Automation improvement request

[mikobuntu]

LMMS automation could be greatly improved by 2 things

(1) the ability to load and save automations ( opens the possibility for preset automations that can be packed with LMMS

(2) the abiltiy to be able to drop any knob etc onto an existing automation and have it use the automation ( this will probably cause a major rewrite in the source ).
*currently automation is automatically reset/wiped by dropping for example a volume knob onto an existing automation track

thanks Mikobuntu

[mikobuntu]

• note i can for example have automation of "kicker" volume in the BB_Editor and if i have another instrument for example Triple_Osc in the BB_Editor i can drop the Triple_Osc volume knob onto that automation track, but it will be sharing the volume not switching off Kickers volume 1st ...

terminal output when i do this JO-ID 1556684 already in use by automationpattern!

I want to be ableto also open up a blank/unnasigned automation track and draw some automation ,then drag and drop a knob etc and have it use this automation

[tobydox]

(2) should work (and worked here on a quick test)

Assigning a knob later currently is not possible as automation patterns record absolute values, i.e. in the range of the attached model(s). If no knob is assigned, the range is 0...1. If you draw automations between 0 and 1 and then assign a volume knob, the volume only will vary between 0 and 1 % ;-) For this to work as expected one could either implement a workaround which scales up the values in an automation pattern to the range of the first attached knob. Alternatively we could change things such that automation values internally always are between 0 and 1 only and scaled by the model when it retrieves values from the track. For this to work, we would have to add lots of compat code to properly load and convert old projects.

[mikobuntu]

Toby ....yes i understand fully the problems with were it implemented, and no one likes losing functionality of their old song, the only alternative is if the user wants to load an old song he can perhaps keep an older version of LMMS on his hard-drive, I think with newer versions of LMMS and especially with newer functionality etc being introduced, certain older behaviour is going to have to be deprecated anyway imo.
An example of this is im a Renoise user and they have pluggable lua scripts which most are user created, but in each major version overhaul almost all will be deprecated, but i think the developers prefer improvement over holding back on new essential features due to keeping old compatabilty.

thanks Mikobuntu

[tresf]

As part of a pruning effort, this enhancement request is archived into a dedicated "Better Workflow" checklist here #4877.