tbosco


I may be wrong about this, but after you apply slip editing, if you then do "Apply Trimming", does that make the clip change its length?

I kind of think since there is no audio data at the end of a slip edited clip, it's actual "length" is governed by the audio dat, not the size of the clip curtains.

...but I might be wrong, so don't quote me. 

:-)

I'm actually working with all MIDI, no audio. 

Not sure why I said that either.

Whenever I Move or Copy/Paste a clip it retains it's size no matter where the data is.

I can even split off the blank area and move it around without altering it's size.

What's the point of having an empty clip? There's nothig there. Again, I think it is simply a visual reference.

So to answer your original Q of clips changing size when moved, I have no clue.

chuckebaby - Have you tried setting the proper lenth in the Inspector under track properties?

 Yep, both methods result in the reversion to the original size when I move the clip.

 
Not sure why this isn't working for you (although I don't have the X2a update installed yet).  The most consistent way for me has always been to lock in the clip length by changing that parameter under Clip Properties.  That's been my process throughout; covering a significant number of Sonar revisions.
 
Let me see if I can "break" that with a few more tests later on.

So I FINALLY worked out what was causing this annoying problem (for anyone who's interested). 

I had "non destructive MIDI editing" unchecked in the preferences. With this unchecked, MIDI clips will be truncated to the edge of the rightmost note in them after you move or copy them. So if you have a MIDI clip of size 7:840 and you drag that clip out to a size of 8:0, then as soon as you move or copy it, the size will be truncated back to 7:840. The manual's explanation of this setting is:

Select this option to make all MIDI editing non-destructive. When toggled on, this option forces deleted data to be retained even though it is not visible.

You can see what's going on in Sonar's clumsy way (sort of). When you stretch out a MIDI clip so that part of it is blank, Sonar sees this blank section as "deleted data" and retains it. Of course what it's doing is "retaining" data that wasn't even there in the first place - you've just fooled it into thinking that there is deleted data by stretching the clip out to include blank space. 
And I guess I didn't fully articulate why this is so important to me: I regularly stretch MIDI clips out to the nearest bar so that I can easily click on them and loop them. If you've got a MIDI drum clip that's 7:840 and you select it and shift-L, the loop points are going to be set to a width of 7:840 instead of 8:0, meaning the loop is going to be out of rhythm. Of course I could set it by drag selecting the bars on the timeline, but this is a pain. Anyway it doesn't matter now because I FINALLY got this sorted!