This is something I’ve been wanting to request for a while, and since DOP is getting a major overhaul it would be great if you could slip this change in. =)
The thing is that if we turn on bypass for a process and then turn it off, it has to re-render re-renders the process/chain, and this is very bad for two reasons:
one is it wastes a lot of time and two it makes it almost impossible to do a quick A/B comparison on what your processes are doing because of the long wait between auditions.
So it would be great if we could keep the edits in a cache so when we bypass the processes it immediately reads the original clip, and when we un-bypass it it reads again from the edit cache allowing for quick way to listen to the unprocessed clip.
I know that there is the issue of the interaction between processes, meaning you can’t bypass one of them without affecting the others so it would mean huge caches and longer processing times, but if we could have this in a “bypass process chain” option it would be hugely useful already.
So either it would have to load the processing chain for an event into a temporary realtime path where you can turn things on and off, or it would need to render each “step” into a separate clip corresponding to that state so that “bypass” effectively reads the clip that is from “before” the bypassed process and then also re-process all processes after without the bypassed process.
To me neither seems reasonable given the many problems we could end up with. Running it in realtime could be a problem if you have an RX connect process in there somewhere since triggering that would send the event to RX. And starting to process things offline in multiple “configurations” of processes on/bypassed (i.e. processes 1,2 and 5 on but 3 and 4 bypassed) would just yield a really large amount of files over time.
I support the ultimate goal of your request but I’m just wondering if it’s feasible.
Yes I understand what you are saying, that’s why I wrote my last paragraph, albeit much less eloquently than you.
But I don’t think it needs to be complicated or risky at all.
Think with me: the original file is already there, the processed edit (of the whole chain) is also already there. All they need to do is not delete the processed edit file when we press bypass. This way the event can immediately reference either the original clip or the edit file depending on the bypass state.
Of course, this is considering a new “bypass process chain” button, since that would remove the issues you pointed out and is already much better than what whe currently have.
Yes, there is that option, but I wouldn’t say they are very similar. Perhaps in principle, but surely not in practice.
Unfortunately the preview, although highly improved since it started at least following event volume (and not destroying speakers and hearing anymore), is still borderline useless because:
there is no way to control the transport except play/stop so you have no option except starting from the top everytime.
It does not follow the tracks signal path.
You can’t listen to that clip in context with everything else.