Will having all notes selected when entering PRV be "fixed" and, if so, when???

I never noticed it until now. I guess I always click somewhere off notes first... DAMN YOU! Now it's going to nag me until it's changed. hehe. 

Ignorance is bliss =)

Right you are Seth, ol pal.  I do use the Smart Tool...and love it... but I still await any definitive answer as to why on gawd's green earth anyone at Cake or anyone who uses Cake's software would PREFER to have all notes selected in ANY AND ALL cases when entering the PRV.  Perhaps you could enlighten us??  I'm listening...

I don't prefer it, but it does not bother me at all.  One click, deselect.

yorolpal


Right you are Seth, ol pal.  I do use the Smart Tool...and love it... but I still await any definitive answer as to why on gawd's green earth anyone at Cake or anyone who uses Cake's software would PREFER to have all notes selected in ANY AND ALL cases when entering the PRV.  Perhaps you could enlighten us??  I'm listening...

Frist of all, I appreciate the consistency of behavior that Seth has pointed out.  If the whole clip is selected, then it's reasonable that that is also so in the PV.  But here's another argument in favor of having all notes selected.  If you're going to PV to fiddle with note velocities (and some of us make more trips to PV for that purpose than to edit the notes themselves at times), it's a pain to apply edits that don't take because you forgot to select all the notes.  Just sayin'.

I still would like to know why it seemed a good idea to anyone to ever have as the default for any way to enter the PRV to have all notes selected??

It seems you're still missing what Seth is saying. This behavior results from opening the PRV by double-clicking a clip. The first click selects the clip, and that's what causes all the notes to be selected. Then when the PRV opens, that selection is preserved.


It's logical, and I for one am fine with it because I often open the PRV to see how events move when I quantize a whole clip. And it's faster and easier to de-select All with Ctrl-Shift-A or by clicking in an empty area than it is to select all notes in the PRV by lassoing or dragging in the PRV keyboard.


If they are going to change this implementation, I would ask that they also change the behavior of Ctrl-A in the PRV to only select notes for displayed clips/tracks, rather than selecting the whole project, because I will need a way of quickly selecting all notes if it doesn't open up that way.


Actually, I'd like to have that anyway, because what usually happens is this:


- I take a first pass at quantizing, find that some notes move the wrong way because they were a few ticks closer to the wrong gridline than to the right one.


- So I undo, de-select all, tweak the positions of those few notes, then re-select all by swiping in the PRV keyboard, and re-quantize.


- Depending on how long the clip is, and how rough my timing was (pretty rough when I'm composing by improvisation), I may have to do this a half-dozen times or more, and re-selecting all after adjusting individual notes becomes a pain.

It worked the 'orthodox' way in Sonar 8.5 and in previous versions, and I don't recall any requests on this forum to change it.  For years I always opened the PRV in this way and I can't recall a single instance where I wanted to open the PRV with all notes selected.  So like the OP I'm curious as to why it was made to work bass ackwards in X1.  I understand what Seth said but I'm still curious why somone thought it a good idea to change the behaviour.   

Yes, thanks Seth!

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

The reason for this is down to the method of opening the PRV. Double-clicking a clip opens the PRV, but it also selects the clip which in turn selects the notes in the clip that are opened in the PRV. The PRV follows a clips selection and vice versa.
The good news is that if you are using the Smart Tool you can simply click once in an empty space of the PRV to de-select the notes.

However, if you were to make a track active without selecting it and then hit Alt + 2 to open the PRV on that track, none of the notes will be selected since none of the track's clips are selected.

It really is a boon to this Forum to have breath of fresh air posts from you, Seth, calmly explaining things.

I totally understand your explanation, and to me, this oft posted "problem" of having notes selected when the PRV is opened is a total Non-issue.  If a selection has been made - of course the notes will still be selected when the PRV is opened - what's the mystery?  If working from the TV and then to PRV, simply activate the track, don't select the clips in it.

But people doing a lot of MIDI work need to have their PRV available all the time, and when you're using the PRV as MIDI-Central, which it is, tracks are opened up with the PRV menu - there's no highlighted clip action happening at all.

Randy B.

yorolpal

Just to show I'm not unwilling to learn...how do I "make a track active without selecting it"??  Alt+2 seems like a good solution.

Hiya - Last I looked (can't check on X1 at the moment) if you click the number in a track header, that selects all the clips in it.  But if you click elsewhere in the header, the track gets the focus, but nothing is selected.  That's how I've always done it anyway - Click number=selected.  Select under the number=activated.

Randy B.

Thanks!

Click on a track to make it Active and then press Alt + 3 to open that track in the PRV. You can open multiple tracks in the PRV by selecting more than one and pressing Alt + 3. With multiple tracks open in the PRV clicking on a track to make it Active will bring that track's MIDI to the forefront and put the other track(s) MIDI in the background. When a track is Active without being selected and pressing Alt + 3, those notes will open in the PRV without being selected.

I'm not sure what we took away, but if you prefer the PRV to be opened with a different/ old keybinding, you can certainly change that.

SP

yorolpal


Before X1 I had a keybinding that just opened up the PRV on the active track.  Now tho...or am I still wrong...you actually have to go through some machination to "select" the track in a certain way before you can open it in the PRV.  At least that has been my experience.  I'm gonna check my Sonar X1 power book and see just where I'm going wrong.  All I know is that it is NOT like it used to be for me.  And I haven't figured how to do it the new way yet.  But I will.  Although why they would take that away I still can't fathom.  And you know what?  I bet by now they can't either.

Yorolpal, one of the major themes of your posts is the PRV.  Like David "Bitflipper" just said in post #19 of this thread, I wouldn't have been so aware of this "double click a MIDI track to open PRV" approach if I hadn't been reading so many posts on the Forum.  I knew that method was in existence, but it's so polar opposite of how I work, that I've never made that a part of my normal work flow.

You sed "...I haven't figured how to do it the new way yet.  But I will..."  Good deal, because I'm here to tell you, again, how to use the Piano Roll View.  It's really the same now as it was in previous Sonars, so it isn't "the new way"--it's just The Way to Work with the PRV.

Scenario - So you're working away on a project, and you've recorded a bunch of MIDI tracks, or maybe even just one.  But now you're at a place where you want/need to do some editing.  What to do?---Exactly this:

---If you don't already have a screenset which focuses on the PRV, make one.  If you're in to working with MIDI, you have to want the PRV available at moment's notice, because it is MIDI Command Center Central in Sonar.  So stop fighting it, and just make a screenset which has the PRV as the main part of the screen.  While you're at it, include above it, one track of the Track View so you can jump up there and make gross edits and selections easily.

---Open that screenset (assuming you've taken me seriously and you now have a PRV screenset)-- and take note of its menu where you can open any track that exists in your project.  Open the track you want to work on.  There it is, everything in the track, no notes are pre-selected for you - it's all the MIDI data you have in the chosen track - the notes and any controllers you've already recorded in that track.

--Edit away to your heart's content.

That's it.  It's a mind set of understanding that the PRV really is the heart of MIDI production in Sonar.  It's not just something to call up as a plug-in and do something with.  It's where you view your entire project and do in-depth MIDI editing.

I understand that when you're in the tracking portion of your project, you're just laying in tracks and so you're working in the Track View.  Great--as it should be.  But when you want to get serious with editing, then get serious about how you get to your main editing tool - don't just double click a track for the PRV to open, and then get pissed off that all the notes are selected, even though that makes sense, since you just got through selecting everything - Do it the proper way--Open the PRV and start calling up, through its menu, the tracks you want to work on.

The Big Tip I keep posting, since it seems to be a revelation to quite a few people - It's really helpful to make your screen so that one track of the TV is still visible above the PRV.  It's the same in 8.5 - but that version made it even more easy and straight forward.  When you have a track visible above the PRV, you can more easily do the "gross" edits like moving a clip backwards or forwards in the Time Line.

Yorolpal, on another thread, you made reference to not liking the advice because it's not the way you work.  Well, the whole point of asking questions and getting replies is that we can find out ways to work which are Better than what we've been doing.  It doesn't make any sense to reject an answer because "it's not the way I work"--Of course the answer refers to a way you don't work - That's why it's new information.  I've learned many things from reading the posts here on the Forum.  I adapt the way I work according to what I learn - That's what you gotta do. 

A bit more adapting to the information given, and less railing against the replies you get because they aren't what you wanna hear, and then we'd probably get fewer "Well, I'm still swimming against the flow" posts.  Ya know?

PRV - Simply make it your central MIDI editing station, the way its designed, and you wouldn't be experiencing these issues which can come up when you try to get into the PRV via the back door - !

Randy B.

Randy B.,

Good workflow tips above! I'd also like to add that if you prefer to work with the PRV in the MultiDock at the bottom of the workspace that you can double-click the PRV's tab in the MD or press Shift + D to make it full size, vertically. 

Doing this, or using Screensets, makes it pretty easy to jump from working in the Track View to working in the PRV, and back to the TV.

And then there's always the Inline PRV, which can be shown by selecting Notes in the track's Edit Filter. And a track can be maximized vertically to the Track View by double clicking in an empty space within it, then double click again in it to bring it back to its original size. Then you can right-click in the small separator between the track and the Clips Pane and choose Fit Content to make the notes bigger.

Wait, this would make for a killer video!

(ugh, what have we done here. more work for me)

SP

Yup...I'm making a new keybinding. 

But agree...make that video!!  At least for me...an many others I imagine...that's the best way to see how somethings actually done.

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

I'm not saying I prefer it or that anyone does, I'm explaining the rationale as to why it happens. And it doesn't happen in every and all cases. As I said before, de-select all clips in the TV, then click on a track, and open the PRV via the menu or key-binding. This will open the PRV without having the notes selected because no clips were selected in the process.

Hi Seth...

If this be the case... then why does it still select all the notes if I click on the upper half of a clip which does NOT select the clip?

Keni