Good idea beepster

I have had a few situations recently where I needed a conductor, voice artists or someone else to keep a close eye on the track view so that they can get a performance in sync with existing material.
 
Problem is, of course, that Sonar flips pages so to speak. I would LOVE to see an option where the cursor stays in the centre of the screen and the tracks scroll past continuously. I'm sure there are other great reasons to have this feature too - scrolling midi / piano roll etc.

Anyone else like this option?

yes

This would be very useful to me also.
 
I'm tending toward adding chords changes to follow in the staff view and the same "turn the page" thing bugs me as well.

I think somewhere in this thread I've already said this but: Digital Performer has always had this feature, it's extremely helpful in a number of ways. I'd love to see it. I realize it's a little more intensive on the GPU but c'mon, other DAWs have had it since forever. 

LJB
I have had a few situations recently where I needed a conductor, voice artists or someone else to keep a close eye on the track view so that they can get a performance in sync with existing material.
 
Problem is, of course, that Sonar flips pages so to speak. I would LOVE to see an option where the cursor stays in the centre of the screen and the tracks scroll past continuously. I'm sure there are other great reasons to have this feature too - scrolling midi / piano roll etc.

Anyone else like this option?

Yes, I started a FR on that specifically, and realized Beeps touched on it as well. That "jump" is distracting when zoomed in and the only workaround I know of is a key bind to "center now time on cursor" and hold that down (or script it). Such a feature could easily be done within SONAR.

Mixbuss offers the option of having the tape head (now time) moving or stationary. I really like it fixed, while the audio scrolls by. Sort of reinforces the tape machine metaphor. On my system the scrolling is pretty smooth on smaller projects but it might be a problem on big projects without a good video card.

Their transport is really slick. You can get a high speed cue and the ability to "drag" the audio track with good precision. It really sounds like a tape being postioned. Really different than the way Sonar does it and the live audio feedback makes me want to listen for an edit point rather than trying to find it on a wave preview.
 
Not better, but different.

BobF
I don't always want a centered, stationary Now Time, but when I do, I want it to work like this:
(the proximity of the loop marker is coincidental)

Ya, man. Totally what I was referring to in the OP with the fancy extra options to set WHERE and HOW the smooth scrolling occurs.
 
Nuendo allowed this (which was my previous DAW... totally ancient version). It had an option that did almost EXACTLY that. Instead of centereing the Now Time as soon as Smooth Scrolling Playback occured you could set it so if the cursor was totally off screen to the left it would stay of screen, the screen/clips would stay stationary and ONLY when the Now Time reached the center of the screen would Smooth Scrolling engage.
 
HOWEVER that was the CENTER of the screen. What I would like, as your image implies, is the ability to set that "center" left or right by a % value. So in you image the "Center" where Smooth Scrolling engages is probably at about 50% to the right (0% being centered and if scrolling occured an equal distance to the left of center in your image then that would be 50% left).
 
As noted that allows ultimate control for watching the waves for editing.
 
BTW there was, IIRC, separate options for automatic Smooth Scrolling from center that would auto jump the screen to the center as well (instead of letting the Now Time to roll on screen before scrolling occurred at center).
 
Just Smooth Scrolling itself is obviously popular as this is one of the top voted requests (thanks doods/doodettes) but Cake could REALLY max this bugger out with ultra control like that.
 
AND as I was saying to Mr Ampfixer up thar ^^^ if we got a speed variable shuttle control to go along with this (where we can slow down playback like we can with the Scrub tool except with a dial or parameter input so that speed is CONSTANT) then acutally ANOTHER serious request of mine regarding "Wave Editing" would become less important....
 
because if I can SLOW DOWN playback while listening back AND have centered smooth scrolling (or Smooth Scrolling set to where and how I want it to occur) THEN it makes zooming WAY into a wave file, playing it back to watch for the split second problem areas I want to manipulate/remove and then using automation or Split/Cut/Remove/X-Fade procedures or whatever to "heal" my changes possible WITHOUT a crazy wave editor that actually mucks about with the printed wave/transients.
 
ALL of this is currently in the code anyway via the Scrub tool (slow down/speed up) and all those split/automate/heal functions are standard editing procedures...
 
The ONLY thing missing is the Smooth Scroll to visually scan the waves where the edits need to occur and the "set it/forget it" speed "Scrub" control (which could be a Control Bar module).
 
Oh my goodness I'm getting myself all in a fluster.
 
I do seriously hope the Bakers are watching this one and digging into the code to make it happen. It really would make Sonar kick about a MILLION times more azz than it currently does.
 
I'll shut up now.
 
lulz...
 
 

I'll shut up now.
 
lulz...
 
Okay I lied... because I remembered the OTHER massive request that many others have been BEGGING for could also tie into this as well.
 
That would be Varispeed. So that "Shuttle" module I was referring to that would control playback speed could have a "Varispeed" button to emulate the simultaneous pitch changes a tape machine would produce when sped up/slowed down (AKA... Varispeed).
 
Click the Varispeed button in the "shuttle" module and it emulates the pitch changes along with the playback speed. Otherwise the Shuttle module just adjusts the speed (no pitch change).
 
Ya? Ya.
 
Multiple MASSIVE user requests kind of sort of wiped out with ONE (rather extensive) tool/program improvement.
 
Now... I go.
 
;-)
 
 
 

Yeah....I like editing envelopes on the fly, and this would help.  Seems either Sound Forge or Adobe Audition did this too...or both.  Can't remember ....

Are there more scrolling controls besides on click behaviour. I've suddenly lost the ability to rewind to the beginning of the project. It goes to the beginning but my current screen stays where it is. 

+1
 

Lord Tim
Have you tried pressing the scroll lock button?

Hiya, Tim. I do... every danged time I boot up (very annoying keybinding for me since Scroll Lock is off by default in Windows).
 
Not the same thing though. "Smooth Scrolling" (or at least that's what I'v ebeen led to believe it's called) is when your Now Time stays at a fixed position on screen and the clips/waves/MIDI/etc flow past it "smoothly".
 
If you are familiar with Nuendo (or at least older versions of it and maybe Cubase) they have a smooth scrolling option like this.
 
Cheers.
 

John
I was under the impression that "smooth scrolling" and a stationary now time with the waveforms scrolling underneath were the same thing. That is what I was agreeing to. If its not please explain the difference.   

Naw, you got it.
 
There are many possible variants of this (like the fixed position of the Now Time on screen or whether the screen jumps to center on start or moves into view before scrolling, etc) but the basic idea is the data moves slowly from right to left onscreen past the Now Time Marker instead of the Now Time moving past the data behind it (and in the case of the default scrolling mechanism having the screen jump from section to section... which is absolutely useless to me).
 
Cheers.