It seems like, compared to the old days, what gets selected and what does not is a bit of a lottery. Or at least, what appears to be selected is.
 
Here's an animated gif of my problem:

Happily, it does appear in my case that all the data does get cut - but it doesn't appear that way during the process, and one of the MIDI clips gets a bit damaged along the way (leaving an empty shell clip at the cut site, and leaving the destination copy of that clip unnamed at the paste site).
 
What is going on here? Am I the only one who experiences problems selecting whole regions like this? Is there some method to the apparently inconsistent highlighting here?

I can't tell because the track pane is cut off but it looks like maybe you are working in the Parent Tracks and/or with clips create in Comp Mode and/or the Clips are responding to Comp Mode/Tool type workflows.
 
Have you recently upgraded to Platinum/X3 (I seem to recall you were previously working in older versions)?
 
Doing stuff in Parent Tracks instead of in Lanes can cause all sorts of crazy editing stuff and editing with the new comp tool (which is a huge part of the Smart Tool now) expecting it to behave like older editing methods will also cause all sorts of unexpected chaos.
 
More deets needed but I'm guessing that when you are selecting sections in the Parent Track you are seeing that other clips hidden in the lanes are getting selected as well so any actions taken affect more than what you are seeing in the collapsed tracks.
 
Cheers.

No, I don't use the Comping Record mode or, as far as I know, any Comp Tool. Never touch them as they seem to do more harm than good. Yes, there are some Take Lanes and Track Folders involved, but it's not practical to work with Take Lanes expanded all the time.
 
And no, I've been on Platinum most of the year. I was one of the last to jump from 8.5 to X3, skipping X1 and X2, but that's in the past now.
 
I'm pretty sure these problems never existed back in the layers days! Let's be clear, I'm not trying some sort of exotic editing trick - I'm just trying to select clips in a rectangular area and cut/paste them. It should be trivial functionality, right?

It looks like a clip only appears selected if it entirely falls in the boundaries of the selection? Similar behavior to lassoing things perhaps. At the point of your selection SONAR has no idea that you intend to cut, which will split the clips, but it does make more sense to have that entire vertical region highlighted.

I get it but the unfortunate thing is that in tracks that have multiple Takes/Lanes that are creating a composite if you start editing in the Parent Track this is what happens. Especially with Ctrl All type maneuvers.
 
What I suggest is go through all these tracks and "Flatten" your comps before attempting Parent Track style editing like this. That way in the parent track you are dealing with one continuous clip instead of a composite. You're gonna need to unlock the Pos/Data option in that Flattened clip in the Take Lanes to make that happen. Also make sure none of the other clips in the hidden lanes exceed the boundaries of the flattened comp (so there are no splits visible at all in the Parent Track).
 
However the way I do this just to be ULTRA sure nothing wierd is going on in hidden lanes is create a new track and drag my final flattened comp into it then mute or archive the original track (just so I can raid it later if need be).
 
There is a lot of "avoiding" the comp features that needs to be done in the new system that requires knowing how comping works. It can be completely avoided altogether BUT to do that, since Cake has pretty much made all this the default workflow, you really gotta know how everything affects eveything else.
 
Mostly though I restrict my editing to lanes. It really avoids all shenanigans.
 
Not saying I like the fact that parent tracks are this futzy (it's the one problem I have with Comping) but it is what it is and the positives outweight the negatives IMO. It's just a little weird to get used to at first.
 
I hope that makes sense/helps.

Here's another corker related to Sonar selecting something other than what you see.

 
I double and triple-checked that those clips don't appear in the part of the timeline I selected. The inspector says each is linked to 3 others - the 2 other copies are off the screen to the left.
 
Bizarrely, having tested by unlinking each of the 4 pink clips and repeating the procedure, it is the 3rd of 4 (ie. the one left-most in my GIF) that is being locked when I unlock the selected clips and vice versa (then that status spreads to any linked clips). But if I unlink 3 of the pink clips, the 4th becomes unlinked as well - confirming there isn't an extra linked clip I am unaware of - then NONE of them get selected.
 
This is very frustrating. I need to be able to rely on Sonar selecting exactly what I ask for, no more, no less.

mettelus
It looks like a clip only appears selected if it entirely falls in the boundaries of the selection?

That would make sense, but those clips were all exactly aligned to start on the measure boundary, and the marker is also on that boundary. And I didn't find any tiny slices of the audio clips left over after the operation, which is what I'd expect if the clip wasn't entirely selected.

Beepster
What I suggest is go through all these tracks and "Flatten" your comps before attempting Parent Track style editing like this. That way in the parent track you are dealing with one continuous clip instead of a composite. You're gonna need to unlock the Pos/Data option in that Flattened clip in the Take Lanes to make that happen. Also make sure none of the other clips in the hidden lanes exceed the boundaries of the flattened comp (so there are no splits visible at all in the Parent Track).

That sounds hellish to me. As in, completely unworkable. I do all my work by recording parts and dragging them around, sometimes causing overlaps, which Sonar is apparently going to create new take lanes for. If I then have to micromanage the take lanes afterward every single move or edit operation in order to have any hope in hell of being able to select everything properly, it's simply not workable.
 
I knew there were some weird bits with track folders where I have to ensure every single thing within the folder has splits at the exact same place, or the selection ends up extending out as far as the next 'fully-split' area, but that is just about manageable - I can't do that for every automatically generated take lane as well.

Open the lanes and perform these procedures again (still using just the parent track). This should show you exactly what selections are affecting what in the Lanes. That should make it easier to understand what's going on.
 
Parent Tracks really aren't meant for editing anymore. They are just a visual representation of the currently audible lanes/lane sections.
 
The only way to reliably edit in the Parent Tracks is to only have ONE continuous clip being the only thing populating the Parent Track. Otherwise you'll be selecting, editing, moving, etc all sorts of clips without knowing it.

Kylotan

Beepster
What I suggest is go through all these tracks and "Flatten" your comps before attempting Parent Track style editing like this. That way in the parent track you are dealing with one continuous clip instead of a composite. You're gonna need to unlock the Pos/Data option in that Flattened clip in the Take Lanes to make that happen. Also make sure none of the other clips in the hidden lanes exceed the boundaries of the flattened comp (so there are no splits visible at all in the Parent Track).

That sounds hellish to me. As in, completely unworkable. I do all my work by recording parts and dragging them around, sometimes causing overlaps, which Sonar is apparently going to create new take lanes for. If I then have to micromanage the take lanes afterward every single move or edit operation in order to have any hope in hell of being able to select everything properly, it's simply not workable.
 
I knew there were some weird bits with track folders where I have to ensure every single thing within the folder has splits at the exact same place, or the selection ends up extending out as far as the next 'fully-split' area, but that is just about manageable - I can't do that for every automatically generated take lane as well.

 
There are ways to work around this stuff and be able to edit as you want (old school) but I've been using the comp/lanes features for so long now I can't be a reliable tutor as to HOW to make that happen anymore (I used to know but I'm drawing a blank... sorry).
 
All I can say is dig into the new comp stuff in the manual so you get the broadstrokes and then compare them to the older methods that remian.
 
I think what you need to do is use different tools (not the Smart Tool) and ensure everything is recorded using SOS and/or Overwrite.
 
It would be more about learning comping mode and it's methods so you can AVOID comping mode.
 
A big part of the issue is like the fact the Smart Tool automatically turns into the Comp Tool over large sections of the clips now so any actions taken when that is engaged results in comping actions. Try using the more traditional tools to see if that helps.
 
Cheers.
 
Edit: And the comping mode/tool stuff actually creates clip groups automatically based on certain settings/actions. That is something to be very careful of because sometimes clips will get grouped that you don't want. That's happened to me before and it's very annoying when it isn't intended.