Edit clip loop with external software

[sonejostudios]

Have a button in the clip properties to edit the sound with an external software (which can be set up in the prefs). E.g Audacity. Find a way to edit the sound directly from the .sbs file OR export it to a temp folder, edit it and re-import/overwrite it inside the .sbs file.

[sonejostudios]

Yesterday I had a look to the python ZipFile library, to figure out how easy/difficult it would be to add a button "Edit Clip with external Editor". Theoretically it is easy doable, but in the practice it throws a lot of questions.

Here a summary:

• it is not possible, to edit a file within a zip file, so extracting/re-zipping is needed
• it possible to add a file to a zip file, bit if it already exists inside the zip file it will NOT overwrite it and ends up with two files with the same name inside the zip file
• it is not possible to delete a file inside a zip file
• at the end of the day, the only way it to extract all files into a temp folder, make changes, re-compress the whole folder and overwrite the original song (I don't like it).
• I achieved to do all this automatically, as well as opening Audacity with the right "to-edit" file, but Audacity is silly: You can't "save" the opened file, you need to export it, and the export dialog doesn't suggest the file's folder BUT the "last used" export folder. This makes Audacity really cumbersome to use like this. A lot of people asked for this feature, but the developer seems to prefer this "last export folder" option, than "opened file folder". https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?t=101724
• OcenAudio is a nice Editor which would perfectly work with open/save, but it is less spread and less powerful than Audacity.
• If I want do do this "Edit Clip with external Editor" button, I would need, ON EACH CLIP EDIT, to extract the whole song, make changes on ONE clip, then re-compress and OVERWRITE the original song (I don't like this idea, because it is really inefficient and dangerous).

So what to do?

• Push again Audacity to add the feature (but I don't have any hope)
• Before overwriting the original song create a backup (cumbersome) (new idea: implement automatic backups?)
• Create something different, more like a menu/wizard "Edit Song externally", which would extract the song and open the temp folder, then after all changes, it recompresses the folder and overwrite the song (but only once)
• Change the overall behaviour of Opening Song: extract file on opening song, rezip file on saving/closing ST
• Create a own sample editor (lof of work) -> https://github.com/sonejostudios/LoopTool
• Something else?