Bugzilla – Bug 882
Windows: RTP effects not grayed-out when no audio is selected
Last modified: 2018-08-20 11:45:47 UTC
With no audio selected, all other effects are grayed out apart from the two shipped LADSPA ones - and they are un-clickable. Don't know if this applies to any LADSPA effects that the user may add as I have none to experiment with. This is a regression on 2.0.6 (and other 2.0 releases). The information message that is displayed is not entirely accurate - as you don't need to have a whole track selected, just part of one. But in the normal course of things this message would not be seen as the LADSPA effects would also be grayed-out and un-clickable. I have set this as P4 for now as it is a regression - but it does fail fairly gracefully and reasonably informatively.
I assume you must have disabled the default "Select all audio in project, if none selected" in Tracks Preferences. LADSPA are real-time preview (RTP) effects. There is already bug 879 open to cover that RTP effects do not respect the above preference. I assume yes that with that preference disabled, RTP effects should also be greyed out. I'll move this issue there. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 879 ***
(In reply to comment #1) "I assume you must have disabled the default "Select all audio in project, if none selected" in Tracks Preferences. " Yes I always work that way. I understand that these are RTP effects - the problem is not only are they nor grayed out if nothing is selected - Audacity then brings up the effect dialog and you can RTP it - but if you then click the Apply button you get an error message saying "You must select audio in the project window" and you are left in the effect dialog.
Fix applied in b60e4e3.
(In reply to Leland Lucius from comment #3) Looks fixed to me now on W7-HP 64-bit in 17May15 alpha nightly
Since I made the "availability" of the menu item the same as the rest of the effects, I may have removed one "feature". Prior to the change, you could start the audio playing and then go to the menu and open an RTP effect. After the change you can no longer to that. I can add that back in if desired.
I changed the bug title from "LADSPA effects not grayed-out when no audio is selected" to "RTP effects not grayed-out when no audio is selected", because VST and AU were affected too. (In reply to Leland Lucius from comment #5) > Since I made the "availability" of the menu item the same as the rest of > the effects, I may have removed one "feature". > > Prior to the change, you could start the audio playing and then go to the menu > and open an RTP effect. After the change you can no longer to that. Well, you could play audio then open an RTP effect but it required first the track and then some audio to be selected (which was bug 879). Yes as per http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Real-time_preview_of_effects, when audio is playing and "Select all... if none" is on (as it is by default), we must be *always* be able to open an RTP effect (but not other effects). This commit isn't a good change IMO, so I reopened this bug. When the "Select all... if none" pref is off, I "think" that to respect that pref you should only be able to open any effect (even an RTP one) when audio is selected. I think this is what was wrong in 2.1.0 (and from a purely user perspective is again bug 879). If we want some other behaviour for RTP effects when "Select all... if none" is off then we'll have to discuss it on -quality. I don't think it would make sense with that pref on to grey out RTP effects when there was no selection and no playback, but to enable RTP effects when there was playback without a selection.
Change reverted, but I made an additional change that allow the RTP menu items to be available even if no tracks exist. I didn't see a reason not to, especially since you can have an RTP effect open and delete all of the tracks which produces the same situation.
(In reply to Leland Lucius from comment #7) > I made an additional change that allow the RTP menu items to be available > even if no tracks exist. I didn't see a reason not to, especially since > you can have an RTP effect open and delete all of the tracks which produces > the same situation. But that reintroduces the bug as titled, Leland, and makes it worse. Whether "Select All.. if none..." is on or not, when you first open Audacity, the RTP effects appear to be enabled but just produce "You must select a track first". If someone has an RTP effect open, deletes the track then applies the effect that looks like user error to me. Clicking on an active menu item is not a user error. And now bug 879 which seemed to be fixed has come back. The availability of RTP effects in the menu when "Select All... if none" is on seems clear to me. What we need to decide is RTP availability when "Select All... if none" is off. I've made my suggestion about that. Which has primacy, the preference or being an RTP effect?
(In reply to Gale Andrews from comment #8) > (In reply to Leland Lucius from comment #7) > > I made an additional change that allow the RTP menu items to be available > > even if no tracks exist. I didn't see a reason not to, especially since > > you can have an RTP effect open and delete all of the tracks which produces > > the same situation. > But that reintroduces the bug as titled, Leland, and makes it worse. Whether > "Select All.. if none..." is on or not, when you first open Audacity, the > RTP effects appear to be enabled but just produce "You must select a track > first". > Yea, I had to split this change out from another unrelated change I have coming, but when I split it out, I missed a piece. I'll get it fully committed here shorly. > If someone has an RTP effect open, deletes the track then applies the effect > that looks like user error to me. Clicking on an active menu item is not a > user error. > > And now bug 879 which seemed to be fixed has come back. > I'll check, but I can't imagine how.
Try it now.
(In reply to Leland Lucius from comment #10) Gale's recent post on Bug #879 reminded me to test this and I am afraid it is still not fixed. I have two RTP effects: SC4 that we ship with Audacity and iZotope Vinyl that I downloaded. 1) If I create a new empty project and then click on Effect in the Menu bar, all affects are grayed out except SC4 and iZotope Vinyl. Clicking on those two effects will bring up their RTP dialogs. The effects are to some extent operable in this state - you can use the Manage button and the Play button (but of course it plays nothing). If you click the Apply button you, rightly, get the error message "You must select audio in the project window". 2) I have audio in the project but with none selected and then click on Effect in the Menu bar, once again all affects are grayed out except SC4 and iZotope Vinyl. Clicking the Play button now just plays the audio without applying the RTP, probably sort of rightly as no audio is selected - but I would argue that the Play button (and both the Skip buttons) in the RTP dialog should be inactive/inoperable and grayed out when no Audio is selected.
This all behaves differently now in 2.2.0 with the non-graying out that we introduced. 1) With an audio track but no audio selected - now no effects are grayed out a) selecting a non-RTP effect immediately yields the "friendly educational message" about the need for selection (provided the user hasn't reset that pref for Auto-select) b) Selecting an RTP effect pops up the RPT effect dialog - the user can experiment with the settings as the audio plays. But if they try to use the Apply button, then they get the "friendly educational message. 2) With an empty project, no audio, clicking on the Effect menu shows a) the non-RTP effects are grayed-out b) RTP effects are not grayed out and are clickable. In the ensuing RTP dialogs the only button that has any effect is the Manage, the user cannot RTP-play or Apply as there is no audio I'm thinking that is a fairly reasonble thing as the user may wish to manage the RTP effect settings without having any audio. There is no real bad behavior as a result of this. You may continue to argue that with no audio at all then the RTP effects should also be grayed-out, but I am minded to live with what we have now. In the 2.2.0 non-graying out environment, when audio exists, clicking on the Effect menu now looks much more sensible to the user (this user anyway). Accordingly I am going to Close this bug as CLOSED FIXED (fixed by 2.2.0 changes, but not "resolved")
(In reply to Peter Sampson from comment #12) > You may continue to argue that with no audio at all then the RTP effects > should also be grayed-out... I would argue that even with no audio at all, RTP effects should not be grayed-out. RTP effects are not dependent on pre-selected audio, so there is no technical requirement to gray-out.
(In reply to Steve Daulton from comment #13) >I would argue that even with no audio at all, RTP effects should >not be grayed-out. It's also a good visual cue to ascertain which of the effects are RTP. So I think we're agreeing it stays the way we hace it now.
