Hiding Unused Tracks

Tripi · Post by **Tripi** » Wed Nov 18, 2015 10:19 am

Did anyone see the Junkie XL youtube videos where he demonstrated his studio process? They were very interesting. He uses Cubase, with a nice custom touchscreen for macros. One macro that really stood out was the ability to hide unused tracks (or only show tracks that have MIDI/audio on them). With a film scoring template like his (100s of tracks), it really makes things easier to navigate. I'm thinking that DP could really benefit from this type of option too. I've got so many tracks now, that I'm always scrolling around to find things. Track folders help, but only so much.

It got me thinking that what DP could really use is a system of scripting, where anyone could come up with a script to make it do things like "hide unused tracks", or "batch assign stemming routes". I'd be happy to see something like this in an update instead of more guitar fx plugins.

frankf · Post by **frankf** » Wed Nov 18, 2015 10:46 am

Back a ways when I was using Cakewalk it had a built in scripting language with access to almost everything. I've not seen anything like it since, nor do I know if Cakewalk still has the scripting feature.

FMiguelez · Post by **FMiguelez** » Wed Nov 18, 2015 11:59 am

I would LOVE to be able to hide unused audio and MIDI tracks

I think this feature has been requested in the past. Hopefully MOTU will implement it soon. I don't think it would be hard to program...

DP scripting would be awesome too, of course.

apanacci · Post by **apanacci** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 12:59 pm

I use DP8 and PT 12.3. Protools has that feature also. Hide and Make Inactive. I love it. Wish DP would do that also. I have to delete tracks instead to clean up my work space in DP. Not always want to do that.

frankf · Post by **frankf** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 7:19 am

My templates have an "Unused Tracks" folder inside which are sub folders "strings unused", percussion unused", etc. Using the "move selected tracks together", "move selected tracks to top" and "move selected tracks to bottom"commands in the TO helps me organize and hide unused tracks. Furthermore, if you need to conserve resources, for the Unused folder, you can click the folder's blue "active" button to deactivate all tracks within it.

Almost all of my "empty" tracks in my templates have some initial cc data at the top so are really empty, so a hide empty tracks command like the one suggested wouldn't work for me, but maybe for most users.

musicman691 · Post by **musicman691** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 7:37 am

apanacci wrote:I use DP8 and PT 12.3. Protools has that feature also. Hide and Make Inactive. I love it. Wish DP would do that also. I have to delete tracks instead to clean up my work space in DP. Not always want to do that.

In PT hide or hide and make inactive work across both the mix and edit windows; you can't have tracks showing in one window and not in the other like you can in DP9. Why not use the built-in hide feature in DP or are people talking here about having a one-button solution that would hide the unused tracks?

Tripi · Post by **Tripi** » Sun Nov 22, 2015 11:11 am

We're talking one button..... any track without MIDI or audio info (at least notes or soundbites) vanish... and can come back at another button push.

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