Hidden takes and measure insertion/deleting

[Prime Mover]

There seems to be some discrepancy over what happens to hidden takes when certain move/delete/insert actions are performed, and it would be nice to know exactly what the outcomes will be. I'm always unsure, if I add or cut measures to a sequence, what it's impact will be on hidden takes. Ideally, I'd like to ensure that all full-sequence edits will impact all inner-takes, just as they would all the tracks. Does someone happen to know, off hand, which actions impact hidden takes, and which do not?

On a slightly different note, I have a bit of an irk when Comping drum tracks, and other multi-track groups. If I have 8 drum tracks, and 20 takes, then it can be utterly painful to have to view all 160 waveforms when performing my comping. Usually, seeing the snare, kick, and maybe overheads is enough for most of a sequence. I tried hiding all the other tracks, but came to an annoying conclusion: only tracks visible in the sequence window can have actions performed on them. Even though all my drum tracks were grouped together with all take/comping sync options turned on, if a track isn't visible, it doesn't get edited. Booo! So now I end up collapsing all of my unnecessary tracks down to as small as I can make them, but the screen clutter is still pretty ridiculous. Anyone found a better method?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Great question. Never thought about that stuff.

[Prime Mover]

Not one to usually bump things, but I just know there's someone out there that's come up with some good solutions, especially for comping techniques. Shooshie? Dan? David? RadioGal?

[waitsongs]

As far as I know, only visible takes will reflect edits to the entire sequence, although I'd love to be proven wrong about that (e.g., find out there's some magic check box that says "Hidden tracks reflect Sequence Edits"). If I decide to use takes that were hidden when I made the sequence edits, I manually conform the hidden takes to match the new edits. Old school, yes, but it works as long as you keep track of the edits you've made.

For drum comping, I also use the old school method of taking detailed notes on each take (on paper!), and assembling a comp according to those notes. Usually there's a fairly obvious best overall take to start with, so I duplicate that, then cut in sections from other takes that I think might work better according to my notes. I don't use the comp tool, but rather just group all drums together, switch takes, and copy and paste. That way, I'm only looking at/hearing one take at a time, and it's quick and easy to audition, copy, and paste from different takes to the final comp.

Hope that helps?

[Prime Mover]

Hey! I just found a really neat workaround! All you have to do is put your unneeded tracks inside a track folder and collapse it. Edits are carried over to tracks inside collapsed track folders, as long as they're selected. This is SLICK! Takes about 2 seconds to setup and take down. And best of all, if you DO need to look at one of those tracks, it's really easy to flip out. Wish I'd figured this out sooner!

Only thing you have to make sure of, is that the act of showing takes and collapsing comps MUST be done with the track folder open, it seems that those track-wide actions don't carry over to collapsed folders. Just keep that in mind.

[Prime Mover]

After a night of comping this way, I have to say, it is solid. I had multitracked upright bass with three separate mics. Who needs to look at close vs room when you're comping. It was so nice to collapse those windows. I was comping drums (with HH, Toms, and Bottom Snare collapsed) and bass at the same time, and it wasn't a hassle at all!

[Dan Worley]

Great tip, PM! I will use that for sure.

[philbrown]

I've spent some time with the manual this morning and have also read this thread a couple of times. If the answer to my question is here, I'm still not quite getting it.

Here's the scenario:
A song with multiple takes on vocals for instance. I comp the vocal (old style not with the comping tool per my work preference). Then the band decides the guitar solo needs to be 4 bars shorter, so I snip 4 bars from the song. Then later when listening/mixing, decide one vocal line isn't quite sitting right - is there maybe a better take for this particular line? But when I pull up the alternate (hidden) vocal takes, none of them line up with the song any longer because of the edit I did.

Is there any way to get global edits to apply to hidden takes without having to expand all the takes to tracks before editing and then collapsing them down to takes afterward (which is not a practical workaround unless I'm missing something). This keeps coming up over and over. I hope there's an easy solution I'm missing.

[Shooshie]

I don't know of an easy solution. If the takes are audio takes, then you can open up all the takes as for using with the Comp Tool, and then do your snip. That'll get all the takes. I think you can expand takes in MIDI, too, then restore them to takes later. Not sure about that, because I haven't done it. But it seems logical that you could. Any way you look at it, there are extra steps. It would be nice if there were a command like Command-Option-J that would snip all takes, vs. Command-J that only snips the visible one. But I know of no such option currently.

Shooshie

[cbergm7210]

I have always thought this was a bug / oversight on MOTU's part and hoped it would be rectified in version 8. Doesn't sound like it was, unfortunately.

[Prime Mover]

Wait... I thought I did a test a few months back and found that when using "snip", at least, internal takes got snipped... or maybe it was when inserting measures with the "Modify conductor track" submenu, I forget.

The safest way is to open all your takes first before doing the snip. That works. Unfortunately, if you're using the comp tool, like I do, it doesn't snip the comp marks. But that shouldn't impact you. Unless you have 30 un-grouped multi-take tracks, opening them shouldn't take too long, especially for something as rare as making a snip. It's still a pain though.

I can't think of any situation where you wouldn't want a full-sequence edit like snipping/adding measures to effect internal takes. This should be performed on ALL data in the entire sequence: soundbites, automation, internal takes, and COMP MARKERS. The inability to edit comp markers is an especially huge oversight.

[philbrown]

Thanks for the replies. I think Shooshie's idea of a modifier key would be good. I originally thought a global preference would be the solution but there are occasions where I would NOT want a time edit to affect the underlying takes. Say a band does 3 full takes of a song not playing to a click track. Take 3 is good but they hung out a break too long so I do small snip there to see how it feels. Hmm it's OK but maybe take 2 was best after all... in that case I wouldn't have wanted the snip to affect underlying takes. The vast majority of the time though, I do want time edits to be global i.e. affect all underlying tracks and that just seems like more logical DAW behavior.

I guess I need to figure out key combos for expanding and absorbing tracks and at least give it a try, although it sounds like a PITA as far as workflow goes and you need to always remember BEFORE doing any time edits.

I'm surprised this isn't a bigger issue for more people.

[Prime Mover]

While I agree, I think the modifier needs to trigger some menu preference, or maybe an edit-window tick box (though it needs to work in the track editor too). While I'm cool with keyboard shortcuts, this seems to me more like a preference, rather than a modifier. Modifiers are most useful for small, repetitive things that you will be using over and over again. This is the kind of thing you might use once or twice per project, and is too potent to be likened to a snap toggle. Also, you won't know when you're doing it, which is kind of scary for a modifier key. You could easily accidentally leave it on and not know you were screwing up your inner takes.

Oh, and even if there are times when you might not want it on, the vast majority of the time, I think we'd want it on, which should be the default.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

...the vast majority of the time, I think we'd want it on, which should be the default.

-1

[Prime Mover]

Maybe I should clarify. This option does not affect day-to-day editing commands. Changing soundbite lengths, normal editing stays on the active take only. The only thing this would effect is when you're doing universal sequence time operations, like "Snip" and "Insert measures", These typically affect ALL the tracks anyway, so common sense would suggest that if we're talking "ALL" we're talking hidden takes as well. Most of the time, if it doesn't affect internal takes, then you have terrible take offset issues you have to correct. I believe that "insert measures" already works this way by default, just not any measure removal commands.

But more importantly still (because you can currently do this manually by showing all takes, though a pain) is that it should also re-position the comp markers, which are currently STUCK, permanently, to specific point, unaffected by edits.

It just surprises me that anyone wouldn't want this to be standard operation, as it already fits in with the whole concept of universal edit functions. Seems like an abnormality to want to insert measures into every track, and leave internal takes untouched, but it would always be nice to have the option to turn it off just in case you do.