XO Wave: Offline Operations

XO Wave's an advanced design allows it to perform multiple functions simultaneously. For example, you can import audio, play back audio, and burn a CD at the same time; without interrupting editing or playback. This means you are almost never stuck waiting around for something to complete. This is managed by having certain (generally time consuming) operations disengage from the main interface while running, leaving it free for interactive use such as editing and playback. These operations are called "offline operations", "background operations", or "background tasks".

The first time you begin an offline operation, XO Wave will bring up a dialog box with a quick explanation. You may avoid this dialog on future operations by checking "Don't show this message again" before clicking OK.

Multi-Process Model

XO Wave is composed of three distinct components:

• XOgui, the "graphical user interface", is the part of the program that you interact with directly. It provides controls all the visual objects such as windows, audio waveforms, and buttons; the GUI also handles keyboard and mouse input.
• XOmux is a small program that receives requests from the GUI and passes them on to an XOengine.
• An XOengine performs the actual audio processing and playback. Multiple engines may be launched and run from XO Wave, allowing you to playback, export, import, and burn CDs simultaneously.

Exporting Audio, Importing Audio, Burning CDs, and More...

Because XO Wave does not limit the number of offline operations you can run, you can get a tremendous amount of work done simultaneously. The following operations are all examples of offline operations in XO Wave:

• Importing Audio
• Exporting Audio and Movies
• Creating CD Masters
• Burning CD Masters
• Rebuilding Audio File Overviews

The only things preventing you from burning a CD while exporting video and editing another session might be your computer's CPU, memory, and hard drive speed. If you really load your system down with a lot of offline operations, you might start to experience trouble when playing back -- for example, you might have brief audio drop-outs while your computer is busy providing data for a CD burn -- however, unless your sessions are extremely complex or your machine is very slow, you should not experience trouble with playback because playback always runs at a high priority. In general, you can reduce the likelihood of buffer underruns by increasing the # Preload Buffers in the Audio Hardware Settings window.

Managing and Monitoring Offline Operations

XO Wave provides progress bars for each operation to let you know how much work has been done. The three most recent operations have progress bars that can be viewed in the Transport window (or the transport area of the Mix window or Edit window. Not only do these progress bars provide you with feedback about the progress of offline operations, but clicking one provides a convenient way to open the Offline Operations Manager. The Offline Operations Manager shows all your active operations, and allows you to cancel operations and remove operations from the list. For more details, see the documentation for the Offline Operations Manager.