already have. Beats prioritizing implementing it in C++ right now, and provides the requested feature. > > Steve knows more than I about the limitations of the plug-in. There may be > memory limitations to the number of files to be imported due to Nyquist. I > suggested on the Forum that the plug-in should be Wiki published but this has > not happened. > Fine, that's why it was a "why not" question.
(In reply to comment #3) It has been suggested this a P4 rather than P3 enhancement, which possibly suggests it would be good to implement in C++ within two or three releases if not done now. I think the balance of argument could be against shipping and documenting it as a Nyquist plug-in ; it's not a very good test as C++ integration should be free of most of the current limitations. From the plug-in "help": "This plug-in is not tolerant of user error. Invalid input may cause the import to fail without warning. "To import files into a stereo track, a stereo track must be selected before running Append Import. "Non-ascii characters are not supported for file or folder names on Windows. "The computer must have enough RAM for the entire import. Attempting to import more audio than can fit in the available memory will cause Audacity to freeze and/or crash. "Progress bar and Remaining Time are non-functional. "Errors in the 'filelist.txt' file (if used) may return a 'Nyquist did not return audio' error. Using the Debug button to run the plug-in may give some clue of what went wrong. "Imported files will be resampled to the current track sample rate." Apart from the last limitation, all the above seem significant drawbacks. If you wanted a test it might be better to publish the plug-in on Wiki and point to it obliquely in Release Notes, but I feel a C++ implementation would be far better. We know the "demand" is there. I am guessing Steve feels the same way as he has asked on devel about a C++ implementation of Append Import.
Ther is a perfectly good proiposal for this in the Wiki: https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Proposal:_Import_Appended So it doesn't need this Bugzilla entry too
