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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. |
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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:
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.
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