Join Shaun, Garth and Kayaker in this latest Audio Pizza roundtable discussion as concern grows over Garths out of control domain name habit. Is an intervention the answer?
Shaun then goes on to discuss the recent iPhone 8 leaks concerning the fate of the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. Can Apple really be ready to retire your finger in favour of your face?
Kayaker then tells us of his recent trips to New York and Las Vegas, and just how well his Aira glasses performed. Sir Patrick Stewart and Levar Burton seemed to be impressed anyway.
Finally, Garth tells us why he’s so excited by the Tesla Model 3. With his deposit down he predicts that Model 3 will be the tipping point, the start of the smart electric car as a serious option for the masses.
In this episode I take a look into some of the project settings and the save dialog. I show how to set a project such that when you move by bar, or measure, you will move by a minute, and when you move by beat, you’ll move by a given number of seconds. This is a useful way of navigating projects which are not musical in nature, since there is no native keystrokes for this.
If you set the tempo to 60, and the time signature to 60/4, each measure will be a minute long, and each beat will be a second. If you keep the tempo at the same value as the first number in the time signature, you will move by a minute each measure. Reducing these two numbers will increase the length of a beat. So 30, 30/4 will give 1 min per measure and 2 seconds per beat, and 15, 15/4 will give 4 seconds per beat and keep the bar at a minute. Changing the ratio of the tempo to the first number of the time signature will adjust the length of a measure. 60, 30/4 will give 30 second measures and 1 second beats. Once you understand the maths, you will be able to set this up however you like, or just have a play and find something that works for you.
I also show how to set up your project so that any files recorded into the project are conveniently placed into a sub folder in the project folder. This is done by accessing the media tab and providing a folder name in the path to save media files.
Within the project settings, you can also set the default recording format for files recorded into that project.
Prior to looking at the save dialog, I show how to optionally import a collection of files either consecutively on one track or such that the files all start at the same time on individual tracks.
Also covered briefly is the process of rearranging the order of your tracks within a project.
Looking at the save dialog, along with the standard settings of location and name, I cover the options that specify the creation of a sub folder, and the options available for moving the actual files associated with a project into that folder. On Windows, you will need to use your screen reader’s, screen review mode to make these selections. On the Mac, the check boxes are presented to VoiceOver.
This is Audio Pizza’s open letter to Tim Cook podcast where we discuss the accessibility issues of MacOS, iOS, and the Apple Watch, and ask Tim to listen and react to the unique problems faced by the VoiceOver community.
Dear Tim,
Thank you, as a company, for realy being a pioneer in accessibility, but we would like you to bump it up a notch and make quality a high priority for the accessibility team.
So we had four issues we wanted you to take a look at under the mac. First, there’s the HTML5 rendering engine that we demonstrated in the MacOS app store where the navigation flow is completely broken, which is as if your mouse just jumped randomly all over the screen instead of where you moved it. Second, there is the responsiveness of the action item with the VO-spacebar to trigger buttons, which is as if your mouse button only worked some of the time.. Third, there’s the audio ducking where we loose the VO text to speech volume , which is as if your screen brightness just randomly went dim all day long. And fourth there is the drag and drop / finder issue
where VO is reporting the wrong item under the VO cursor, which is as if your selection in the finder was the item next to the one you wanted.
Taken individually these bugs are serious. Taken together as a whole, they are critical. They have a direct impact on our productivity. We need these fixed. Please, Tim, make it so.
Under iOS we think you are doing a great job with accessibility. But some of the hardware choices you are making affect us more than you may think. There are bluetooth issues where we cannot control VoiceOver reliably with our keyboards. The lack of a headphone jack and the lag we see with your wireless solution fails us.. It’s as if every key you type takes seconds to appear on the screen.
It affects our productivity to the point of making the device unusable. Please try this yourself, it’s easy to understand once you experience it. And finally under iOS consider taking the next step to being an advocate for accessibility. Require your developers to do the bare minimum to their apps if they want to be in the app store by requiring them to use Xcode’s accessibility tools to remove all warnings and properly label standard UI controls. It’s a small price to pay and it makes Apple look really really good as a leader of universal access. Not to mention, quality of the apps in the app store will improve as you educate developers. Since you will happily kill 32- bit apps, how about killing the poorly coded non-accessible apps as well.
And with WatchOS, we are just looking for improvements over time. We thank you for making nit accessible out of the box. We look forward to its future as improvements with both tactical feedback and text to speech evolve. We are very excited about the direction you are taking the Apple Watch.
We respect Apple as a company; we respect you as a person. You are both leaders in universal access and accessibility. We hope you listen to this podcast and reflect upon the management and design decisions you make and how they impact all your users.
Thank you Tim, and I’ll be happy to demonstrate that walking chocolate tour using voiceover for you anytime.
Sincerely,
Scott, Shaun and Garth
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With WWDC 2017 just a couple of days away, the Audio Pizza team get together to discuss the various rumours regarding what may be announced at Apples much anticipated event. Shauns lack of funds underlie his disintrest in anything Macbook, while Garth declares a fetish for function keys. Will Apple give a glimpse at the iPhone 8s new design if the much rumoured 10.5" iPad is revealed at WWDC?
Finally just how bad is Siri and can it be improved if given it’s own new shiny home in the form of the Siri Speaker? Garth seems to think it can’t be much worse then what he’s heard of the Amazon Echo.
In this episode I cover the basics of editing using items, and the three different ripple modes. A number of other actions are briefly covered as well, such as cut copy and paste, adjusting track pan, soloing a track, and duplicating a track.
Keystrokes
A Custom: Select and split item under edit or play cursor
Command+C Edit: Copy items/tracks/envelope points (depending on * focus) ignoring time selection
Command+X Edit: Cut items/tracks/envelope points (depending on focus) ignoring time selection
Command+V Item: Paste items/tracks
D Track: Duplicate tracks
Option+Left or Right Arrows Track: Nudge track pan left or right
F6 Track: Solo/unsolo tracks
F5 Track: Mute/unmute tracks
Option+P Options: Cycle ripple editing mode
Option+Shift+P OSARA: Report ripple editing mode
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if you’re following these tutorials along on the Mac, make sure you get the latest build of OSARA and update your key map.
In this third of a series of beginner tutorials, we finally get a bit of editing done using time selections. The context sensitive nature of Reaper is discussed along with some further navigational and editing techniques. These include selecting and moving between items, scrubbing, moving by beats or measures, making and refining time selections, previewing your edit and the implications of your zoom factor.
Keyboard Shortcuts Mentioned
Left Arrow View: Move cursor left one pixel
Right Arrow View: Move cursor right one pixel
Command+Left Arrow Item navigation: Select and move to previous item
Command+Right Arrow Item navigation: Select and move to next item
Page Up Move edit cursor back one measure
Page Down Move edit cursor forward one measure
Command+Page Up Move edit cursor back one beat
Command+Page Down Move edit cursor forward one beat
Delete OSARA: Remove items/tracks/contents of time selection/markers/envelope points (depending on focus)
[ Time selection: Set start point
] Time selection: Set end point
Option+[ Time selection: Nudge left edge left
Option+] Time selection: Nudge left edge right
Command+[ Time selection: Nudge right edge left
Command+] Time selection: Nudge right edge right
Option+Space Transport: Play (skip time selection)
Shift+Home Custom: Select from cursor to start of project
Shift+End Custom: Select from cursor to end of project
Option+Shift+- or NumPad- View: Zoom out horizontal
Option+Shift+= or NumPad +View: Zoom in horizontal
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This tutorial gives a basic overview of the conversion between the windows key map and the Mac key map. It covers the hierarchy of a Reaper project. How to add a track, and insert an audio file on it. There’s also a quick run down of the OSARA configuration dialog. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions for things to cover in future tutorials.