[LAD] [ANN] Qtractor 0.4.2 (flaunty demoness) is out!

Howdy!

Greatest thanks goes to Mathias Krause aka gizzmo, who contributed with
the fundamental code to the new MIDI controller mapping functionality
that now widens the Qtractor horizon with regard from generic control
surfaces. Being the Behringer BCF2000 [1] a notable example, control
feedback is fully supported so that those fancy motorized faders, knobs
and lights, actually reflect the whole mixing and editing session state.
Some pre-made files are here provided for your conveniency:
"bcx2000.qtc" [2] is to import into Qtractor (View/Controllers...) and a
couple of presets goes into your BCF2000, "Qtractor_Mixer_1-8.syx" [3]
and "Qtractor_Mixer_9-16.syx" [4], respectively for the first and second
set of eight channel/track strips.

Ah, the previous hardwired support for the JLCooper-like controls,
provided by the Tascam US-224 and US-428 (via us428control), is now
optional. You can have it back by just adding this file, "usx2y.qtc"
[5], to the controllers map.

That's it:

  Qtractor 0.4.2 (flaunty demoness) is out!

Release highlights:

* MIDI controller mapping (mixer) (NEW)
* Audio/MIDI multi-clip merge (NEW)
* Multi-clip selection export (NEW)
* Improved snap precision on drag/moving clips (FIXED)
* and some other asorted fixes (see change-log;)

Description:

Qtractor is an audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application, written in
C++ on top of Qt Software's Qt4 framework, having JACK and ALSA as its
main infrastructures and Linux as native and exclusive platform.
Specially suited to the lone-wolf composer, arranger and (re)creative
music-maker personal home-studio, it still hopes to evolve as a fairly
featured desktop audio/MIDI workstation or at least, a prototypical part
of it ;)

Website:

  http://qtractor.sourceforge.net

Project page:

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor

Downloads:

  - source tarball
  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.4.2.tar.gz

  - source package (openSUSE 11.1)

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.4.2-1.rncbc.suse111.src.rpm

  - binary package (openSUSE 11.1)

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.4.2-1.rncbc.suse111.i586.rpm

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.4.2-1.rncbc.suse111.x86_64.rpm

  - binary package (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS)

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor_0.4.2-1.rncbc.ubuntu804.i386.deb

  - user manual (outdated)
  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.3.0-user-manual.pdf

Weblog (upstream support):

  http://www.rncbc.org

License:

Qtractor is free, open-source software, distributed under the terms of
the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.

Features:

- Multi-track audio and MIDI sequencing and recording.
- Developed on pure Qt4 C++ application framework (no Qt3 nor KDE
dependencies).
- Uses JACK for audio and ALSA sequencer for MIDI as multimedia
infrastructures.
- Traditional multi-track tape recorder control paradigm.
- Audio file formats support: OGG (via libvorbis), MP3 (via libmad,
playback only), WAV, FLAC, AIFF and many, many more (via linsndfile).
- Standard MIDI files support (SMF format 0 and 1).
- Non-destructive, non-linear editing.
- Unlimited number of tracks per session/project.
- Unlimited number of overlapping clips per track.
- XML encoded session/project description file.
- Point-and-click, multi-select, drag-and-drop interaction (drag, move,
drop, cut, copy, paste, delete, split, merge)
- Unlimited undo/redo.
- Built-in mixer and monitor controls.
- Built-in connection patchbay control and persistence (a-la QjackCtl).
- LADSPA, DSSI and native VST plug-ins support.
- Unlimited number of plug-ins per track or bus.
- Plug-in presets, programs and chunk/configurations support.
- Audio/MIDI clip fade-in/out (linear, quadratic, cubic).
- Audio/MIDI clip gain/volume, normalize and export.
- Audio clip time-stretching (WSOLA-like or via librubberband),
pitch-shifting (also via librubberband) and seamless sample-rate
conversion (via libsamplerate).
- Audio/MIDI track export (mix-down, merge).
- Audio/MIDI metronome bar/beat clicks.
- Unlimited tempo/time-signature map.
- MIDI clip editor (matrix/piano roll).
- MIDI instrument definitions (a-la Cakewalk(tm)).
- MIDI controller mapping (mixer).
- JACK transport sync master.
- MMC control surface enabled.
- MIDI Song Position cueuing support.
- Configurable keyboard shortcuts.

Change-log:

- The MIDI clip editor (piano-roll/matrix editor), the main track view
as well, have been subject to usability fixing, the most notable avoids
clearing current selection as much as possible when updating view
contents (eg. changing zoom levels does not reset current selection
anymore).
- MIDI tracks channel bank/program and controller stuff are now only
issued when the respective bus connections have changed, seldom on every
playback start.
- MIDI controller mapping infrastructure, with file based configuration
management (see View/Controllers...), is now in place, following an
original contribution from gizzmo aka Mathias Krause.
- Plugin chain buffer reset on playback start/stop is not guarded by a
momentary plugin de/activation anymore.
- Clip export may now be applied to multiple clips, sharing common
refactored code and same semantics as merging of current selected clips.
- Improved, may be just fixed yet again, audio track export
synchronization and reliability.
- Clip merge is now featured both for audio and MIDI tracks (see
Edit/Clip/Merge...).
- Improved, or better said, fixed (again) the precision of multi-clip
final positioning as result of drag/move and paste operations in main
track view (as in bug #2741611).
- MIDI track program number is now listed in 1-128 range, in an attempt
to be consistent with corresponding MIDI track dialog drop-down list.
- MIDI editor snap grid lines get slight different color then regular
beat divisions.
- Reset local tempo map cursor on newer MIDI file imports in a tentative
to fix incidental but random crashes.

URLs:
[1] http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/BCF2000.aspx
[2] http://www.rncbc.org/datahub/bcx2000.qtc
[3] http://www.rncbc.org/datahub/Qtractor_Mixer_1-8.syx
[4] http://www.rncbc.org/datahub/Qtractor_Mixer_9-16.syx
[5] http://www.rncbc.org/datahub/usx2y.qtc

Cheers && Enjoy!

-- 
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
rncbc@email-addr-hidden
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