DP 8.06 merge issues

[italodisco]

Hi. I've been having some trouble merging lately and wonder if anyone else has had this too. I called MOTU tech support and described the issue and the guy said merge didn't work like the way I was using it. Okay…I've been using this technique for years on hundreds of projects. Time for Motunation! Here is the process below, thank you for any help.

-I have multiple, some-overlapping soundbites in a single track - let's say a comp'd vocal.
-In the sequence (main) window, I will drag my cursor over all the little rectangle soundbites to select a time range. Often I just want to merge the soundbites and not any extra selected time before or after, so a quick "right arrow, left arrow" will select just the bites themselves and no extra time.
-Hit "Merge." They should merge. They no longer do. All that happens is the soundbites deselect.

Sucks. This is new behavior. Any thoughts?

[Tritonemusic]

Right and left arrow, by default, will "Nudge" the Soundbite. Are you sure you haven't changed your Commands in a previous version and forgot to do it in the newest version? I can't Merge Soundbites in DP7.24 the way you describe. Perhaps I'm not understanding you correctly. If so, my apologies.

[italodisco]

hi Tritone,

Yeah, exactly - I have "nudge" set "to grid" and I just go back and forth (in essence, canceling out any movement on the timeline) just as my own weird shortcut to select the soundbites without having to option-click every soundbite. It's a shortcut.

But to avoid any confusion, let's just pretend I option-clicked a bunch of soundbites in one track in a row and hit "merge." It wasn't merging them. The usual behavior was it would merge the soundbites in a row, with the newly-created soundbite being made up of the first and last selected soundbites and everything in between (including silences between soundbites). It was handy.

Now in some projects, it still does this, but in others it won't. Frustrating as hell. I'm thinking it's a bug.

[bayswater]

Works for me in 8.06. Select a range in the SE on an audio track. Use Merge Soundbites, and I get a new soundbite spanning the selected range made up of the visible portions of the original soundbites that were in the selected range.

First things I'd check are, as mentioned above, whether there has been a change to your key commands, and second whether there is a permissions problem preventing DP from writing the new soundbite.

[Timeline]

I'll have to check this one out. So far, I have had no issues like this but older sessions has created differences in 8 performance making issues appear.

I would start a new 8 session and try merging there. If you find it works properly then I would chunk load the old problem sessions into a new 8 template. I fixed my issues doing that but the old DP sessions were from way back in 5.

[Phil O]

I have "nudge" set "to grid" and I just go back and forth (in essence, canceling out any movement on the timeline) just as my own weird shortcut to select the soundbites without having to option-click every soundbite. It's a shortcut.

Slick! Good tip. Thanks.

[italodisco]

Ha, I'm glad someone liked it

This is inconsistent. I can merge some soundbites. I've had a lot of weird •••• happen with 8.06. I think it may be buggy on my system (10.6.8, Eight Core, operating in 32-bit mode).

PS: Commands not changed…not by me at least!