Feature request: Add the ability to add markers to recordings

Hi there,

I was encouraged by kissaki to put this here as a feature request, instead of just as a forum question.

I have been using Mumble (Murmur server on Ubuntu with DigitalOcean, various clients on Windows, Mac and phone/tablet) for years for recording a podcast. The primary reason is that Mumble is the only app I've found that gives me files which properly sync up; This makes post processing and editing much easier.

However, I would love to be able to do one thing - to have a script, command etc. to have Mumble store a "marker" in the wav files we end up with. I am not sure exactly how these markers are stored (I am not familiar with the wav file format in intimate detail), but when I use for instance Adobe Audition to edit, I can save a .wav file with markers in it, and they will be there even if I open the wav file on another computer. So I am guessing there is a somewhat "standard" way of doing this, accepting that I might be entirely wrong about this.

So what I would love to see is some sort of command, or even GUI element, that would allow me to set a marker, that is stored in the recorded wav file.

Bonus 1: I could be able to enter a "label", marker name. This could be "Segment start", "Edit point", "Participant burped", "Episode end", that sort of thing. Bonus 2: I could choose if the marker was only created in my local ("Recorder") file, or also in the local recording of the other participants.

Why does 2. matter? Well, in order to have the best possible audio quality, we have all participants record multichannel locally. Then they upload their local ("Recorder") audio files to me. Now I have a sync challenge - since audio boards and computers have slightly different timing, my local recording of the remote users will be slightly longer or shorter than their local recording. I can "stretch" them in Audition and sync this up manually based on the waveforms, but if I could tell Mumble to place a marker ("Episode start", and "Episode end") in each of the participants local "Recorder" file, that job would be MUCH easier. I realize network latency means this wouldn't be nanosecond precise, but it would be good enough for a talking head kind of podcast.

Addendum since forum post: Since I don't know what kind of data the markers are stored as by Audition in the wav files (by reading the spec I would guess cue points with labels?), I created a wav file in Audition and added some markers to it. It is a one second sound file with a tone in it, and three markers; The first is after 0.2 seconds, the second is an "interval" marker (with a start and end point), going from 0.4s to 0.6 s, then the final one is at 0.8s. What can I say, I'm a sucker for symmetry. I don't know what tools are available for taking apart wav files and analyzing the contents, but if there is anything I can do, let me know and I will try my best.

I don't know if this is at all feasible - could it be done? Or would it require adding functionality to the Mumble client itself?

Thanks for any input on this! Really loving Mumble for the audio quality and excellent features!

mumble-voip / mumble

Feature request: Add the ability to add markers to recordings #3757