Clips in DP

[zounds]

Who out there in the MOTU DP universe is using Clips primarily or extensively?

I'm just starting a large project (24 chunks scoring each chunk for 8 live instruments) and decided to give Clips a try rather than Ableton. After about a month of frustration and many tickets/calls with MOTU support, I've had to abandon using the Clips window. The Clips Editor crashes immediately with almost everything I do with it, some crashes are repeatable (e.g., editing notes at the beginning of a clip), the rest of the Clips window crashes frequently in random and unpredictable ways. We've been through the whole gamut of verifying the problems in a new, empty sequence, trashing preferences, creating a test user, etc. For what it's worth, I don't have any of these kinds of crashing problems when I work in any of the other windows, e.g., Tracks, Sequence, Mixing Board, MIDI, etc.

I also have one major issue with Clips and I'm wondering if anyone else out there finds this to be an issue too: There is no way to record into a clip while listening to the other clips in the scene without recording all the other clips into their respective timeline tracks. MOTU describes this as a "feature" but I have found it to be a dealbreaker.

For example, I'm working on a Scene, and have just created a clip in a track. Now I'm creating a new part in a different track. After experimenting for a while, I create a part and now want to record it. I record enable the track and record enable a clip slot in that different track (not option clicking the record button to go into clip record mode). Now when I start recording, all the other clips get recorded into the timeline at whatever time the playhead is at. When I'm creating clips in the Clips window, I don't want the timeline to record anything, I don't want to have to fuss with where the playback head is and hunt down clips in tracks and delete them, etc. It seems to me that the whole purpose of Clips in the first place is to free us of the tyranny of the timeline! Anybody else find this to be a deal breaker for working with Clips?

Feel free to message me privately with your experiences or post them here.

Thanks!

Zounds

M1Max MacBook Pro/64GB/4TB, 828es, NI Komplete S88, Akai APC40, iPad with Metagrid/Babylon Waves
DP 11.22, NI Komplete 14 Standard, EastWest Composer Cloud, Altiverb 7, Loopback, Waves Mercury.

[stubbsonic]

Oooph. Sorry you're having such trouble. Makes me glad I've not bothered to use them.

[Michael Canavan]

Who out there in the MOTU DP universe is using Clips primarily or extensively?

The Clips Editor crashes immediately with almost everything I do with it, some crashes are repeatable (e.g., editing notes at the beginning of a clip), the rest of the Clips window crashes frequently in random and unpredictable ways. We've been through the whole gamut of verifying the problems in a new, empty sequence, trashing preferences, creating a test user, etc. For what it's worth, I don't have any of these kinds of crashing problems when I work in any of the other windows, e.g., Tracks, Sequence, Mixing Board, MIDI, etc.

I haven't really experienced this so I'm not sure how to address it.

I also have one major issue with Clips and I'm wondering if anyone else out there finds this to be an issue too: There is no way to record into a clip while listening to the other clips in the scene without recording all the other clips into their respective timeline tracks. MOTU describes this as a "feature" but I have found it to be a dealbreaker.

For example, I'm working on a Scene, and have just created a clip in a track. Now I'm creating a new part in a different track. After experimenting for a while, I create a part and now want to record it. I record enable the track and record enable a clip slot in that different track (not option clicking the record button to go into clip record mode). Now when I start recording, all the other clips get recorded into the timeline at whatever time the playhead is at. When I'm creating clips in the Clips window, I don't want the timeline to record anything, I don't want to have to fuss with where the playback head is and hunt down clips in tracks and delete them, etc. It seems to me that the whole purpose of Clips in the first place is to free us of the tyranny of the timeline! Anybody else find this to be a deal breaker for working with Clips?

I'm a little confused by this statement?

I record enable the track and record enable a clip slot in that different track (not option clicking the record button to go into clip record mode).

What do you mean by "that different track"? I just opened DP and experimented with this. It might be a manor of how you're doing it, I started the process by hitting record on an empty Clip slot which in my settings starts the transport running, and records into that clip slot while other clips are playing. It doesn't create anything in the Tracks/Sequence timelines here doing it that way, whether in Clip Record mode or not. The main Clip Record in the transport is not engaged in both cases. If it is, it records clips into the timeline.

The thing here, (and maybe I have to look into it more for another way?), is to do this you need to double click an empty clip slot, then the whole scene will play, you record into the clip and it doesn't record into the Track/Sequencer timelines.

Personally my least favorite thing about Clips in DP (and Logic), as opposed to how it works in Live and Bitwig is there is no default stop clip box in the empty clip slots. So in order to have a clips stop playing in the next Scene you have to create empty clips, which clutter the GUI, they also tend to be visible in the Akai and Novation clip launcher style controllers. I feel like the guys at MOTU and Apple really missed the ball with this one. Plus I don't feel like it makes sense to have tagged on an editor for Clips, even if there's some technical reason for it, the idea that the Drum editor for instance is not available for editing CLips is just off putting for new users coming from Live etc.

[zounds]

I started the process by hitting record on an empty Clip slot which in my settings starts the transport running, and records into that clip slot while other clips are playing. It doesn't create anything in the Tracks/Sequence timelines here doing it that way,

Interesting. Just to confirm, you are saying that you have several clips in a scene. You make sure that you are in regular Record mode, not Clip Record. Now you engage record mode on an empty channel/track clip in the same scene. You press record and then trigger the scene which plays the other clips in the scene while you record into the empty clip slot on the same scene.

You record into the record enabled clip and nothing gets recorded in your timeline?

In my version of DP, not only does the clip get recorded into the corresponding timeline record enabled track, but any other clip playing also gets recorded into the timeline in their corresponding play (not record) enabled tracks.

I demonstrated this phenomenon to MOTU Tech Support and they advised that this is the normal behavior of clips recording in DP.

Just want to confirm that you are doing exactly the same thing and getting different results.

If this is not the exact procedure you are using, could you go into a bit more detail about exactly the process you are using? You may have found a workaround I can live with!

Thanks so much for responding and trying to help.

[Michael Canavan]

I started the process by hitting record on an empty Clip slot which in my settings starts the transport running, and records into that clip slot while other clips are playing. It doesn't create anything in the Tracks/Sequence timelines here doing it that way,

Interesting. Just to confirm, you are saying that you have several clips in a scene. You make sure that you are in regular Record mode, not Clip Record.

Just so you know, it doesn't matter, because global record is never on.

Now you engage record mode on an empty channel/track clip in the same scene. You press record and then trigger the scene which plays the other clips in the scene while you record into the empty clip slot on the same scene.

You record into the record enabled clip and nothing gets recorded in your timeline?

So to be clear, the transport record button is not on, only the track I create a clip on is record enabled.

In my version of DP, not only does the clip get recorded into the corresponding timeline record enabled track, but any other clip playing also gets recorded into the timeline in their corresponding play (not record) enabled tracks.

I demonstrated this phenomenon to MOTU Tech Support and they advised that this is the normal behavior of clips recording in DP.

I'm still not 100% certain what you're doing here, but it sounds like you have the record button on the transport enabled. In that scenario if I double click an empty clip slot with the mouse, it records into the Tracks/Sequence timelines.

So hopefully I can explain this well enough:

Only the track I want to record a Clip into, has the record armed, the transport record is not on.

I'm about to try other methods, but what I did was this:

Arm the track, double click an empty slot in the Scene on that track I want to record to, this starts the Scene, makes a Clip and starts recording into that Clip.

So if I was to arm the transport for recording I would get all the clips in that Scene recording into the timeline. As of now I don't know of any way besides using a clip launcher like the Novation Launchpads that work with DP11 to select and create a Clip in a Scene without using a mouse and double clicking the empty clip slot, but it works.

A caveat, seems to sometimes miss the first note, best to wait a bar before recording MIDI. It doesn't respond to count off, it starts recording to the clip quantize setting. I set it to quarter note, I had it set to 2 bars at first and couldn't figure out why it wasn't recording.

[zounds]

Thanks Michael! This did it. The trick is to play enable the scene, record enable the clip, and then just press play (not record). The clip will go into record mode and nothing will get recorded into the track. On page 300, step 5, the manual says "start recording". So I did lol.