I did a second vocal take, using a take lane.  After the vocal was laid down, I saved the project before doing anything else.  The new vocal track was there.  I then deleted the original vocal track and closed the take lane which put the new vocal track in the main track.  I then saved it.  That was this past Friday.  I opened the project to work on it today, the vocal track data was visible but no vocal.  I tried several things inclucing bouncing to a new track and the new track was empty.  Fortunately I had a backup project file with a good vocal track on it (by dumb luck) I was able to export that to a file and then import it into a new track in the project. 

I have no idea what went wrong.  I looked at the Audio data for that project and there was no voice wav, just wav's for the other tracks (e.g. bass, drums, etc). 

FastBikerBoy

fooman


I would love someone who works in audio material (not midi clips, but more continuous audio material such as multi-miced drums, guitar cabs, etc) to give a video tutorial on how to efficiently use track-lanes. I tried, but it seemed like a hassle.

What exactly do you want to know? If you are talking about comping there is a chapter on that in my X2 video, although on a single audio track the only difference between that and a multi tracked comp is the clips are clip grouped for multi track editing. Once grouped, editing one group member affects them all so it really wouldn't look any different even if the demonstration was changed, other than it'd be zoomed out to show multiple tracks, the edit is still done on only one track though.
 
There's also a similar video on my youtube page and although that is using layers in principal there is no difference in the method, obviously you'll see the old solo and mute buttons rather than the new ones though. The tools and method are the same.
 
That video is HERE.
 
Again that is using a single track but I use exactly the same method for multi tracks, usually on multi Mic'd acoustic guitar. Again the clips are clip grouped which is usually set up at the recording stage but can just as easily be sorted out after recording.
 
HTH

This is all well and good.  I have seen your example videos.
However you show how to use the mute tool and do things based on a specific split- or mute-point.  How do you use crossfades efficiently in X2?  How do you fold a track (hide all lanes and view the actual track only.  No lanes), and not see all of the muted clips?  The tracks often end up being seen as a collage when folded rather than a finished product.  I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm probably just missing a key piece of workflow or knowledge.

Seems like a small issue to some, but if you are taking visual cues on your automation (for example) based off a track that has muted clips showing rather than what's actually being heard, it's harder to work.  Unless you guys are creating a composite take lane at the top and putting all active clips up there...?



I guess my main point is that I use crossfades... a lot.  I never use the Mute tool.  I slice and fade.

That's exactly what the "split and fade clips" method does although that is in the X2 video, not on my youtube page.

If you don't have the video.... basically, split the clips at the points where you want a cross fade and then select the clips you want to use (or delete the ones you don't and select all of the remainder) then select the "Fade clips" command from the Track View-->Clips menu.
 
There you can set the parameters required for the cross fades and apply.
 
That will create overlapped fade in and out envelopes on the start/end of each clip, and while not on top of each other as the clips remain in their own lanes they are cross faded into each other.

Of course bouncing them down to clip will make one full clip or closing lanes will move them all into the main track lane while still maintaining them as separate clips.

HTH

Definitely need some sort of rebuild option. Also there's an issue when clips overlap on a track or lane and whatever you do effects the overlapping clip and you can't deal w/ them individually.

Yes I ran across that option in my lil' journey as well.  However, I then realized I had to work through another popup menu of options and settings to get a simple crossfade, rather than having it down with a slip-edit.

How about the 'muted clips being shown on top' thing I brought up?  If the take I want to use is on lane 5 except for a small section of music I use in Lane 2, the folded track shows muted clips because the top layers show through. Some may say "move the most-used lane to the top".  That's cool, but for any clips that are muted in that lane, you still see the mutes.

To me it just seems a bit un-intuitive. Your vids are great BTW.

fooman


Yes I ran across that option in my lil' journey as well.  However, I then realized I had to work through another popup menu of options and settings to get a simple crossfade, rather than having it down with a slip-edit.

Once you've got the fades set up how you want them then check the "Only show if pressing Shift" option. Selecting the command then will apply it unless you hold shift down in which case you can access the options, that may help a little.

How about the 'muted clips being shown on top' thing I brought up?  If the take I want to use is on lane 5 except for a small section of music I use in Lane 2, the folded track shows muted clips because the top layers show through. Some may say "move the most-used lane to the top".  That's cool, but for any clips that are muted in that lane, you still see the mutes.

AFAIK there is no easy way round that especially when comping but personally I tend to bounce to track once I've finished then archive and hide the original track in case I need it again so it's not a huge issue for me personally. I can see it'd be a pain if you work differently though. Feature request maybe? Were layers (once collapsed) any different regarding what was shown? I wouldn't notice because of my work method.

To me it just seems a bit un-intuitive.

Yes I agree.

Your vids are great BTW.

Thank you

To be honest, track layers were easier ONLY because they were more compact by design.. so shift-moving them vertically was a super easy way to get them to get crossfades going and all that.  Once everything was set, I could then click the little option on the top-right of the track GUI to turn off the layers and I saw all of the active clips.

I do not bounce to clips (to create one solid take) in case the drummer says, for example, I want to use my first take for this section.  After mixing the song, I could then simply do so.. unless I've bounced and gotten rid of things I thought weren't needed.<br />Or better yet, let's use my own shortcoming.  Perhaps my edit between takes wasn't exactly great, if I don't bounce I can do back and fine-tune the edit a tad or edit something so it does work :)

I think I need to just rethink how I use track lanes.  The composite-lane idea may be cool for now.

Please excuse my posts if they seem like I'm whining or complaining.  I'm just trying to gain some knowledge so I can work with X2 once the metering bug gets sorted out (different topic for a different thread haha).

I'm not sure I'm following exactly what you mean about moving layers around but lanes can be moved up and down as easily as can clips from lane to lane. I don't think there's much of a difference there other than the visual look of the lanes as opposed to layers.

I could never get the rebuild layers function to do anything other than screw the layers up into some arbitary order that I didn't want (or understand) so I never used it.

Honestly track lanes is a good idea in theory but it needs some serious work as of right now.  The behavior is a bit sporadic and unpredictable.  Copying and pasting to lanes and moving clips around to different lanes for instance.  Both of those functions seem to either be "buggy" or either poorly implemented unless I'm missing something.

Good example just now on a track I'm working on.  Guitar player has several takes.  I wanted to copy all the raw, unedited takes to a different track and archive them just in case I need to come back to them later.  Easy enough in the past but now w/ track lanes I feel like I'm working on a rubix cube b/c I can't simply copy and paste or move things w/o weird things happening.

I tried just simply holding ctrl and dragging to copy and now I'm getting this weird behavior where when I move a clip to a newly created take lane (Take Lane 5 in this case)  it is also moving the clip from Take Lane 1 to the new take lane along w/ the original clip that I was trying to copy there in the first place.  So now I have two overlapping clips in the new take lane.  Now that refers back to the issue in my post above w/ overlapping clips.  Because of that I can't simply drag the clip back to Take Lane 1 where it was originally b/c it's dragging pieces of the overlapping clip along w/ it.  Very frustrating.

Yes bladetragic! I also experienced that!! I totally forgot.

It was odd. I'd move the unused clips to archived tracks "just in case", and I'd end up with an extra clip. I didn't bother trying to figure out exactly what was up because at that point I said "screw it" and went back to X1