KPerry

Beepster
 
Seriously the swipe takes half a second but the time saved by being able to just click a clip to make it audible while muting the others completely DESTROYS the time needed to do the same task in the old workflows. DESTROYS it! And of course isn't even necessary if the correct record mode is chosen (which to me would take MORE time than just a simple swipe... even though it takes half a second. I just don't like having to remember what mode I'm in while tracking).

Just picking up on this one point...while I understand the logic, I don't agree with the conclusion: it's now too easy to accidentally mute/promote and wonder what's going on, which leads to a more painful experience overall.  Manually being in control was still pretty quick (Ctrl-K IIRC to mute) and didn't leave you scratching your head and swearing at the computer (well, not for that reason anyway :-)).
 
Losing the easy ability to stack and crossfade clips within layers for artistic purposes is also another disadvantage of the new method of working.

I've not had that experience at all but the Smart Tool Clips hotspots can get pretty hairy.
 
However Ctrl K still totally works. I use it often if I need to mute/unmute clips OUTSIDE of the Comp system. So let's say I want two Clips active in the same range I select the desired clip and hit Ctrl K and they are audible simultaneously OR maybe (and this happens sometimes when you do certain things while tracking I won't go into) a clip stays outside the Comping group so I have an active clip that does NOT get muted when I promote another clip. Ctrl K mutes it easily/reliably.
 
As far as editing the old way (like having creative overlaps and fancier fades than the simple X-Fades of the Comp Tool) the answer is actually frustratingly simple (protect your forehead because you may slap it).
 
If you want a straight up, old school Crop Edit workflow... just use the TOP half of the clip instead of the bottom half. So hover your cursor over the end of the clip in the top half (or more accurately upper middle quarter of the clip) and now you can crop that clip independently of all the others without even changing modes. If you want to create fades hover over the end of the "Header" of the clip (the bar at the top of the clip). If you want to do old school Range Select moves swipe over the top half of the clip.
 
With Ctrl K and those maneuvers you can actually work the way you describe easily. I revert to those techniques when Comping isn't quite doing what I need. The Record Mode does not have to change at all for this to happen.
 
Basically now when I look at audio clips it is in two to three parts. Bottom half... hardcore comping. Top half traditional editing. The Header at the top I consider the "Handle" for selecting (without promoting... this would be how I select for Ctrl K mute/unmute) and moving clips around.
 
Really, to me the biggest PITA is the sheer amount of tooltip states when handling clips and trying to hook into them reliably (as in sometimes the cursor/tooltip doesn't change when I want). When I run into those issues I either a) expand the lanes vertically a little to make the clips bigger (and thus the hotspot targets easier to hook into) or b) switch to dedicated tools from the HUD (usually when I need to make a specific action over and over again and don't want to futz around with the Smart Tool hotspots).
 
Maybe that'll help... maybe not.
 
And yeah... I'll try to get off my arse and make a vid about this stuff. It will be another long one though because there are tons scenarios and workflows to be considered.
 
Cheers.

Beepster
 
As far as editing the old way (like having creative overlaps and fancier fades than the simple X-Fades of the Comp Tool) the answer is actually frustratingly simple (protect your forehead because you may slap it).
 
If you want a straight up, old school Crop Edit workflow... just use the TOP half of the clip instead of the bottom half. So hover your cursor over the end of the clip in the top half (or more accurately upper middle quarter of the clip) and now you can crop that clip independently of all the others without even changing modes. If you want to create fades hover over the end of the "Header" of the clip (the bar at the top of the clip). If you want to do old school Range Select moves swipe over the top half of the clip.

 
I did know this so no forehead slapping required.  I just think it's a poor UX - too easy to get it wrong.  I want to be able to crossfade (say) without worrying if I'm a hair's breadth off target.
 

 
Basically now when I look at audio clips it is in two to three parts. Bottom half... hardcore comping. Top half traditional editing. The Header at the top I consider the "Handle" for selecting (without promoting... this would be how I select for Ctrl K mute/unmute) and moving clips around.
 
Really, to me the biggest PITA is the sheer amount of tooltip states when handling clips and trying to hook into them reliably (as in sometimes the cursor/tooltip doesn't change when I want). When I run into those issues I either a) expand the lanes vertically a little to make the clips bigger (and thus the hotspot targets easier to hook into) or b) switch to dedicated tools from the HUD (usually when I need to make a specific action over and over again and don't want to futz around with the Smart Tool hotspots).
 

That's pretty much my point and I agree with you - I just think it's too cumbersome because of the accuracy you need.  And it didn't use to be.  For what it's worth, I often find the normal (track not lane) slip editing accuracy required a bit too finickety (sp?) at times too, so it's not just lanes that I think provide a sub-optimal experience in this way.
 
Another FWIW, I also hide the header as I already think we're wasting too much vertical space with the newer widgets (vs 8.x) so every pixel counts.
 

For me Layers became useless very quickly for exactly the reason I describe. As I tracked the layers got smaller and smaller and smaller and for some insane reason Cake made it so you could not expand them vertically and the tracks would lock to screen height.
 
So it was fine if there were only half a dozen or so layers but since I create WAY more takes than that there would become a tipping point where ANY editing became impossible. Even the Layer Mute/Solo buttons would disappear.
 
It was bad. Very bad.
 
When lanes got introduced in X2 it was a godsend at first but X2 was ridiculously buggy and the Lanes workflow was half baked.
 
X3 and comping fixed everything (aside from one weird annoying bug that would jump the screen to the parent track in certain situations but that got fixed in SPlat).
 
As for the hotspots, they can be finicky fershure but now that I know their quirks and exactly where/how to access them it's no problem. I do think sometimes though it depends on the graphics resources on the system. I know if I'm really maxing out my crappy GC or the system in general the hotspots get harder to hook into. If a project starts corrupting... even worse but it was WAY worse on X2... and impossible in X1 which I'm assuming would have been the same scheme as 8.5.
 
But it DOES work as designed barring other issues and as noted there are ways to force the issue when they aren't playing nice (which is happening less and less these days on my rig).
 
I think because of the time period I came into all this (X1) I got to start fresh with BOTH workflows. The layers scheme was not ingrained in my workflow after years of usage so it was like learning all three completely fresh (Layers, Lanes without comping, Lanes with comping within 2-3 years).
 
The current method, to me, is simply a buttload easier.
 
I actually came from Nuendo 2 which had a weird system of a single track and you had to Right Click to call up (promote) clips from a menu. Now THAT was weird... but I kind of liked it and actually wouldn't mind that to be included as a function in the Parent Track. Essentially you'd rifle through the list of clips and whatever you selected went on the top (and anything underneath go muted). You then did your crossfades against whatever was overlapping with that top clip. So you could have Clip 1, 2 and 3 where Clip one was in the middle, clip 2 was at the start being partially obscured by Clip 1 and clip 3 at the end (being partially obscured by Clip 1. You fade them together and apply on clip levle autmation or whatever and that's how you comped.
 
It is possible there was an "expose layers" type thing but I didn't have a manual and that system worked alright for me.
 
If I could have lanes AND do that in the Parent Track... that'd be cool.

Oh and I menat o mention.. I think now that maybe the reason we have  minimum height for lanes and the stupid auto Lanes zoom thingie is specifically because if the lanes got to small all the hotspots would become too jumbled/inaccessable like they were with layers.
 
I would still like to be able to disable both of those things so I can drag them out as needed to the height I want.
 
I also want an Archive and Hide Lanes option. That would make the workflow perfect for me. Archive to remove uneeded data from system resources but still available if I want to return to those takes and Hide to clean up my tracks Lanes Area after I have the takes/comps I want (again without losing the data in case I want to return and make a new comp).
 
I have to do that stuff manually by cloning the track, deleting unwanted material and/or creating a new track, dragging the desired data into it then Archiving/Hiding the original.
 
 
Layers most definitely could not grant any of those wishes.
 
Again.... different strokes and all that but for me, in regards to layers... good riddance.
 

Beepster
@Kylo... re: "This would be easier if Sonar didn't throw in 10 empty lanes from time to time!"
 
Not going to go through your whole post again (but really I work section by section as I write as well and often times during my final tracking... it works totally fine for me). However that comment raises a red flag that something is wrong. There should not be empty lanes getting added and certainly not that many.

 
Usually the lane has something in it... one or two clips... 3 minutes to the left or the right. And sometimes it doesn't.
 
As in my original example, I have a rhythm guitar track which, despite me never having done any sort of looped recording or comping, ended up with 15 take lanes. 3 were entirely empty. The rest were 11/12ths empty (as I only have 1 take per section). It's a lot of dead space that serves no purpose.
 

 

One way I could see that maybe happening is if you are deleting unwanted clips/takes in the parent track as you record instead of using "Undo".

It's quite common for me to record into one track and move the recorded audio to another track, which is much the same thing. Doesn't explain why the new take lanes keep appearing in the first place though.  In an ideal world I would record only ever into the track the audio was going to stay in. But this isn't an ideal world and doing it that way takes longer.

Kylotan,  Sonar does the same thing when midi loop recording.  It's so cumbersome,  especially when all I want is for all of the midi data to be in one consolidated clip.  Not only do you have a bunch of unwanted takes,  but you also end up with empty takes that you have clean up manually.  
 
This is why I at least want the option of COMPLETELY disabling Take Lanes!

Kylotan

Beepster
@Kylo... re: "This would be easier if Sonar didn't throw in 10 empty lanes from time to time!"
 
Not going to go through your whole post again (but really I work section by section as I write as well and often times during my final tracking... it works totally fine for me). However that comment raises a red flag that something is wrong. There should not be empty lanes getting added and certainly not that many.

 
Usually the lane has something in it... one or two clips... 3 minutes to the left or the right. And sometimes it doesn't.
 
As in my original example, I have a rhythm guitar track which, despite me never having done any sort of looped recording or comping, ended up with 15 take lanes. 3 were entirely empty. The rest were 11/12ths empty (as I only have 1 take per section). It's a lot of dead space that serves no purpose.
 

 

One way I could see that maybe happening is if you are deleting unwanted clips/takes in the parent track as you record instead of using "Undo".

It's quite common for me to record into one track and move the recorded audio to another track, which is much the same thing. Doesn't explain why the new take lanes keep appearing in the first place though.  In an ideal world I would record only ever into the track the audio was going to stay in. But this isn't an ideal world and doing it that way takes longer.

Yup. I see it. Those empty lanes are likely from you yanking out the clips to other tracks. As far as that screenshot... dude, flatten that bugger. As you said multiple times you only have 1 take at any give time range (but I was going on the premise maybe you had the occasional section with more than one section you wanted to test out for your final).
 
In that screenshot, if it were on my screen, I'd make any necessary crops/fades at the start and ends of the clips (just like I would with Layers), select the track so all those segments on the Parent Track are highlighted, Right Click the Parent Track and Flatten Comp.
 
Then you don't have to worry about jack. You can delete ALL the Lanes (aside from the comp) if you want to clean it up.
 
Also... as I said upthread, if you want all those little snippets to record into the same lane I'm pretty sure all you have to do is arm the desired Take Lane for recording. That will force the recording into that lane without creating a new one. I'd have to test that though and there may be a Preferences setting somewhere to avoid the new lane being created or whatever.
 
There is also the Auto X-Fade option that could be disabled. I think when two overlapping clips appear in the same lane you simply have to click on the clip you want to bring to the surface to apply a fade or crop it. That would be Single Lane editing like in the old days.
 
Again I'd have to test it to make sure but essentially by arming the Lane for recording all data gets forced into the lane. Disable X-Fade in Prefs if you don't want auto Crossfade and probably use Sound on Sound recording mode. Click a clip to bring it to the surface for cropping/fading (use the top half of the clip for crop, header for fades).
 
Something like that. That's wicked old school but totally fine (if it works more or less like that).
 
Personally if I were forcing that type of workflow I would actually use TWO lanes and switch the arm status between them. So I could record directly into my MAIN lane and if at any point there was going to be an overlap of clips I would arm the second lane and record that part there. That way instead of having auto X-Fades or messing with selecting clips to draw them to the surface for editing I could just have the overlapping clips in their own lanes and edit them independently without the fuddle duddle.
 
Two lanes, old school editing, use flatten as an "unaffected" mixdown once the editing is done.
 
Ya?

Kylotan
If you know how to find the magical menu option that lets you remove empty take lanes (hint to all: you have to right-click on a clip in the parent/composite lane to see 'Remove Empty Take Lanes'... why the hell it's so hidden and doesn't appear when you right click (a) the track, (b) a take lane, I don't know),

Having just searched for this, thanks for the tip, but it only works if you have a clip to click on.  Otherwise there appears to be no way to get rid of a bunch of empty lanes except by deleting them one by one by clicking the  'x' for each.  (?)  I had to create a clip in the main track (which was empty) for the option to appear.

Paul P

Kylotan
If you know how to find the magical menu option that lets you remove empty take lanes (hint to all: you have to right-click on a clip in the parent/composite lane to see 'Remove Empty Take Lanes'... why the hell it's so hidden and doesn't appear when you right click (a) the track, (b) a take lane, I don't know),

Having just searched for this, thanks for the tip, but it only works if you have a clip to click on.  Otherwise there appears to be no way to get rid of a bunch of empty lanes except by deleting them one by one by clicking the  'x' for each.  (?)  I had to create a clip in the main track (which was empty) for the option to appear.

Already mentioned this one earlier. Select the Lanes you want to remove (they select just like tracks do with a blue button in the top left corner of the lane controls... admittedly there should be some indication there that there is a selection square there but it is). So Shift or Ctrl select the Lanes you want to go away, hold Ctrl, Click the X on one of the selected lanes. They will all go away.
 
I did search for Remove Empty Lanes on an unpopulated track (that I loaded up with empty lanes) and yes... the menu option was unavailable so Cake could improve that.
 
I never get empty Lanes though and I cannot recall ever using/needing that feature. If anything I am ADDING lanes for that minor annoyance where a new clip will populate an existing lane with data already on it (the exact OPPOSITE of Kylotan's complaint... lol).
 
 

Beepster
Already mentioned this one earlier. Select the Lanes you want to remove (they select just like tracks do with a blue button in the top left corner of the lane controls... admittedly there should be some indication there that there is a selection square there but it is). So Shift or Ctrl select the Lanes you want to go away, hold Ctrl, Click the X on one of the selected lanes. They will all go away.

Thanks Beep.  To get rid of all of them it's easiest to just drag out a selection region across the lanes which selects them all, then Ctr-click the "x".