How to decouple regions?

[peter]

Hi everybody,
I'm new to DP (yeah) and this is my first post, so hello to everybody!
I have some soundbites in a project. I then copied some regions to several places. After changing fade outs on one of them I found the fade outs of the other regions to have changed as well. How can that be avoided? I read the manual about edge editing but did not understand what they where trying to tell me. Blame it on my bad knowledge of your language, I'm no native speaker.
But I read the manual!
Cheers

[FMiguelez]

Welcome to MOTUNation, Peter!

1- In the Sequence Editor window, there's a mini-menu at the top right of the window. Open it, and look for one of the options that reads.... err... i forgot its name, but somethng like " Edge edit Copy". Make sure it is selected.

This will allow you to manipulate the duplicated soundbites independently of each other.

OR

2- Leave it as it i s, and simply press and hold the Command Key every time you make an edit to a SB.

if most of the time you want the current behaviour, use the second option. If you want to be able to edit the duplicates independently easily, use the first option.

Using the Command key will temporarily defeat whatever setting you have in the mini-menu (edit all duplicates or "decouple" them).

[philbrown]

Welcome Peter!

what FM said.

This is such a common question from newcomers I can't believe MOTU still makes that the default.

[stubbsonic]

This is such a common question from newcomers I can't believe MOTU still makes that the default.

I think if the other way was the default, we'd just get a different "demographic" asking the opposition question.

It does seem like there could be a "Things you need to know before you dive into DP" listicle.

[philbrown]

This is such a common question from newcomers I can't believe MOTU still makes that the default.

I think if the other way was the default, we'd just get a different "demographic" asking the opposition question.

It does seem like there could be a "Things you need to know before you dive into DP" listicle.

Yeah, there 2 or 3 gotchas we've heard many times over the years that ought to be in big bold letters for newcomers.

[peter]

Thanks a lot,
solved. Solved fast!

But I have another one for you, new post.

[peter]

Alright, I checked a bit more and ran into another road block. When I set the Edit Layer in SE to pitch I still cannot change the regions separately, no matter whether Edge Edit is checked or Command is hold or not. I work mainly by dropping waves into the SE and moving them around and, yes, transposing them, so if anybody has an idea I would be thankful.
Thanks

[philbrown]

I'm not completely sure I understand, but do your edge editing etc in the Soundbites layer and use the Pitch layer just to adjust pitch. If you're in the Pitch layer you can click on the top bar of the soundbite itself and will throw you back to the soundbites layer.

[Shooshie]

Alright, I checked a bit more and ran into another road block. When I set the Edit Layer in SE to pitch I still cannot change the regions separately, no matter whether Edge Edit is checked or Command is hold or not. I work mainly by dropping waves into the SE and moving them around and, yes, transposing them, so if anybody has an idea I would be thankful.
Thanks

I'm guessing that those soundbites were already created as linked (coupled) regions. Maybe you have to recreate those soundbites, using "edge edit copy." It's hard to know, because my preference has been set to edge edit copy since the beginning of time, and I never use it otherwise. It edits pitch independently, as far as I can tell.

Shooshie

[peter]

yes, Shooshie,
you are right, they had already been created as coupled copies. Will try again, thank you so far. There's a lot to learn coming from the like of Cubase and Logic.

[peter]

Alright,
I tried again, Edge Edit Copy is ticked. I import one audiofile into the SE, then I copy it. I select one of the regions, open it in the wave editor and go to Pitch. I alter the pitch of a part of the region. When I now go back to the SE and change settings to Pitch I can see that both regions have been changed. That tells me, the act of changing pitch does not work on region level, but on soundbite level. Meaning it will affect all copies no matter what the setting of Edge Edit Copy is. Is that the way it should be?
Sorry if this sounds bumpy for your ears, I'm German and still struggling with your language. But it's getting better the more problems I run into with my software

[philbrown]

Alright,
I tried again, Edge Edit Copy is ticked. I import one audiofile into the SE, then I copy it. I select one of the regions, open it in the wave editor and go to Pitch. I alter the pitch of a part of the region. When I now go back to the SE and change settings to Pitch I can see that both regions have been changed. That tells me, the act of changing pitch does not work on region level, but on soundbite level. Meaning it will affect all copies no matter what the setting of Edge Edit Copy is. Is that the way it should be?
Sorry if this sounds bumpy for your ears, I'm German and still struggling with your language. But it's getting better the more problems I run into with my software

The Wave editor is for destructive edits - i.e. changing the original soundfile. Instead back in the Sequence Editor go to the Pitch layer (it's a pulldown menu on the left side of the track that defaults to Soundbites). Do your pitch editing there instead of the Waveform editor. When you edit in SE the edits are non-destructive - the soundbites are changed but the original audio file is not.

Here's a video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwlfr8RHju4

[Shooshie]

Yeah, all editing of sound is non-destructive in the Sequence Editor if you don't invoke the wave editor. Pitch is absolutely non-destructive when done in the pitch layer of the SE. I did about 100 pitch edits today, then realized that no amount of quantizing the pitch was going to get these two tracks perfectly in tune with each other, so I went to the UNDO History page, and in about 3 seconds an hour of pitch editing was set back to the way it was recorded, and... after all that it sounded pretty good in its original form! I have no idea why I even began editing it!

Shooshie

[peter]

Guys,
I must be doing something wrong. But first: Of course wave editor is destructive - I clearly should have known this. I actually do, but I lost track while trying to narrow down my problem.
Now I tried again and again, with Edge Edit Copy ticked and unticked: I throw an audio file from the finder into the SE, copy that file several times and switch Layer to Pitch. Whenever I alter the pitch of one file all other regions will change accordingly. Yes, it is non-destructive, but why is it changing not only one region but all of the copies also?
What am I doing wrong? Is it supposed to work like that at all?

@shooshie: Some days ago I was editing a snare drum sound for hours (at least it felt like that). Then I gave up and called it a day. Next morning I listened to it and found the snare to be great sounding. Only later did I realize that I was listening to the original snare drum file, and not to the copy of it I had been tweeking for hours. I turned 59 this year, and after 50 years of music I still can't believe how easily our brain can be distracted. A friend of mine told me he never "does do sound" for longer than 10 minutes, because he knew it would sound different the next day anyway...

[stubbsonic]

If you've been switching back & forth, then you are still working with some copies.

The key is to look at the soundbite's name. (Note: this is different than the file name. The filename is the original audio file that is on the drive. The Soundbite name is a region contained within that file. A file can have one or more regions inside it). If you are editing one soundbite, if others of the same exact name exist in your sequence, they will be changed too, because they are one and the same soundbite.

If you are editing a soundbite's pitch, it will change all occurrences of that soundbite. It won't create a new one. The only edit task that will (based on the edge edit copy setting) create a new soundbite is... of course, edge edit.

So... if you want to have two different versions of the soundbite, and edit the pitch separately, you can do a little edge edit, or there is another command to create a copy of a soundbite. I can't remember it now.