SIBIAC add on for NVDA

SIBIAC add on for NVDA

Sibiac: Single Image Blob Interface Accessible Control is a free NVDA add on with a primary development focus for inaccessible plug-ins or music apps. It reconstructs an app's interface from its graphical representation by using OCR and NVDA text ranges to retrieve app specific information and provides keyboard functionality for interacting and manipulating its controls. It now contains two parts, the plug-in itself (at this time being updated frequently with definitions for application controls, also known as overlays) and a specific version of the teseract OCR engine that is optimized for it (this second component is very unlikely to change soon), so you will need to install both before using the add on. Please note that the plug-in is being updated frequently, so there will be changes coming all the time so this page will be regularly updated with additions and modifications as they are presented. It has been tested and known to work in windows 10 and windows 7 (64 bit)

before you get started

Since this is entirely a screen based tool, some recommendations are in place:

• The interface of the program you want to use should fit into the screen. If this is not the case, image information will be missed, making it impossible to perform accurate mouse clicks. So windows zoom or magnification if used, should be set to 100%
• your monitor should support resolutions hopefully equal or greater than 1920x1080. This is because some plug-ins have been designed for larger monitors, addictive drums notwithstanding as one of the more rare and for now, the only example.
• However, It can still be possible to work with lower resolutions (most plug ins scale their displayed windows accordingly). You will have to make the Windows task bar auto hide and then control the plug-in you want by using it inside reaper making sure everything is maximiced within the fx chain window. Tabbing around this should actually give you an "enabled" label for a checkbox that was previously not labeled and once you pass that checkbox you will be inside the plug in controls reported by sibiac.

In the REAPER preferences, under the "Plug-ins" section, make sure the following options are checked:

• Automatically resize FX windows: check boxes for both Up and Down
• Auto-position new floating FX windows
• Auto-position new FX chain windows

Test the installation of the plug-in by opening the item properties dialog and tabbing around. You should then hear for example, "fade shape, slow 2" button. This means that the add on is working correctly as fade shapes are now being described to you.

should you still have problems or extraneous feedback when using Sibiac, try

• maximizing FX chain by using the Winows Key+Up arrow.
• You might need to also press the applications key on the plug in in the list of effects and choose the option Window float selected FX (doubleclick)
• Also maximize REAPER itself, that will position new windows better. REAPER remembers its own position between restarts, as well as the position and size for each fx, so you will need to do this only once per track/plug-in instance.
• if you have changed the way plug ins run, before inserting an effect, press the applications key, select the run as submenu and make sure that the options "native only" and Embed bridged UI (may not work with all plugins, less crash-resilient) are checked.
• you might also find this video helpful for installation and setup instructions.

what is possible using SIBIAC?

You can accomplish the following:

• REAPER: Get fade shape descriptions in item properties dialog as well as in the preferences for them.

you can additionally, use some more plug-ins inside reaper, demos and examples follow, thanks to the amazing work of AZ (plug-in author) and Gerad Deuvall. Note: As SIBIAC is still in development (testing reports and contributions of all kind are of course welcome) only those plug-ins which have a greater degree of accessibility will be posted.

G-tune

We have taken GTune, a free VST chromatic tuner, and made it accessible using SIBIAC. You can change the reference tuning frequency, and determine just how tuned your instrument is. In this video, I am using my 7 string to demonstrate the tuner. Follow the description for download links.

addictive drums 2

here you can carry out most tasks such as midi mapping, preset selection, changing out kit pieces, assigning track outputs, etc. Please note that the latest version of addictive drums (2.8.1) is required. follow the link for a demo

melodyne

When using melodyne there are a few key points to consider: Supported version is melodyne 4. You should first and foremost, set melodine as either a secondary or primary external editor by going into preferences, external editors, and then locating the path to either the 32 bit or 64 bit executable version of melodyne inside the \program files\celemony directory in the second or first edit box. Whether it is a primary external editor or a secondary one will not matter in this case. Once you have done this, go back to your project, and then select and split the item that you wish to tune (preferably a portion of it, and not the entire item, though it is possible to work with longer items) then open it into the external editor in any of these ways. Melodyne will now open in standalone mode.

As navigation in melodyne normally uses a note for note aproach, its better if you open files that are short. You can open long files, but be aware that for the analysis melodyne will create many temporary ones. If yo happen to use an antivirus software you should exclude the directory that melodyne uses which is found under preferences/recording. Not doing this will severely slow down the process. Analysis will start when you open a file or change used algorhythms. Sibiac does not support the description or reporting of the analysis progress.

If this is the first time you do open melodyne, please set these preferences accordingly. If you have done this already, then skip to the end of this list

• opening melodyne for the first time will anounce untitled, followed by top menu. This is a virtual button that when pressed (using enter) will place the cursor in the file menu for saving or exporting, ETC. From there you should navigate to the right until you find the options menu (press the right arrow 4 times) and configure the following:
• show tracks: unchecked
• show note editor: checked
• info pane sub menu: cleared, nothing showing.
• tempo editor sub menu: nothing checked, nothing showing, same as info pane.
• also, go back to the file menu and then arrow up to ppreferences, then set language in preferences to English, should be doable by tabbing once, and then arrowing down or up until you find it. The reason for this recommendation is the universality of the language, even though it does also work well if you set the language to Spanish, thanks to a recent plug in update. Everything works except for configuring key assignments in Spanish. you can then press enter, and close the window by using NVDA's object navigation commands.
• also in preferences: disable automatic updates. Future sibiac compatibility is not guaranteed unless changes are also made to the overlay.
• note: on some computers using intel graphic cards, alt and control in combination with the arrow keys (default keyboard assignments for ffine adjustment of values in Melodyne) will not work if you do have hotkeys turned on in your graphics control panel, so ensure they are disabled before using.

melodyne description and usage notes

When pressing tab you will come across an editing tools selector which will have several modes for correction, which can be selected by using the arrow keys:

• pitch (tuning of notes)
• pitch modulation (vibrato)
• pitch drift (voice glissandos or slides)
• formant, (harmonic resonance or content of notes)
• amplitude (or volume of notes)
• main window): allows quantization of audio and correction of pitch simultaneously

Tabbing once more will land you into the editor screen. Tab once more to find out which note you have selected, and tab once more to find information on the drifting of the note or the current parameter you are going to modify. SO you can use this to confirm your changes.

Some default assigned hot keys follow

• f1: press once to switch to main (or pitch and time) window
• f2: switch between pitch, pitch modulation and pitch drift modes. You have to repeat presses to select the desired tool. So pitch modulation, for example, will be accessed by pressing it twice.
• f3: Press once to switch to formant mode
• f4: Press once to switch to amplitude
• f5: press once for time correction and three times for attack speed (the second option for synth editing of the waveform is not currently supported).
• When you press the right or left arrows, you will hear the next or previous notes of the file being played back which will also select them. Up arrow moves forward one measure and down arrow moves backward a measure.
• Pressing space bar will play and pause through the file regardless of what is selected, though it follows cursor position after you have auditioned a specific note.
• alt plus space will audition the currently selected note or notes for its entire duration.
• Numpad enter will play the entire file and pressing it twice will restart playback from the beginning.
• Numpad 0 will stop playback.
• Shift and the arrows will select adjacent notes.
• pressing enter on the information given such as a note or parameter will open up and edit box so you can type values manually to change them faster especially when they are larger modifications. You press escape to discard them, or enter again to save them after you are done typing. This is sibiac specific functionality.
• use control plus up or down arrow keys (coarse) to alter the note by bigger increments, which will produce no sound so you will have to audition immediately after by using alt plus space. The note will be changed by whole tone increments in the case of pitch or by whole decibels in the case of amplitude. Doing so when there are percentages involved will increase or decrease by 50%, and cents will be increased by 100.
• using control alt plus up or down arrows (fine adjustments) will change values by one cent, or percentages by a single digit, or decibels by tenths of one, 1.10, 1.20 and so on.
• using control and the side arrows will move notes forward or backward by whatever grid unit is selected.

Now follows a very quick overview of what each mode will do:

• altering pitch will make the note higher or lower. The cents will let you adjust pitches by very small increments, about a 100th of a tone, melodyne calls this pitch deviation or drift.
• in case of altering vibrato or pitch modulation, there can be positive and negative values. Positive values will exaggerate the original intent of the audio signal, so if vibrato goes up it will go even higher, while negative values will create the opposite of what is intended, so if vibrato goes up it will be inverted. This depends entirely on the direction of the note you are modifying. Setting the value to 0 percent will just give the classic robotic singing effect because vibrato will be completely removed.
• pitch drifting or sliding works in similar principles, including setting the value to 0 to have the notes adhere to the same pitch, or negative values to cause the opposite effect (a slide upwards instead of downwards, for example) though you will need more extreme values to notice the changes.
• when altering formants, changing a note by larger increments up will make the voice sound nasal, while negative values will make it sound boomy or hollow thus significantly changing the character or timbre of a voice.
• when adjusting amplitude positive values will make notes louder and negative values will make notes softer, so it can be a way of applying manual compression to the audio.
• To correct timing of notes, switch to the time correction tool by using f5, then set a grid unit using the options menu. Control plus left and right arrows will move notes earlier or later. Use triplets when dealing with music with a swing feel. This will move notes from their beginning only. Melodyne always tries to detect the tempo by either tempo information inside the file or deriving it from the waveform alone, so its rare that issues should arise when using this tool.
  • Other ways to detect or change tempo include
  • running Melodyne as ARA inside reaper, then set the tempo manually from the project properties. If the tempo does not match, Melodyne will indicate that tempo is out of sync and playing the file will produce noise. There is no way to change this default behavior.
  • you might correct the detected tempo or load it from a file by using the tempo assignment screen, currently not supported using sibiac.
  • you can export the tempo or transfer it in ARA mode
  • finally, you can force a refresh of the tempo detection by selecting all notes pressing control+a
• main window:. In this window you can change the pitch of notes by using control plus up or down arrow, and alt control plus up and down arrow as well as moving notes forward or back later or earlier by using control plus right or left arrows.
• attack speed: Can be useful for smoothing out sibilance, and the editing must be done manually, by selecting the parameter and typing in a desired percentage. arrows will not function. Negative values will stretch the audio and positive values will accelerate it, just at the attack point of any syllable.

general tips

• You can transpose or modify the entire clip or file by selecting all (using control plus a) and using control plus up or down arrows to change by larger increments, or alt control and the arrows for smaller values.
• when deleting notes or breaths by using the delete key, melodyne will move the audio and it will not preserve the timing of whatever you are deleting, meaning it will leave no gaps. You might be able to disguise the removal of a breath by drastically turning down its volume.

When you are done correcting in melodyne, in order to save your work and have it applied to the track you were in, you should export the edited audio to a wav file type, otherwise using the save option in melodyne will create a melodyne project file (.mpd). You can save to a folder close to the one which contains the audio for your reaper project, make a back up of your original recording, and then cut and paste the file using explorer, effectively replacing the original one (no need to close the project) but this is because melodyne will not overwrite your original files. Should you wish to do so however, there is an option in the file menu called replace audio for this purpose. Once you use this option, the original file is completely gone so make sure you really do want to replace the original file or do have a versioning system in place because this option has no undo.

Navigation and manipulation in the preferences screen is now supported. You can assign shortcuts as well, but one word of caution is in order. To assign a shortcut you use the tree view to find it. Sections can be expanded or collapsed by using enter. Enter also enables the learn mode, which means that if you select and action and press enter on it, any key that you press on that moment will be assigned. There is no way to tell melodyne to stop learning assignments, so be careful as pressing even escape or alt plus f4! will have actions bound to them. What you should do in this case is tab to the page or tab selector and switch the page to anything, and then press OK. When reopening the shortcut preferences melodyne will still keep on learning the shortcuts used, so keep that in mind. Finally, you can delete an assignment by enabling the learning mode for an action as described above, tabbing to the delete button and pressing enter on it.

you can also see the following video tutorials to have more in dept and detailed information

• Installation and Pitch control also includes overview of some initial settings
• Pitch Modulation and Pitch Drift
• Formant and Amplitude
• Time, Attack Speed and Other Functionality

zampler

This free vst is a SFZ/REX based sampler by Sinapse Audio. It also emulates some functions found in synth workstations. You can use some free libraries or buy others.

Once you load the vst into reaper, from there you can access the following: Main tab:

• Current patch. Use the arrows to change, enter opens the patch management menu for changing patch numbers within the zampler libraries (.fxb files)
• Bank and patch load/save buttons. Here you can load specific banks or patches without having to load an entire library.
• Currently loaded SFZ/REX slot. Press enter to import your own rex or sfz files into it.
• Polyphony and pitchbend settings: use the arrows to change values

Mod matrix tab: This modulator matrix will receive a midi message and substitute it for another operation or message, thus allowing you to create presets that will alter the sound as soon as you switch to any of them. In the chooser, select the desired modification slot (there are 12 available). Current parameters can be configured for each slot, as such:

• Pressing enter on either Source or Destination opens a menu for selection. The source can be for example, assigned to the pitch wheel on a midi controller. You can then use the pitchbend wheel to control the panning (that you set as a destination) of the patch you are playing.
• In the case of ammount, values can be changed by using the arrow keys. You may hold the arrow keys pressed down for a while for fast changes. This will affect the range that the control will operate. So if you have assigned, for example panning to the pitchbend wheel but set the range to +50, you will have a smaller stereo field.
• you can also apply a filter there, when sibiac says "choose patch off" it refers to the type of EQ you can use. There is currently no way of changing the values for the specific parameters of the EQ and it is the only one that is not automatable.

As you can gather, this does open up quite interesting possibilities for sample playback. Try assigning the velocity to control the panning.

arpeggiator tab:

• Currently, only loading patterns is supported by pressing enter.

Lastly, it will allow you to work with custom supplied rex files easily, by first splitting the beat slices found inside rx2 files and then automatically mapping them across the entire keyboard starting from the note c2. B1 will play and loop the sample from beginning to end, on demand, the rest of the keys will act as one shots for the different slices (useful to make either variations or fills on an existing pattern). It is also velocity sensitive so how soft or hard you play will affect the volume. It does sync your rex files to the tempo of your project, there is no way to change this setting. There is a video that demonstrates loading and playback of libraries that have been specifically made for zampler and the manipulation of some parameters

STL tones STL Tonality: Howard Benson Guitar Plug-In Suite

a commercial all-in-one Guitar Plug-in Suite which contains amp modules, stomp and cab simulators. Sibiac supports:

• navigate between sections: The plug-in has 3 pages: amps, pedals and cabs. Press enter when one of these is selected, and use the left and right arrows to toggle the on-off state of the selected equipment.
  • On Amps page, use up and down arrows to choose one amp from 5 available. By tabbing into the Amps page you can fine tune amp parameters. As is done with other controls, you can select a particular parameter with left and right arrows and change the value with up and down arrows. You can use Shift+Up or Down arrows for finer adjustments. Switches are toggled by using enter.
  • There are 3 fixed stomp boxes in the pedals section, with the same controlling approach used for amps. Please do not forget that in addition to individual power switches for each stomp, there is a global one in the control page.
  • In the cabs page you can select one from 5 built-in cabs available, or you can also select an external cab and load your own impulse response file. There are no configurable parameters for cabs.
• managing Banks and presets. Controls allow loading, saving, coping and deletion of banks and presets. Use left and right arrows to select an action and enter to run it.
• The signal section is where you can change between mono/stereo modes, set input and output levels, set gate options. Use the left and right arrows to select a control, up and down arrows to change levels. Press enter to toggle Gate modes.

Finally, there is context help available. Use the f1 key when a control is focused to learn what key commands you can use on that control.

NadIR

NadIR is a free Impulse Response convoluter from Ignite Amps. All elements which are not covered by automation parameters are supported. The plug-in has 2 cabs which can be selected using the arrows. After tabbing inside each one, its possible to load impulse response files by browsing to them. Then its also possible to start changing between them using the arrows as well. This is the first Sibiac overlay created by someone other than the sole developer. Credit goes out to Nikolai.

Toontrack: EZ drummer

EzDrummer is Toontrack's Commercial sample based drums synth with a 10 day demo period. They have supported the development for this overlay.

Sibiac supports everything except the groove section

overview: The overlay has 2 pages, Kit and mixer.

• The kit page allows you to change kit pieces and adjust their corresponding parameters.
• The mixer page allows mixing the kit inside the plug-in or routing mic channels for multi-track mixing inside your DAW.

When you navigate to the kit page for the first time, you will be asked to let the program learn the layout. Two of them come with EZ Drummer and all extra extension packs have different sets of kit pieces and different graphical representations for each. Sibiac can automatically recognize each layout, but that is a relatively lengthy procedure. So you will be explicitly asked to start the layout learning procedure. Please be patient and do not use the computer until the recognition has finished. The layout will be learned only once per extension pack, the result is saved on disk.

Channels and effects in the mixer are dependent on the extension pack and also on the particularly selected preset. But unlike with the kit page, Sibiac recognizes the mixer page on the fly without explicit learning involved.

Reading Toontrack's documentation in order to understand the concepts and operations in this plug-in is recommended. Several terms can be confusing, however.

• Each EZ Drummer pack provides a set of sounds for kit pieces, one kit layout and several presets.
• A preset contains the kit layout, mixer channels and used effects. It is possible to change kit pieces and many parameters, but not the layout nor effects.
• Hidden inside each piece dialog, there is another term called kit. A kit defines used kit pieces in any particular layout.
• is not possible to change The MIDI mapping for kit pieces individually, but there are several mappings for different e-drums.
• MIDI mapping for mixer and effects can be defined by user.

Finally, there is context help available. Use the f1 key when a control is focused to learn what key commands you can use on that control.

Known issues

• there are many OCR recognition failures. Sometimes true text can be used but this is not persistent. So you may hear different words for effectively the same text, for example for a preset name.
• during preset loading, the focus is temporarily moved to some other window and it sometimes does not return back to the plug-in automatically, especially when the keyboard is used before the preset is loaded completely.
• the overlay works with graphics and EZ Drummer uses animations. Navigation and audio feedback may lag in several places when sibiac waits for the picture update.
• escape cannot be used to close some rarely used internal dialogs. Please use the tab key to get to the close button in this case. However, escape should work fine for all dialogs used during normal workflow, including the settings dialog.

some more plug-ins

In addition to being able to use these plug-ins already mentioned, you can also do the following inside reaper:

• preset selection in native instruments Absynth 5 and Guitar Rig 5
• the ability to bring up the program selection in Cakewalk Dimension Pro and session instruments.
• preset browser usage with Addictive Keys.
• toontrack Ez mix 2: complete functionality: this includes
  • Selecting and filtering presets by using a text box to search (you should press enter when you start and end typing, and shift plus space to avoid playing back the project) or a table which can be expanded (left and right arrows move through categories, up and down arrows move inside categories, delete key clears selection, enter toggles the selection for a particular filter). The search text limits what is displayed here. The filter will also work on favorites as well as and all presets individually. When using the preset selection control up and down arrows will switch presets, left and right arows will speak the name of the current preset and the categories for it, if any, since this information is influenced by the applied filters.
  • adding, renaming or deleting favorite presets via the preset list
  • editing parameters by bigger (coarse) changes using the arrows and smaller (fine) changes using shift and the arrows. Pressing enter on any of the parameter controls will speak the name of the parameter and its current value.
  • There is a input and output gain control. up and down arrows will change the level, enter will speak the current value. Clipping is also anounced though these meters are not reliable nor accurate.
  • The options button will open up a pop-up menu which will let you pick categories for display in the filtering table and in the current preset.
  • Sibiac will also announce when the demo version has expired after 15 minutes of use. You can close the plug-in using alt f4, then restart it to be able to use it again. here is a demo for ezMix.
• Cakewalk Session Drummer 3. Preset selection, kit piece selection and routing.
  • As usual with Sibiac, controls are Tab, Arrows, Enter and Escape.
  • Inside the Drum Kit page, Pressing the preset button opens the preset selection dialog. find the preset you want and press Alt+Enter to load it. Then Escape to close the dialog.
  • The other controls on this page are kit pieces, you can press Enter on each for their description and the down arrow will open a popup-menu. You can load kit pieces separately and change MIDI assignments.
  • In the Mixer page you can set the outputs for each kit piece.
  • Other Mixer controls are easier to operate using OSARA's plug-in parameters dialog.
• Sforzando player and VCSO2 vst: preset selection and loading patches.