feature request: small audio meters

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leith
Posts: 194
Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:17 pm

feature request: small audio meters

Post by leith »

Hi. Just a quick feature request. I searched about and didn't find any indication that this feature exists, or is handled in another way.

I very much appreciate that Motive will record synced audio and export it. I was planning on handling audio a different way. But if Motive can handle it, that's great.

I therefore, broke out my mixing board and wireless mic, and connected it to the system. I tested it out and it records great.

However...

I would suggest you add a live VU meter, similar to the one that's in your audio tool config panel, to the actual UI. And further, it should be able to always be on.

Rationale:

Motive, by default has a "Data" visualizer on the lower right. Which can be set to many different things. But the basic idea that an operator just needs to be able to see at a glance that data is flowing (or, more importantly, that it has stopped, or is maxed), is what's important here.

Similarly, an operator that's also recording audio through the system, needs to be able to determine, at a glance, that audio is indeed flowing into the take. Especially since your interface to the underlying audio devices seems, touchy. It makes me fear accidentally missing audio on takes, and not noticing.

Having a simple visual cue that confirms the audio spigot flows, would be very useful. As it stands, the only way I can really tell, is to swap out of live mode and play back a take, while listening for sound on playback. That's not great.

The meters don't need to be large, or accurate. But it would be very helpful to just have a visual indication that levels are popping around visibly.

A red "peak" or max value indicator would be nice bonus too. Just so the operator is aware if the audio being fed, is peaking too high. Obviously the right way to watch levels is to have a separate audio operator using a mixing board/pre-amp to ride levels. But since Motive is acting as a recording device here, it should have basic monitoring ability, just to confirm that what's coming off the mixing board is indeed hitting the disk as expected.

Another bonus would be meters on playback, not just the live source. That way, an operator can confirm that audio on a take exists, even if they don't have an output device configured. This would also help in cases where people's input device and output device have very different configurations. They'd still be able to confirm that the audio is there without needing to hear it.

Anyhow, just a suggestion.

If anyone has a better idea or can point me to an alternative feature set that handles what I'm getting at here, please advise. Thank you.

-brad
steven.andrews
NaturalPoint Employee
NaturalPoint Employee
Posts: 738
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2015 11:52 am

Re: feature request: small audio meters

Post by steven.andrews »

Hi Brad,

Thanks for this feedback regarding the audio. You make an interesting point about the audio visual.

We will likely not be able to implement this as a main feature, but it seems like an ideal candidate for scripting in the future.
We will make a note about adding the ability to reference the audio widget, as we work to develop scripting into our software. This is a main goal of ours, though you will likely not see scripting in our software for several more releases.

Feel free to share any additional feedback and requests with us directly in Support.

Cheers,
Steven
--
Steven Andrews
OptiTrack | Senior Customer Support Engineer
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