Humusbeta

The Library & file browser

Every file Humus asks you for, and every file you might want, goes through one window: the browser. Click Library on the tool rail to browse, press Cmd+O (Ctrl+O) to open a project, or click the file slot of any organism to choose a sample, bank, impulse response or clip.

The window

  • Places down the left: Recent, Favourites and Projects; the Library shelves (Impulses, Samples, Banks, Riffs, Scores, Scales, Shaders); Recordings and Presets; Computer (Home, Desktop, Documents, Downloads and your drives); your watched folders; and your collections.
  • The list shows name, rating, length and favourite. Right-click the header to add BPM, key, sample rate, size, date added, where the file lives, and which organisms load it.
  • Projects gathers every project folder and every patch (.hum, or an older .amh) the browser knows, wherever it lives: your Patches folder, watched folders and recent files. A patch inside a project folder shows as its project. Switch between Cards (rating, boxes, tempo, where it lives, when you last opened it, and a strip coloured by the families inside), Small tiles, and the plain List.
  • Right-click the list header for Created and Modified; the inspector shows both too.

In a folder under Computer, double-click a folder to go in and press Backspace (or Cmd+Up) to come back out.

Cmd+O opens on the place you last opened a project from. If that folder or collection is gone, it starts on Recent instead.

Searching

One search field understands a few words beyond plain text. Finish a word with a space and it becomes a chip; Backspace on an empty field removes the last one.

Type Finds
kick names and folders containing "kick", or files tagged kick
#vinyl files tagged vinyl
>3, >=4, 4+ at least that many stars
kind:ir, kind:bank, kind:project one kind of file (sample, ir, bank, midi, scale, shader, video, preset, patch, project)
bpm:120, bpm:118-124 a tempo or a range
key:am a key
fav favourites only

Listening

Click a sound and it plays. The strip at the bottom shows its waveform: click the waveform to jump, Space to start and stop, Loop to repeat it, Sync to play loops at the patch tempo, and the slider sets the preview volume. What you audition is heard but never recorded or bounced.

Rating, tagging and collecting

  • 1 to 5 rate the selection, 0 clears it, F favourites it. You can also click the stars and the heart in the list.
  • Press I (or the i button) for the inspector: big stars, tags you can add and remove, the collections a file belongs to, and its details.
  • Select several files and a bar appears to rate, tag or collect them all at once.
  • Collections are your own groups ("Dark kicks", "Live set 3"). A file can sit in many. Add one with the + beside Collections.

Ratings, tags, favourites and collections live in one hidden file, ~/Documents/Humus/.index.json. Move or rename a file inside a place the browser knows and it finds the file again, with everything you gave it.

Loading into organisms

  • The Loads into column lists the organisms that take each file, the ones built for it first.
  • Drag a file onto a box in the patcher to load it there, or onto empty canvas to make a new organism with it.
  • Select an organism in the patcher, then double-click a file in the browser to load it into that organism.
  • When an organism asks for a file, the browser opens on the file it already has, showing only the kinds that slot takes. Use File Browser... opens the system dialog instead.

Your library

  • Import to Library (right-click) copies files into the right shelf, keeping their ratings, tags and collections. Dropping files from your file manager onto the browser does the same.
  • Remove from Library... moves Library files to the Trash.
  • Watched folders add a sample drive or any folder as a place: click the + beside Watched folders. The browser indexes it in the background and slows down while the transport plays.
  • Refresh (or Cmd+R) looks again for new, moved and deleted files. Deleted files also drop out on their own within a minute; files on a drive that is unplugged stay until it comes back.
  • Move Library Folder... (right-click a Library shelf) puts the whole Library somewhere else, such as an external drive.