skinnybones lampshade
I agree wholeheartedly with Afrodrum.

Howard Johnson: Dr. Samuel Johnson's right about Olson Johnson being right. 

I too have the mysterious dotted automation lines appearing willy-nilly well past the end of the song, and I've not been able to discern exactly why they get put there. Was it something I inadvertently caused to happen? I do a lot of cutting and pasting during arrange sessions and I suspect it has something to do with that but I don't know for sure. I would love to know what the "rules" are for these things.
 
As to the end-of-song marker, it would be useful for me. I often record bits in a non-linear way and place them well after the body of the song, then use them when I'm ready. I often end up not using these bits in the song I'm working on for whatever reason, but like them enough to not want to lose them. Incidentally, I'd love to have the ability to put these in some kind of "idea bag" in a way that's well integrated in the workflow.
 
Anyway, I often only want to render the tune without the music blocks at the end, and an end-of-song marker would be useful to easily exclude them. Yes I know I can highlight the timeline to render only the parts I want, but that often results in many more clicks because I tend to render a lot to test the sound quality at various mp3 quality levels. Also, I'm often zoomed in, so to select the timeline part with any accuracy I usually have to adjust the zoom level first, then select the timeline portion. Not a big deal, but quite a few clicks that an end-of-song marker would tend to substantially reduce.
 
All that being said, I don't consider an end-of-song marker to be a high priority, must-have feature whereas I do consider the anomalous automation event issue to be important.
 
 

I wonder if this is really an issue anymore , I checked several more recent projects and they all end at the last spot I stopped recording. I also wonder if some of the copy and paste issues that are now fixed could have been putting that data out past the end of the song in the older projects. Just curious if anyone is seeing this in projects created since the Hopkington update?
 

teego
I wonder if this is really an issue anymore , I checked several more recent projects and they all end at the last spot I stopped recording.  (...)

That's the  point, I may want  song to be finished way before "the last spot I stopped recording".

@ Afrodrum    I haven't really thought about it that way, guess it's because of workflow differences. What I was really talking about though was the problem of data being hung way out after the end of a song and not really sure how it got there. I can see where the end of song marker could be handy in your scenario though.

Guitarpima

Anderton

Guitarpima
I don't think so. I think Sonar is just broken. I've had projects with no automation and still have the problem. 

See post #3. I already addressed this, but I can understand how signal sometimes get buried by noise.

I guess you would know. Have a nice day!

 
Not quite sure how to take that...but if I wasn't clear, what I meant was that when a thread goes off in a lot of different directions ("noise"), the points that relate to the original premise ("signal") can get lost.

AHA! Possibly another clue...
 
Referring back to post #3, I confirmed this is how SONAR acts. However if you do the experiment in post #3, insert several tracks, record-enable all of them, and start recording, only the highest-numbered track will place nodes as described. Nodes will not be placed on the other ones.
 
I'm not sure of the significance, but like I said...possibly another clue.
 
 

teego
I tested as you described with 3 audio and 1 midi track. Sonar wrote the nodes for all four tracks for me at the record stop point. I only checked the volume automation, forgot to check pan.

I recorded only audio tracks. Will try adding MIDI to the mix... 

Anderton

Kalle Rantaaho
Sounds like a good candidate for one cause of the problem.
I have encountered the never-ending-song phenomenon in projects that have no automation.

As far as I can tell SONAR is always recording automation, even if it's just a straight line - I believe that's how it knows where to restore fader values when you open a project. For example, if you set a fader to -6 at the start of a track, SONAR will write an automation value of -6. You need to enable the Write automation only if you want to deviate from this static value. Try this:
 
1. Create a new project.
2. Insert an audio track. 
3. Start recording.
4. Stop recording.
5. Unfold the automation lanes, and you'll see automation has been written for the current fader and pan positions, and an automation node has been inserted where you stopped recording.

Craig, I'm not seeing this.
 
I tried the above and at step 5, there is no automation for pan.
Also, if you simply insert an audio track without recording anything, then unfold the automation lanes, a volume envelope is created automatically.

I read this with interest and would like to make what are intended as constructive remarks
 

kevinwal
I too have the mysterious dotted automation lines appearing willy-nilly well past the end of the song, and I've not been able to discern exactly why they get put there. Was it something I inadvertently caused to happen? I do a lot of cutting and pasting during arrange sessions and I suspect it has something to do with that but I don't know for sure. I would love to know what the "rules" are for these things.

 
Whenever you have an envelope in a track, there will always be a solid dotted line after the last node. So it would seem that what you're seeing is normal and intended
 

As to the end-of-song marker, it would be useful for me. I often record bits in a non-linear way and place them well after the body of the song, then use them when I'm ready. I often end up not using these bits in the song I'm working on for whatever reason, but like them enough to not want to lose them. Incidentally, I'd love to have the ability to put these in some kind of "idea bag" in a way that's well integrated in the workflow.

 
Just a thought, put all of your little snippets into their own folder with a suitable name. Move them to wherever you want

Anyway, I often only want to render the tune without the music blocks at the end, and an end-of-song marker would be useful to easily exclude them. Yes I know I can highlight the timeline to render only the parts I want, but that often results in many more clicks because I tend to render a lot to test the sound quality at various mp3 quality levels. Also, I'm often zoomed in, so to select the timeline part with any accuracy I usually have to adjust the zoom level first, then select the timeline portion. Not a big deal, but quite a few clicks that an end-of-song marker would tend to substantially reduce.

A very easy way to overcome this is to set up 2 different screensets.
 
Just a few ideas which you might find useful

Bristol_Jonesey
I read this with interest and would like to make what are intended as constructive remarks
 

kevinwal
I too have the mysterious dotted automation lines appearing willy-nilly well past the end of the song, and I've not been able to discern exactly why they get put there. Was it something I inadvertently caused to happen? I do a lot of cutting and pasting during arrange sessions and I suspect it has something to do with that but I don't know for sure. I would love to know what the "rules" are for these things.

 
Whenever you have an envelope in a track, there will always be a solid dotted line after the last node. So it would seem that what you're seeing is normal and intended
 

As to the end-of-song marker, it would be useful for me. I often record bits in a non-linear way and place them well after the body of the song, then use them when I'm ready. I often end up not using these bits in the song I'm working on for whatever reason, but like them enough to not want to lose them. Incidentally, I'd love to have the ability to put these in some kind of "idea bag" in a way that's well integrated in the workflow.

 
Just a thought, put all of your little snippets into their own folder with a suitable name. Move them to wherever you want

Anyway, I often only want to render the tune without the music blocks at the end, and an end-of-song marker would be useful to easily exclude them. Yes I know I can highlight the timeline to render only the parts I want, but that often results in many more clicks because I tend to render a lot to test the sound quality at various mp3 quality levels. Also, I'm often zoomed in, so to select the timeline part with any accuracy I usually have to adjust the zoom level first, then select the timeline portion. Not a big deal, but quite a few clicks that an end-of-song marker would tend to substantially reduce.

A very easy way to overcome this is to set up 2 different screensets.
 
Just a few ideas which you might find useful

Thanks for the ideas, I'll have to look into the idea of screensets. I confess that I haven't made much use of that feature so it's no surprise to me that there might indeed be a way to make use of them for this. In the end, though, I think I'd like a project-independent way to capture these blocks of music. I though about just making a separate project for them so that I had one place to go to browse them for ideas but the thought of managing the various plugins I tend to use has always deterred me. An idea for another thread though. Thanks!