GUI Enhancements that would be nice...

[Frodo]

I'm sitting in an aiport about 2500 miles from home, but I couldn't resist checking in with my U-nation family!!

We missed ya too, bud!

Cheers again, m8!

I'm short-sighted (physically that is!), so I'm in.
Also, I know there's been much debate about "resizable" tracks in the TO.

Surely restricting this feature to "all tracks at once" would retain all the usefulness of the TO, yet save an awful lot of squinting, especially late at night!

I've even tried lowering the resolution of my monitor, but it's such a pain when windows still open in the higher res with all handles and window extremities too far off screen to navigate and to resize. Hmmm...

Ribbed "for her pleasure"?

No wonder the gals around here are all anonymous!

Ssshhhhh-- don't tell anyone...

[grimepoch]

Fixed Wow...talk about a stupid error, forgot the .com at the end of the address!

[Frodo]

Things that I changed:

*Shrank down the height of the transport by moving the controls to the right. Ideally, maybe some additional drawers instead of what I did. But, the point being it would be nice to not take up so much room on the display. I would push the buttons a little closer together and get rid of some of that dead space. I do like the 'transport' itself, so I left it unchanged.

*Created a small little G4 looking CPU meter. Again, this might be better in a little drawer.

* Added the toolbar to the tracks window for just MIDI edit to show what I meant.

* Created a single mixer element in the MIDI edit for the currently selected track. Made it smaller and more condensed.

* Changed the color of the ENTIRE MIDI piece, I do not like the white in there, personally.

* Higlighted the currently selected track in the mixer.

* Added a second line of text in the mixer that autowraps words.

* Created an alternate colored version of a dark color scheme that I would like (inverse color) Of course, the shading is all wrong in what I did, but I REALLY like the colors better inverted.

* In the regular colored version, My idea of coloring based on markers for easy recognition of song parts. (colors from the marker and after, each new marker resets).

BRAVO!!! Nicely done. Thanks!!

[grimepoch]

No problem, and thank you! It's meant as a REALLY rough guide to ideas, but essentially, this is what I am going to email to MOTU.

[paradeatw]

It all depends on one's work habits, and what is familiar for one is strange to another, but it's all good.

Shooshie

so true

[mikebeckmotu]

Mike - what DAW you using there then?
(check out the toolbar on the "screenshot")

I want a copy. LOL!

Well, sometimes I can't help myself, I guess... Ha!

what mike showed...not only could i live with it...i LIKE IT! great idea, and i'd think it could be done pretty easily.

I've been spoiled by graphics apps that let you rearrange your tools and workspace to an almost radical degree. I wouldn't expect too much, but would like a few more audio app options, considering the variety of monitor sizes and resolutions. I really like what grimepoch did in his examples, too. I think this is a great discussion that he started.

[monkey man]

Surely restricting this feature to "all tracks at once" would retain all the usefulness of the TO, yet save an awful lot of squinting, especially late at night!

I've even tried lowering the resolution of my monitor, but it's such a pain when windows still open in the higher res with all handles and window extremities too far off screen to navigate and to resize. Hmmm...

I've tried that too.
Then there's Apple's "Universal Access"...

No wonder the gals around here are all anonymous!

Ssshhhhh-- don't tell anyone...

Aha! I had a feeling...
Cross-species as well as cross-gender deception!
Man, what's the galaxy coming to?

* Created an alternate colored version of a dark color scheme that I would like (inverse color) Of course, the shading is all wrong in what I did, but I REALLY like the colors better inverted.

Love it.
It's probably not that far off the proposed "dark" setting.
Light text on darker backgrounds yields less overall light, and therefore for me, less glare.
This is especially so because of DP's "silver" (classy) look.

Universal Access' "inverse contrast" feature works-CMD-OPT-CTRL-8.
That's desperate!

I don't know how you do this new-fangled alchemy, grimepoch, but I like it.

[philbrown]

I like these ideas!

The number one DP GUI feature I would like is a large measure display. I believe ProTools has this...? So, in a pinch, you can see where your count is even across the room and not relying so much (or at all) on a headphone click, especially working in odd time sigs. Just as an option, of course. I track my own drums sometimes and it would be nice to see where cues are, etc. Like if I set up 8 bar countoff, start DP, walk over to drums and put headphones on, I can then look up when I'm ready and easily see if DP is at measure 5, 6, or 7 at a glance. Or if there's a change coming at measure 108 I know exactly where I am even if I've been jamming away and lost the measure count in my head. You get the idea.

A further enhancement would be a mini-menu option for marker warnings. A drop down menu could select 2 beats, 1 measure, 2 measures, etc. Then whenever there's a marker coming up in 2 measures, the large measure display above could turn red, or flash or something to signal upcoming markers/cues. You could have as much or little warning as you want and no straining to see where the next marker/cue is if you're across the room cutting a guitar overdub.

In certain studio situations you could even have a dedicated small monitor aimed toward players so they could see a large measure display and use it for cues and communication, e.g. "let's start that retard at the end at measure 121 instead of 122" in combination with a large display would make for easy communication and keeping everybody on the same page -especially if arranging on the fly.

Another GUI suggestion is Control-Click menus EVERYWHERE in DP. Functions like turning on Sync or especially MIDI-thru shouldn't require a trip to the Preferences Window IMO. That should all be in a drop down Control-Click menu with an option to go to Preferences, but all the easy obvious choices should be there just one click away, e.g. "Turn MIDI-Thru On" using whatever settings you already have in prefs without a trip to the Prefs window itself. Reason is a pretty good example of this but even they could take it a lot further. DP generally has great interface IMO, but is lagging on this area of GUI IMO.

I wish there was some way to see the entire track name in the mixer. Like if you rollover (a la web browsers) with the mouse, the entire name pops up... or something. It could even be vertically written up the side of the fader... nope that wouldn't work too well I guess...
Anyway,
Phil

[Mr_Clifford]

The number one DP GUI feature I would like is a large measure display. I believe ProTools has this...?

DP already has it, it's called the counter. You can specify what time format you want in it (bars, frames, seconds etc.) and you can make it as big as you want.

In terms of the flash warning thing that you also mentioned. You could make a blank QT file and use the streamer/punch functions to overlay a visual cue for you.

[kelldammit]

so i tried inverting the color on my macbook...i very much like that look as well, though some of the shades/colors could be changed in a "real" version...the mixer in particular could use some work there.
otherwise, i really dig it. and the black menu bar is pretty sweet!

[martian]

"Another GUI suggestion is Control-Click menus EVERYWHERE in DP. Functions like turning on Sync or especially MIDI-thru shouldn't require a trip to the Preferences Window IMO. That should all be in a drop down Control-Click menu with an option to go to Preferences, but all the easy obvious choices should be there just one click away, e.g. "Turn MIDI-Thru On" using whatever settings you already have in prefs without a trip to the Prefs window itself. Reason is a pretty good example of this but even they could take it a lot further. DP generally has great interface IMO, but is lagging on this area of GUI IMO. "

control click - or right click.......

pretty much every other app has had right clicks since os X came out...

[WSVP]

Aside from all the functional issues we have covered, One thing I have started to notice is most of the 3rd party plugins seem to have a nicer looking interface than DP. Even MOTU's own MX4, Mach 5 and Symphonic Instrument have much slicker looking graphical interfaces than DP.

[Frodo]

"Another GUI suggestion is Control-Click menus EVERYWHERE in DP. Functions like turning on Sync or especially MIDI-thru shouldn't require a trip to the Preferences Window IMO. That should all be in a drop down Control-Click menu with an option to go to Preferences, but all the easy obvious choices should be there just one click away, e.g. "Turn MIDI-Thru On" using whatever settings you already have in prefs without a trip to the Prefs window itself. Reason is a pretty good example of this but even they could take it a lot further. DP generally has great interface IMO, but is lagging on this area of GUI IMO. "

control click - or right click.......

pretty much every other app has had right clicks since os X came out...

I think the Control-Click idea is a good one-- especially if commonly used tasks can be loaded into a user-definable window.

However, specifically for Sync on/off, the icon on the transport is just a single click with out a keyboard modifier. 'Apple' + '7' is the key stroke. This happens to be one of the simplest workarounds, however still isolated. If I'm not mistaken, there is single number pad stroke that I can't remember right off.

Among the features that would *really* benefit the most from a single window control-click feature would be all of those gnarly pulldown menus in the SE and those which open via sub menus within the Region menu, like the Quantize pulldown options which are so hard to get to quickly enough during repetitive editing and always reset themselves unpredictably.

[philbrown]

Mr Clifford - thanks for the Counter info! Long time DP user but that one went right past me for some reason. A little embarrassing, but nice to request a feature and... it's already there! Something I will use a lot too.

Phil

OT:
PS I'm taking delivery today on a new Cwejman S1Mk2 semi-modular synth. Completely OT and irrelevant, but I'm like a kid at Christmas and had to tell somebody!

[monkey man]

"Another GUI suggestion is Control-Click menus EVERYWHERE in DP. Functions like turning on Sync or especially MIDI-thru shouldn't require a trip to the Preferences Window IMO. That should all be in a drop down Control-Click menu with an option to go to Preferences, but all the easy obvious choices should be there just one click away, e.g. "Turn MIDI-Thru On" using whatever settings you already have in prefs without a trip to the Prefs window itself. Reason is a pretty good example of this but even they could take it a lot further. DP generally has great interface IMO, but is lagging on this area of GUI IMO. "
control click - or right click.......
pretty much every other app has had right clicks since os X came out...

I think the Control-Click idea is a good one-- especially if commonly used tasks can be loaded into a user-definable window.

Among the features that would *really* benefit the most from a single window control-click feature would be all of those gnarly pulldown menus in the SE and those which open via sub menus within the Region menu, like the Quantize pulldown options which are so hard to get to quickly enough during repetitive editing and always reset themselves unpredictably.

Contextual menus sound real handy. Thanks, guys.

For me, and any potential Logician/Cubasean/Sonorian in need of motivation...
They're not GUI enhancements 'though.

NEXUS - DP's Bread & butter VI module:

1) "Low CPU" mode.
2) Simplified versions of MOTU's existing (synth) techniques.
3) All instruments slected for musicality and usefulness.
4) Provides musical acoustic 4-layer drum & percussion.
5) Uses 4-layer trimmed-down versions of sounds from Ethno & MSI.
6) Offers drag-and-drop sample, Apple Loop, REX etc. functionality, including any Ethno-employed techniques.

Alternatively, the Orchestral and percussive elements could be split into seperate VIs, but that would just be more work for MOTU both initially and in terms of mainetenance.

CONVERB - DP's high-end reverberation engine:

1) "Low CPU" mode.
2) Employs techniques used in MSI.
3) Sensibly sized IR library.
4) MSI convolution library included.

DeePchannel - DP's NEW high-end channel-strip.

1) "Low CPU" mode.
2) Musical compressor with choice of useful vintage behaviours.
3) Musical limiter.
4) De-esser. In this day and age, much more could be done here!
5) EQ with MWEQ topological options.
etc. etc.

The idea here is obvious.
Without having to offer all the specialist bells & whistles that the competition offers, DP suddenly becomes a viable alternative for an ever-growing market for an "all-in-one" product.
I for one would go out and buy my first Mac laptop, something I thought I'd never do...

Hey, why don't we keep this going 'till we wear the MOTU guys down.
Every time they check in, they could be confronted with...
1) A fresh set of requests.
2) An "insightful" (for the programmer) debate about the latest proposals..
3) A ugghhh, wait for it... sticky?