End of Song Marker?

Well first you need to check that you've actually set Sonar to "Stop at end of Project". There's a setting for this.

Secondly, you need to ensure there are no Midi or audio events past the 4 minute mark fooling Sonar into thinking that the song is longer than you intended.

Easiest way to check is to go into your Event View, pick "all tracks" and scroll down to the end of the list. Delete anything not required.

These will usually be envelope nodes but hidden/archived tracks have been know to catch people out.

If none of this works, then I suggest you put an "End" marker in yourself, then you can use this to determine your export end point.

I've been begging for an End-of-Song marker (and Start-of-Song) for years. Noel even said it was a good idea, so I thought for sure it would be in versions 7, 8, 8.5 and X1. Never happened. 

What I usually do is insert my own "Start" and "End" markers. Then, when I export, I press Ctl-A to select all tracks, go to the "Start" marker and press F9, then go to the "End" marker and press F10. This eliminates the need for subsequently trimming the output file.

But there is a downside to simply ignoring SONAR's notion of where the song ends like this, which is that there is no way to avoid it when freezing a track. I had one project that SONAR thought was 30 minutes long. Unfortunately, it included a mult-timbral soft synth that required a slow bounce, taking a whopping 90 minutes to freeze!

As Steve notes above, unending projects have some kind of event out there past the end of the song. If you can find it and delete it (automation nodes and MIDI events are the most common culprits) you can trim the project back. But I've had projects where I looked and looked and could not find anything at the point where Ctl-End took me to. 

Here's how you deal with that situation: 

1. Mark the real end-of-song by inserting a marker there
2. Press Ctl-End to jump to where SONAR thinks the song ends
3. Delete all automation nodes under the Now marker
4. Press Ctl-A to select all tracks
5. Press F10, then jump back to the "End" marker and press F9
6. Go to Edit -> Delete, make sure all options are checked except "Markers", including "Delete Hole". Click OK.

I do what Randy does too! Works for all sorts of tasks like dragging a clip.

Sorry, nope. Just follow the procedures described above when you export. Determine where you want the song to end and insert a marker there labeled "End". Do the same for the beginning of the song. Press CTL-A to select all tracks, then go to your start and end markers and press F9 and F10 respectively, then export.
 
I prefer to specify where the song ends anyway, so that I get neither blank space nor truncated reverb tails at the end. Sometimes, I have to do the opposite of your problem, and tell SONAR to go a little bit past where it thinks the song should end.

It seems that no matter what you do, nodes end up on Track View envelopes way past the end of the song.  Sonar has to consider them part of the project if you're not doing any time line selection yourself for export.  

But it's really such a non-issue.  It's only a problem when you haven't made selecting what part of the time line to export as part of your work flow.  Bitflipper's solution, posted twice on this old thread now, is elegant and perfect, using markers, F9 and 10.  He also accurately points out that you don't want Sonar selecting the time line for you anyway, because if you don't have any stray data and it looks like only the song itself is selected, the selection may be too literal, and your reverb tails will be cut off.

My solution, in the short post several messages up, is funkier than Bit's but works for me.  I simply swipe through the time line, selecting what I really intend to be the master 2-track.  That usually means leaving out a count in measure, and giving enough room at the end for reverb to fade.  Super critical selection isn't quite as important to me since I always finish mastering my projects in Sound Forge, so if my selection at the start or end are a bit flabby, I just trim those bits in Forge before I do the rest of the work in that program.

Solution- Take control of your final mix by simply selecting what part of the time line is your actual project.

rbowser

bitflipper
Good to see you back, Randy. Even if it took a thread from 2012 to summon you.

Howdy, David!  These new posts on this old "End of Song Marker" thread have generated the first auto-emails from the Sonar Forum that I've seen all year.  I was enticed to click the link and take a look.  

In 2012, after having gone through another phase of visiting the Forum often, I just got so fed up with the way the Forum's software wasn't compatible with Firefox.  The debacle of the initial X1 release had also soured me on Cakewalk in general, and I became aware that I was posting too much unhelpful criticism about X1, decided to bag it all and stick to the Garritan Forum for my online music community gig.

I am MUCH relieved to see the Forum software here has been updated so it functions with Firefox.  Now I'm looking at the main page of this Forum, and see the usual kinds of questions and problems are still popping up.  Fine, I'll try to throw my 2 cents in now and then if I think I can help someone out.

Great to see you still hanging out here, David!

Randy