If you check out some of the composition and production techniques on YouTube, you've probably seen people effortlessly converting a whole note chord progression to eights. Here is a workflow I came up with in Sonar, is there an easier way to do it?
1. Select the MIDI clip you want to convert.
2. Process -> Length: select 50%, uncheck Start Times. Hit OK. Repeat until the note durations are 1/8th notes. Alternatively in the Piano Roll view you can drag the note duration to an eight note, if you have the entire section selected all of the whole notes will be resized.
3. Copy the clip (Ctrl+C)
4. Turn off Smart Grid, it gets in the way of setting Snap To to eights unless you're in clown mode. (Right click on the grid resolution setting on the toolbar). Alternatively, you can zoom out until the snap to setting is 1/8.
5. Set the grid to eight notes. Right click on the grid resolution drop down and select 1/8th notes.
6. Set the now pointer to the next eight note boundary and hit Ctrl+V.
7. Repeat step 6, 7 times.
8. In the track list, double click the track until the entire track is selected. (Sometimes you get all the tracks selected, just do it until the entire track you want to change is selected).
9. Select Bounce To Clips from the track menu.
10. Split the track where you started editing.
11. Done.
 
In Live, this workflow is:
1. Select the clip or the notes you want to change.
2. Drag the end point to the eight note boundary.
3. Ctrl+drag right 7 times.
4. Done.
 
Doing this kind of editing in Sonar just seems endlessly awkward. Is there a better and easier way to do it?
 

I'm not sure I'm following exactly what you are trying to do but if it is just convert notes to eighths there are several ways. One of which is to select the clip, and in the event inspector module set duration to 480 ticks. That's it.
 
If you then want several more copies of it hit ctrl + L to convert it to a groove clip and then drag it out to required length.
 
If you want to use copy and paste you can but there's no need to do it several times just use "paste special" (Alt+Ctrl+V) and change the repetitions to the required number.
 
If you mean something else you'll need to be more specific.
 
 

Also not sure what you want to do, but I'm assuming this is an example:
 
You have eight measures of music. Each measure has a chord. Each chord consists of whole notes.
You want each chord to now consist of eighth notes, and this series of eighth notes would play consecutively so it would now fit in one measure. Right?
 
If so:
 
1. Select the clip in Track View, or notes on the PRV - doesn't matter.
2. Process > Fit to Time
3. Assuming these notes start at the beginning of the project, enter "2:00" as the new thru time (you want it to be one measure, so you want it to end where measure 2 starts) and check "Event Times."
4. Click OK - done.
 
If all you want to do is change the durations but not their start times, select all the notes in the PRV, and slip-edit the note's right edge down 1/8th note. The others will follow.

I don't think I explained what I was trying to do well enough.
Start point: 4 measures each with a whole note chord.
End point: 4 measures each with 8 eight note chords.
I just tried this again using only the PRV, it's probably easiest to do it there but it's still a lot of steps and you still have to fiddle with the grid and paste options. Hitting Ctrl+Alt+V on paste showed me I had the right options selected to merge the clips without changing any settings but prior to bringing up the paste options Sonar always pasted into separate clips which then had to be bounced to a single clip.
This kind of edit should be simple, obvious, and trivial.
PRV:
1. Turn off smart grid.
2. Select 1/8th note grid and 1/8th note duration.
3. Select the clip.
4. Drag the first chord to 1/8th note length. (slip edit)
5. Hit Ctrl+C (make sure the whole clip is still selected first)
6. Move position to next 1/8th note.
7. Hit Ctrl+Alt+V to make sure things are pasted correctly (blend old with new, paste into existing clips)
8. Repeat 6 & 7, 6 more times (Ctrl+V) will work after the first time.
 
 
 
 

Open the prv set grid resolution to eighth notes smart grid off hold the alt(?) Key which will show a razor tool and you click at each 8th note line.
Resize the chord to 8th note, copy, move the pointer to next 8th note line, paste special with repeats set to 7 and paste into existing clips enabled.

TomHelvey
I don't think I explained what I was trying to do well enough.
Start point: 4 measures each with a whole note chord.
End point: 4 measures each with 8 eight note chords.

 
I'm still confused. For the end point, if you have four measures and each measure has eight chords, how are those eight chords arranged? In other words, suppose your starting point was:
 
Measure 1 = Whole note A chord
Measure 2 = Whole note B chord
Measure 3 = Whole note C chord
Measure 4 = Whole note D chord
 
Would the final result be one measure with eight eighth notes chords arranged like this:
 
option 1: A B C D A B C D 
 
...or like this:
 
option 2: A A B B C C D D 
 
...or something else? If option 1, then the fit to time procedure will work fine. The only difference is that you would simply fit to half the measure, then either:
 

• Copy and paste that half measure to fill out the measure, or...
• Hit ctrl-L to turn the half-measure into a loopable groove clip, then slip-edit it to create as many interations as you want.

I think I understand what you're trying to do. Again there's probably several ways but I'd do it like this
 
Set grid to eighths
Select all
Drag all down to eighths so there's an eighth chord at the beginning of each measure
Ctrl X
Position now time to first measure
Ctrl+Alt+V
Set repetitions to 8
In the interval box type 0 0 480
Hit OK
 
 

Hey Anderton, he wants to go from the left to the right.  It's pretty odd though, because the series of steps that he posted to follow in live works exactly the same in Sonar, so I'm a bit confused now too!  
 
come to think of it tom, you could shorten the chord to an 8th note length, ctrl+drag it 3 times to the right, select the 4 8th notes and ctrl+drag once to the right thus reducing the total steps necessary by 2.
 

There's also Paste Special, with the repetition option. But Swamptooth, agreed - I don't see why he doesn't at least use the Live workflow in SONAR.

I just learned never to post a reply in the forum before my first cuppa joe.  I opened live, followed his steps, and thought to myself "hey, that's what i do in sonar ALL THE TIME!" LOL!