How to import multiple audio cues at once, bug with associated ctrl-d shortcut

[edogawa]

Hello,

since a few weeks I'm working for a small theater here in Vienna, and I'm looking for software to run audio, video and maybe at a later time light cues too (we're running lights from a Compulite Spark 4D there currently), possibly all from one program on the same laptop, a 2012 13" Macbook. It has Ableton Live 8.1 on it, and the free versions of QLab3 and 4, and both of them can do the audio part, it would just be so much easier for us to be able and run audio and video from the same box and program. So I tried and installed current QLC+.

For now I tried to recreate an audio cuelist from the previous show. That soundtrack has around 25 music cues to run, and another 50 short text snippets that need to form a dialog with spoken sentences from the actors on stage. When that show was on play, this macbook was operated on stage by a video technician, so I used Linux Show Player on my private laptop with good success for running the audio, and now I want to look into trying with QLC+.

It seems I have to import the soundfiles to audio functions one by one, by using the according icon in the functions tab. There are following issues with that method, in my experience:

- you cannot select more than a single file in the file chooser. On the one hand his makes perfect sense, as I'm creating a single audio function, but it would be just so elegant to select all the files and have them imported as separate functions in one go...

- trying to speed that up by using the ctrl-d key command as stated in the context menu, brings up an alert message that talks about an ambiguous key command and tells me to open menu->settings->define key commands, but unless i'm blind such a thing doesn't exist. the manual doesn't seem to cover this and shows ctrl-d as a shortcut to "dump DMX values"...

- the file chooser doesn't remember the previous file location, instead it restarts at qlcplus' working directory each time you call it, thus forcing me to navigate there for each single media file I want to create a function for.

Importing 70+ audio files one by one in this way is cumbersome and time consuming, so let me request a batch import feature. How difficult might it be to implement this, or even simpler, drag and drop of audio and video files to the functions tab?

Or am I expecting too much? How do you other theater guys deal with this? It's a small privately funded theater on tight budget as always, so we're trying to manage our work times as efficiently as possible...

Thanks for this great program and all the ongoing work on it, it got so much better and more stable during the last two years!

Edgar

[edogawa]

I'm re-reading my own posting above and now really think that this thread belongs in "Issues reports" rather than "Features requests". Maybe batch import is a new feature, but the rest of my text is a collection of bugs I'm seeing...

Also only a few lines below someone asks for the same in another post, I missed to see that when I started this thread.

Sorry,

Edgar

[siegmund]

Hey,

it's better to open a new thread for every topic. No one will read such a long post + you didn't even provide all the information requested here.

Regards,
siegmund

[mcallegari]

@edogawa: I see your points, but the question I always ask myself is: on 100 users, how many will need to import 70 audio files at once ?
If the answer is >= 80% then the feature is most likely urgent to be implemented, otherwise it goes on a very long wishlist with a low priority.
Sorry but this is how it works, considered my limited time.

CTRL+D is an error. I'm gonna change it to CTRL+8.

As for folders not remembered...I totally agree. I really need to fix it cause it annoys me too. (that's a 100% case answer btw )

[EDIT] actually, on Linux the folder is remembered as long as you stay in QLC+. Probably the behaviour on macOS is different... (surprise...)
[EDIT2] since it took me 5 minutes, I implemented multiple import of audio/video files

[edogawa]

Hi Massimo,

WOW, thats amazing - I'm really thankful to you for implementing/fixing this so quickly. At the moment I'm compiling latest git...

I'll report how I proceed with my attempts using QLC+ for audio and video playback in theater.

Bye, Edgar