2.99 (3) alpha preview 1

[Justin]

OK everybody, I've posted a new build of a work in progress update. This does not represent everything coming for 3.0 -- LOTS MORE WILL -- just a few things.


Big things:

• Big visual overhauls
• Folder in folder support (drag folders around)
• MIDI replace updates, replace-touch mode
• Updates to looped-playback quality (vsti-loopglitch stuff)

(and a ton of other things I'm forgetting).

Before I post the password for landoleet, I'd like to make sure everybody understands the terms:

1) Don't link to landoleet from anywhere, don't redistribute the password or the builds, don't go posting on news sites "REAPER 2.99 is out!" . THIS IS NOT FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION.

2) Don't discuss it other than in the Pre-Release forum. This means not in the general discussion forum here, and for the love god, not at KVR.

3) Don't use it for anything critical -- it's a lot of fresh code so who knows how well it'll work.

4) Don't go making judgments on what v3 will be like from this -- this is an early update representing approximately a month of work.. there are easily a couple more months coming.

I know that's a lot of "don't"s, but I wanted to make it clear what we expected.. So here's a couple more things:


5) DO report any reproduceable crashes you get, _IF_ you can't duplicate them in 2.53 and have since tested to confirm that.


6) DO resist complaining about things that are obviously not finished yet.


The login and pass for landoleet.org is 'reaper' / 'yay'.

-Justin (+ Schwa + Christophe)

[Jae.Thomas]

haha.

nice work.

[jens]

REAPER!!! YAY!!!

[xackley]

v2.99.alpha.preview.1 - November 15 2008
+ Track option "Preserve PDC delayed monitoring"
+ Fixed loop glitches with synth and other plug-ins
+ Fixed some PDC+input monitoring issues with excess MIDI notes
+ Added JS/midi_logger
+ ReaSynth, ReaSamplomatic5k: less cpu use when UI open and automated
+ Nested folder support, drag and drop organization of folders, clearer positioning indicator
+ Theme images for folder indents (folder_start, folder_indent, folder_end)
+ Duplicate selected tracks now handles sends more intelligently
+ Duplicate tracks, cut/copy tracks, delete tracks all now respect folder-states
+ (coming in future builds) Preliminary automation envelope lanes
+ Master auto-mute has new clip mode
+ New themeable item backgrounds, loop notches
+ Theme background images now disable filtering when not stretching much
+ New, fancy themeable marquee selections, better support for zooming during marquee
+ Mousewheel zoom now zooms at mouse cursor if the mouse is captured
+ Better looking automation (circle points)
+ Native graphics rendering engine for better looks, better performance on WINE and OS X
+ Text notes or image resources can be attached to items (optionally background of items)
+ Items with no audio/MIDI become "notes items" and display the text or resource in the body of the item
+ Export project MIDI as single or multitrack .MID file, with tempomap support
+ MIDI editor: option to sync view (scroll and zoom) with project timeline
+ MIDI editor: items remember their view (scroll and zoom) settings when reopened
+ MIDI editor: optionally reuse an existing editor window when opening new MIDI items
+ MIDI editor, virtual midi keyboard: fancy piano keys
+ MIDI editor: graphics rendering overhaul, velocity-sensitive gradient colors on notes
+ MIDI text event support including text event lane
+ MIDI file reader fixes (running status, etc) (need re-merge to 2.5x?)
+ MIDI output channel selector on virtual MIDI keyboard, up/down to change channel, left/right to change octave
+ Setting sto hide tracks from the track list
+ Save live output option to not save when output level below a certain threshold
+ Dynamic split detection improvements
+ Action to restore previous scroll view position (useful when zoomed in and the view jumps away to chase the edit cursor)
+ Load FXP files that were saved with format zero even though there never was an FXP format zero
+ Splash screens now support jpg and pcx, auto-sized to fit.

[LCipher]

Ok. My Saturday nite is set!!

[xackley]

Question: Is there a way to install the ALPHA which keeps 2.53 separate and intact?

[Justin]

Originally Posted by xackley

Question: Is there a way to install the ALPHA which keeps 2.53 separate and intact?

Sure, you can just install to program files\reaper_new or something...

[brice]

great work team, now I can sleep.

[zappsunzorn]

Look at the Virtual midi keyboard!!

[Amberience]

Well, old projects seem to load up fine and playback as they should, happy happy!

[LCipher]

yeah but did you see the ABOUT BOX! I mean I know its not the real meat / features but it is pretty darn cool.

[d. gauss]

hmmmm, can't figure out new folder behavior. i.e. can't even make a folder. i'm a lookin, but i ain'ts finding a way yet. anybody else?

[Justin]

Originally Posted by d. gauss

hmmmm, can't figure out new folder behavior. i.e. can't even make a folder. i'm a lookin, but i ain'ts finding a way yet. anybody else?

Just drag a track into the middle (non-left side) of another track... the preview display will indent a bit...

[dub3000]

fantastic work, some great stuff in here. LOVE the nested folder implementation.

hasn't crashed yet, either...

[d. gauss]

got it! very slick! thanks.

[dub3000]

(great 'about' window, too...)

[LCipher]

Love the notes - and the ability to have images in the notes. I can see this useful for chord charts whatever. Nice work.

[jens]

- Clicking on the mixer's send and insert (e.g. to bring up a plugin's GUI) slot is a bit hit and miss - I haven't quit managed yet to figure out the system

- trying to open Schwa's MIDI Note Namer crashes Reaper

- the velocity shades in the MIDI-editor are a bit too soft to really give me any comprehensible information

[bogo]

Wow the folder implementation is excellent. Perhaps the blue line could be a little thinner when there is many folder into folder. Many thanks for the good work.

[Malevo]

Custom action CTRL+ALT+F "create folder above selected tracks" crashes it,I guess it needs to be adapted to the new behaviour...
What a mayor update anyway!
:-D

[Justin]

Originally Posted by Malevo

Custom action CTRL+ALT+F "create folder above selected tracks" crashes it,I guess it needs to be adapted to the new behaviour...
What a mayor update anyway!
:-D

If you can post the actions required to be executed to get a crash that would be helpful. thanks.

[susbemol]

Wow... amazing looks! Can't even imagine what this is going to end up being like!

[Masarin]

Thanks Cockos!
It's 2.30 AM here so I guess this session is gonna be quite short for me. But what a Sunday!

See ya around the corner of sleep.

/Jens

[kLyon]

"Use item as background" is SICK! A first, as far as I know.

(Oh, and the important stuff is great too...)

[zorn]

WOW !!! love everything, folder in folder, the new look (try the classic theme to see drastic changes in the track view), the notes... just great !

[Bevosss]

Originally Posted by Justin

If you can post the actions required to be executed to get a crash that would be helpful. thanks.

That's my macro, so I should be able to figure out where it breaks down...probably an extension action.

Cheers for the update!

[CineGobs]

Nice update!

Noticed a small problem:
If I enter an event-note containing special characters, the note is truncated at that position when reloading the project.

[bogo]

I got a reproduceable crash while loading Stillwell VibeEq (evaluation ver.) onto a track. Works fine V2.53

[Justin]

Originally Posted by CineGobs

Nice update!

Noticed a small problem:
If I enter an event-note containing special characters, the note is truncated at that position when reloading the project.

Got it, changing the way notes are stored to be more consistent (it wont be backwards compatible tho)

[airon]

Great work so far! Highly encouraging indeed!

Originally Posted by jens

- the velocity shades in the MIDI-editor are a bit too soft to really give me any comprehensible information

on that note, the motion of the mouse to change the velocity when touching the velocity line in the note, is inadequate in that is uses too little motion to produce too much change.

The size of the note should not be what dictates the range of motion for the velocity change but perhaps a percentage of the screen size or a preset number of pixels. Since there is no finetune modifier for this behavior either that I have seen yet, I politely request that this behavior use a much bigger range of mouse motion to change the volume of notes in this manner.

I'd like to suggest producing brief demo videos of features for the major release as well. The folder routing could use such a short instructional video at the very least. I'm sure many of us will gladly help you gentlemen with such an endeavor.

[PitchSlap]

Great work as always. Seems to be quite stable. No issues to report yet.

[Ben Zero]

This is great stuff Justin - very exciting to see folder in folder! The UI for this is fantastic and huge step forward; very much worthy of the 3.0 moniker

One thing I would say is that now we have folder in folder, more than ever I think we need a way to NOT route through the folder parent track. In other words, in the IO dialog rather than the "Master/Parent Send" checkbox you'd have two checkboxes "Master Send" and "Parent Send" giving you the option to send a track straight to the master without routing through the parent first.

You could even go a step further and, to make things clear on the UI, with "Parent Send" unchecked on all the child tracks, the folder and meter would disappear from the parent track, making it clear it is now merely a folder for organisational rather than routing purposes. Or I guess to make things easier there would even be one option on the folder track itself to make this happen. Just a suggestion...

All this would let us use folders solely for organisational purposes - often you don't want to do routing/bussing but merely want to tidy and order your session.

I can see that routing has obviously been discussed and really thought about - I can imagine that with the addition of folder in folder there was the potential for things to go haywire! Hence the removal of routing options for subfolder tracks - that makes sense to me.

So I don't know how possible my suggestion is within the current paradigm - I know it's been talked about in the forums before - but I hope it's something that could be considered.

Thanks

Ben

[argee]

A couple of things I'm getting:

1. When you select the "hide unused and unnamed note rows" in the MIDI editor, the note preview and highlight on the piano keys doesn't correspond with the key being pressed (notes are offset by different amounts)

2. The Track Panel Text Colour displayed does not match the setting in the preferences.

Really great update! I didn't think it was possible, but I'm liking this program even more now!

cheers

[cern.th.skei]

holy crap! the gui improvements are massive in linux/wine !!

as seen in these two quickly made gif-animations:
v2.53:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/249632/reaper_glitch_253.gif
v2.99:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/249632/reaper_glitch_299.gif

also, visible are a major glitch, much more obvious now then before, since the new gui is much more snappy: when you scroll the tracks upwards, the tcp track header area has major gfx glitches.. scrolling down is no problemo.

- ccernn

note the 'unregistered copy' in the anims won't be there for long...

[_Devin]

Hi There...

The GUI improvements look quite nice, it seems to load and playback old 2.53 projects just fine, however, as far as the GUI performance(forgive me if you're still working on it), I'm still getting GUI freeze-ups when I have quite a few instances of Native Instruments Reaktor 5 open, and I attempt to move knobs with the mouse. I've found a freebie plugin that re-creates the bug, and you only need one instance of it open:

http://www.a-quest.com/vocalizer/pac...lizer_1010.zip

Just put it in the VST folder, insert 1 track into a new project, load that VST onto a track, hit play, and start moving the XY pad on that plug, and the GUI will freeze up quite frequently.

[zappsunzorn]

In case you haven't found it, open a new track, insert empty item, stretch out item to see the lock, and click on the little notepad thing next to it.

Even in this early stage this is awesome!!




It looks like the old themes will still work in 3.0, but there will be far more theme options for post 3.0 themes. I thought there would be a lot of backward incompatibility, but I think I was wrong.

[beatbybit]

im sure this is a huge update, and thank you very much for it -


but the first thing i noticed (before testing anything) is that my colored items (random background color) loosing their colors when i select them (actually they all change to "media item background selected (odd/even tracks)")


and another thing : the Time Selection is changed to "tint". now its more unuseful for me than it was earlier. i wouldnt use Time Selection at all - but i must, since i love to set LOOP Selection on the Timeline (empty track). So i must lock Time And Loop Sel., therefore Time Selection tint is always on. i tried to run the "Remove Time Sel." action - but it removes the LOOP sel too - if they are linked.


the new marquee selection is beautyful btw!



im gonna test all the news asap, but im lost here..

[semiquaver]

- never mind - got it working...

[Lawrence]

Now Justin, you *know* somebody is gonna get excited and leak this as soon as someone says something bad about Reaper in another forum.

Not me of course... ;

The 3D media items are very cool. How do you enable those for other themes?

[LiquidProj3ct]

When I use one single click for add and delete notes i get some glitches in MIDI editor.


I'd like see ghost notes in MIDI Editor, please Justin, I would be really happy

Regards