The QRt Home Page
Forgive me for not taking the time to
create a glossy page for this site, but I have software yet to write.
What is QRt?
QRt is a real-time soundfile mixing application modeled vaguely along
the same lines as ProTools, at least in terms of visual editing of
sound placement. It is also a scripted system, with
variable-argument-count text commands representing each soundfile
mixing event or other changes to the mix. These scripts are read
and written by QRt to save and restore the detailed specifications of
the mix. In addition to mixing, a growing subset of simple sound
processing algorithms are also available, such as gain and pitch curves.
QRt is a port of Paul Lansky's Rt, which he created early 1990's as a
NeXTStep application, then ported to the SGI platform in the mid to
late 1990's. Rt's last incarnation was as a Linux application
based upon a no-longer-public Linux port of SGI's Motify X library,
ViewKit. I was actively involved in this port, and eventually
abandoned it due to possible difficulties with ViewKit, most especially
the lack of a port to the MacOSX platform. QRt is based upon the
GPL QT GUI library from TrollTech,
hence the name: QT + Rt == QRt. QRt runs under X86 Linux as an X
application and under MacOSX as a native app.
What's the news?
04/11/2007:
QRt version 1.2 is now available as source and OSX app, and soon as a Linux binary. This
will be the last version that uses QT 3.3.
04/11/2007:
QRt version 1.06 is now available as an OSX app.
10/28/2006:
QRt version 1.06 source is now available, as is X86 Linux binary. OSX Soon.
10/24/2005:
QRt version 1.05 source is now available, as are the OSX and X86 Linux binaries.
09/01/2005:
I have now released QRt version 1.04 for X86 Linux and OSX. I
will release the 1.04 source in the near future.
Where can I get a binary?
The newest X86 Linux binary is available as a tar.bz2 file HERE.
The newest MacOSX binary is available as a tar.bz2 file HERE.
The OSX version is statically linked against both QT and all other
non-standard libraries. The Linux version assumes that you have
the dynamic QT dirs installed on your machine. If there are still
some distributions which do not have this, let me know (they are
usually someplace like /usr/lib/qt3). The bztars
include the COPYRIGHT, GNU.GPL, LICENSE.QPL, the help page
qrthelp.html, a sample resource file,
and (in the
Linux case) a qrt binary or (in the MacOSX case) a qrt.app directory
which contains the binary.
Is there a .rpm (or other installer package)?
Not at this time, there isn't. QRt has no dynamic dependencies
that are not installed by default on most Linux boxes, so at this point
it did not seem worth the trouble.
How can I compile it myself?
Not terribly complicated, but shouldn't be necessary for most
users. Here is what to do:
- Make sure that you have a complete QT 3.3.X development
environment installed on your machine.
Unfortunately, the software has
evolved in such a way that earlier versions are not forward
compatible. To download the latest for your platform, start HERE.
- Grab either the "Qt/X11 Free" version or the "Qt/Mac Free"
version.
- Unzip/untar it, run configure at the top level,
specifying -thread to build in multi-thread support. You
can read up on other options, such as creating dynamic vs. static libs,
if you wish.
- Run the make (takes a long time even on a fast machine) and the
install. There is probably a way to hack it to only build the
config tools and the library, but I did not try.
- Get and install libaudiofile from Michael Pruett's site HERE.
- This is not difficult.
It configures and installs with ease.
- Get the latest distribution of the QRt source.
- It is available on
this site HERE.
- Unzip/untar this. It
will create a directory qrtX.Y, with X,Y as the version and sub-version.
- Set up your QT environment, configure QRt,
and compile it.
- Type "setenv QTDIR <path
to your installed qt tree>".
- Add $QTDIR/bin to your PATH
or path variable.
- Type "qmake". This
should create the Makefile, but will also check that the rest of your
environment is set up correctly.
- Type "make". Under
Linux, you should end up with a binary called "qrt". Under
MacOSX, you will end up with an app directory called "qrt.app", which
you can double-click on from a browser. The binary itself is
buried down inside, Mac-style.
How do I use it?
Read through the help page HERE.
Who do I contact if I have problems or find bugs?
Contact me via email at the address at the bottom of the help page (after you have read through it!).
-Douglas Scott
October 2006