Exported bars have silence at end

[glaslan]

When exporting specific bars of a song, the resulting wav file has silence at the end. This makes it difficult to export loopable sections of songs.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Export specific bars of a song as a wav file.

2. Open the resulting wav in an editor like Audacity.

3. Note the silence at the end of the file.

[YuriSizov]

Hey! This is done on purpose to allow for residual sounds to finish. At some point it should be improved by detecting prolonged periods of silence at the end. Could also implement some form of trimming after the fact and cull all empty trailing data points.

[snowphun]

First: Great work. Im a game dev teacher using Bosca in my class.

An option for a clean cut when exporting would be very useful for looping purposes. Im currently working on a layering system in a game with looping layers of different lengths on top of each other. The files length (the loops) need to be of exact length to add and loop corectly. One option to make the loops really good is to have a clean cut, then add the residual sound to the beginning(on top) of the file.

Keep up the good work :-)

[YuriSizov]

@snowphun I see your point, and it's certainly possible to add some export option to overlay residual sound on top of the beginning of the song.

But I'm wondering if this wouldn't be better handled by a crossfade on the game engine's side? So the transition isn't baked in, and you can have a clear fade in and fade out if necessary.

[NeuroNoNeuro]

Will agree with others - loop export of exact length is necessary. Not just for perfectly ordinary music that has to be looped right, but for other types of music (see tape-loop style). Often, music that is not ordinary has imprecisely looped pieces intentionally.

This is why I love the tuplet option that is available as well. Can create pieces that are 'wrong', because it's gorgeous!

[snowphun]

@YuriSizov I see the benefit of having the option to bake the crossfade into the engine, but i still need to know exact how long the loop lasts. My biggest issue right now is that i dont know the exact length of the bars before i export. So after i export them i have a ton of work in Audacity to cut all the different loops, so they line up and are loopable.

[YuriSizov]

@snowphun Fair point, the exact time of the song is not necessarily obvious. Would it be helpful to show such info in the export dialog?

[glaslan]

Hey, sorry for going dark after posting an issue. I thought I should come back an offer a solution. I see 3 reasons that someone would use this export feature:

1. They want a small portion of the file to play as a standalone audio clip.
2. They want a clean loop that's going into a polished project and needs the instruments to finish.
3. They want a dirty loop where they don't care if the instruments finish they just need it in the project now.

1 is handled by the current solution. 2 would be handled by your idea, @YuriSizov of showing how long the exported section of bars is in the export dialog. 3 could be handled with a toggle in the export menu that allows for the user to choose between letting the instruments finish or cutting them off at the end of the exported bars. This solution would give the user agency and would not remove existing functionality that many users probably rely on.

[YuriSizov]

@glaslan Thanks for the feedback! I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "need it in the project now". It takes a second to finish rendering the song with that one extra bar. In fact, if rendering time is an issue, we can just disable the preview as the song is rendered and do it in the background. It only takes as long as the song's length is because the choice was made to play it back as it goes. That's not really needed for the rendition.

But that aside, there's been a few responses regarding the added silence, and the plan right now is to add a three-way option to the export settings: add extra bar, trim extra bar, overlay extra bar on top of the song. I think that solves all complaints that we have right now.

[glaslan]

By needing it in the project now I mean exporting it and using it as is without trimming or editing it in another program like Audacity. When I opened this issue I was doing a game jam where I cared less about the quality of the music and more about the speed in which I could get it into the game.

That sounds like a great solution!