Comping Issue Solution: Removing unwanted splits across takes incurred by shorter clips

I may be the only one that's had this issue but I'm pretty sure I've seen others mention it as well (mostly in regards to "sliver" clips).
 
Issue: You record a bunch of long takes (in my case entire takes of the whole song) then you record a few overdubs or maybe faltered during tracking so stopped but still had good material up to that point (so you don't want to delete it). When you record the shorter clips they end up creating splits in the longer takes which causes all sorts of annoyances.
 
Solution: I kind of knew this already but was doing it in a much more tedious way on a case by case basis. My current project though had the ideal conditions for this discovery (new track, recorded the entirety of the song a bunch of times then recorded a few problem parts a few extra times to raid for overdub/comps while editing which caused unwanted and poorly placed splits across all tracks and those annoying slivers at the ends of some of the takes).
 
I went to the very first take I recorded (which spanned the entire length of the song), selected the first clip in the take, held Shift and selected the last clip in the take (which selected ALL the clips in that one lane... just pressing the Take Lane's blue select button wasn't working and only selected the first clip in the lane). With all the clips in the lane selected I held Ctrl and using the Comping Tool clicked in the lower half of the clip (this action heals splits between any selected clips and promotes the selection).
 
Instead of just healing the splits in that lane (which for some reason is what I expected but I now realize that was faulty logic) it healed ALL the splits in ALL the lanes essentially leaving me with full, unmolested clips for me to start the Comping process from scratch which is exactly what I wanted/needed. Because that first lane was just slightly longer than all the others all those annoying slivers dissappeared too. So I guess from now on I'll make sure I let my first take record out a little bit past the end of the track or I suppose maybe just performing this action on the longest take in the track would do the same thing (however I'm not sure and have seen some strange stuff when goofing around with comp splits/clips).
 
Anyway... probably totally obvious and as I said I already did that kind of thing but in a much more annoying/laborious way but I figure if it made me this happy then maybe others would find it useful. The auto splitting can have some annoying side effects if you aren't recording the exact same length clips every time.
 
Cheers.

And another obvious but useful thing to do before starting to make you comp splits...
 
To make sure you don't induce more slivers set your Now time to just before the end of your project making sure it is slightly before the end of the shortest clip (unless you have overdubs then ignore those for now), select all the clips, make sure you have the On Split Select Right option enable (forget the exact name but I think it is in the Track View Options menu) then split. All the clips are sheared to the exact spot and the slivers are auto selected so you can just hit delete. No more annoying slivers.
 
For shorter clips due to overdubs do the same thing but obviously set your Now Time to the appropriate location and ONLY select the clips of that specific overdub (like maybe you did a solo a bunch of times), split (and make sure you ONLY split those clips and nothing else is selected), delete. Slivers gone.
 
To trim the start of clips if you happened to have varying record start times just change to the On Split Select Left option so after the split it selects the slivers preceding the actual performance.
 
Tidying up a bit like this makes the Comping feature MUCH less hairy to work with. I've spent a LOT of wasted time wrestling with dumb stuff like this just because I wasn't thinking the process through clearly.
 
Practice makes "perfect", eh?
 
and by "perfect" I mean slightly less of a bumblefart... lulz

Yup they could definitely make some tweaks to it but overall it's pretty good.  Hopefully they offer an option to make dealing with the slivers a little bit easier in the future though.

Hi Beepster,
On the train to work right now and haven't had coffee yet so I'm not sure I'm envisioning your issue properly, but wouldn't doing looped punch-ins after doing your initial take be a better way to handle the 'slivers' problem? That way you just zoom way in and make sure the punch points are exactly where you want them and them your takes are all going to be the exact right length. And just set the loop with enough lead so you're in the groove for the punch. Will that work for what you're describing?

Cheers
Bud

Thanks for that Beep!  The sliver thing and the split on stop is a pain but not unmanageable. Now I know what to do about it.
 
I still haven't figured out why the Inspector keeps opening when I'm comping.  Very frustrating.
 
Paul

Beepster
Hi, guys. I appreciate the suggestions but I bounce around so many tasks that altering the settings would waste more time than it saves. I record into comping mode unless I absolutely need something else to happen. The procedure I describe is actually a two second process wheras fiddling with settings all the time would take more time and cause more confusion.
 
As far as loop record and punch ins? Loop Record has always been buggy as heck for me and I honestly dislike that workflow very much. It is much preferable to me to manually start/stop transport. It gives me that half second I need to decide whether the take is a keeper or not and if not my mind/hands are now hardwired to tap out Ctrl+Z to just get rid of it (as opposed to having to sort through bad takes after the fact).
 
For auto-punch... never use that either. Much simpler for me to just set the Now Time, start transport and use the previous method I described to whip off a bunch of takes. Even still using those types of methods and making it so the punch in/out occurs at the exact spots is not desirable to me either. I don't like waiting for click count ins (and disable click count ins on record except for very specific purposes). I much prefer listening back to the actual material to get my head/fingers into the feel of what I am about to record over. This also ensures for better edit seams as opposed to abruptly going from digital silence to full blast (the music I do is pretty much always full blast with very little true silence).
 
aaaaand a lot of those auto punch/looping features get those sporadic complaints about drifting. I have not personally noticed much of that when trying out those methods but they stick in the back of my mind and if they ever occurred would be a MASSIVE PITA to me I think so I just try to avoid anything that may send me into a rage (I am much less calm in person... lol).
 
Someday I may make a video of how I track. It's like robot shiz. R > Listen for lead in > Spazz the frack out > Space > R... OR Ctrl + Z > R > Repeat over and over and over.
 
I hardly even open my eyes anymore while doing this. It's a little freaky.
 
Good suggestions though for those who are not total wicked spazzes like me.
 
Cheers.

I'd probably use 'sound on sound' mode if I was tracking that way, IMHO.
 

Interestingly, I have a very similar workflow, but I can't use Comping mode because it makes no sense to me. In fact I couldn't find a single situation where I'd want the behaviour it seems to offer. Maybe if I played through entire songs in one go, it would be useful. But usually I have data already on the track in the lead-in bars which I don't want automatically muted by Comping mode. So I've stuck to Sound on Sound all this time.