Default audio clips to Waveform instead of thumbnail

[f-michaut]

Describe the new feature: When working with audio clips, it is usualy very usefull to have the waveform to know where sound start or end or pauses, to easily trim theses blank spaces, or do a clean cut of an audio clip.

However Openshot default to thumbnail view for both Audio & Video clips. This means that every audio clip added to the timeline has to be right-clicked, and Waveform selected.

Describe the solution you'd like: I think a sensible default would be Waveform for audio only files, since they don't have a thumbnail anyway. For files with audio and video, I would also advocate for Waveform. We could also have a setting for all the relevant types of files and allow the user to select what default display should be applied for that type of file. (I think there is only 3 main types of files : audio only, video/picture only, video+audio)

Describe alternatives you have considered: You currently have to right click every single clip you want to change the settings of.

[stale[bot]]

Thank you so much for submitting an issue to help improve OpenShot Video Editor. We are sorry about this, but this particular issue has gone unnoticed for quite some time. To help keep the OpenShot GitHub Issue Tracker organized and focused, we must ensure that every issue is correctly labelled and triaged, to get the proper attention.

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[vinibali]

This would be a great feature and this is not yet implemented.

[Colorjet3]

Hello @vinibali I have added this to the queue. It will require a review by the lead developer and then he will decide to implement or not.

I think the behavior should be set by the user via Edit | Preferences | General tab. Here is what I am thinking for options:

Preference 1. Always display waveform if audio is present (check box). Default would be set to "Not checked". This applies to video/audio and audio files. Preference 2. Always display waveform if audio only file. Default would be set to "Not checked". This applies to audio files only.

I am thinking from a coding perseptive (this will only happen when files are dragged onto a track):

If step 1 & step 2 are not checked then jump to SKIP. If file does not contain audio then jump to SKIP. If step 1 is "checked" & file contains audio then display waveform. If step 2 is checked and the file is audio only file then display waveform.

The lead developer will figure this out, I am sure.

I am also wondering if this feature should be considered during the "Add To Timeline" process. Should there be an option to temporarily override Preferences 1 & 2 when "Add To Timeline" is used?

What do you think?

[vinibali]

I wouldn't enable anything by default if we have only one layer(channel) for a video file with audio. I've been using Vegas previously and there you have two different channels for both the audio and video layers, which helps to separate the waveform from the video thumbnail. If we would have different layer visualizations for the same video file's audio and movie channels, that would be easy to turn it on by default. If we could guarantee that the waveform generation will not force shutdown OpenShot if anything goes wrong, than the default option would be to be enabled by default for audio files.