The Webinar video demonstrated the new take lanes but did not hit an area that I feel could be done with a faster workflow.  When I am comping a performance from a series of takes, I like to take a snippet of one take, a bit of another and maybe even something from another take.  The old track layers caused me to have to use a lot of extra keystrokes and mouse clicks to do this. 

In a competing product all I have to do is hold a mouse button down and swipe over a region in a take and it highlights it and that's all I hear in that take.  If I set up a looped playback section, it makes it very fast to audition bits and pieces and build a satisfactory performance by mouse selecting  and auditioning these bits on the fly.

Has this been addressed with Smart Tools in X2?

Hi Dave,

I'm afraid that you aren't going to like the answer.  Not because it's not there in X2 - but that it has been there for several releases.  Not sure how far back.

Using the mute tool in combination with the Ctrl key gives a mode where comp-ing takes in layers works just like you said.  The Mute cursor changes to an exclamation point when in this mode.  I didn't find a way to do this with the smart tool.  I needed to change to the MUTE TOOL.

I think in the Help and Manual it is called "exclusive" something.  Maybe Exclusive Mute.

Don

Yes, I know about the exclusive "whatever you call it."  But for me, it was also the biggest way to get yourself in a pickle where you couldn't undo it.  Many times I wouldn't get the result that was expected and I would have to spend a lot of time trying to fix it. 

Now, if they have fixed that and I can hold down the CTRL key and swipe it across a section of time and it doesn't screw up, I'm cool with that.

I'm not sure if this addresses your concern, but they did show that you can have it mute overlapped areas automatically. It appears you can define the start end time for this to happen tho I'm not sure how yet as it gleemed over this a bit fast...

I too use layer comping all the time and have been very frustrated with it's many problematic issues.... But this feature may make it easier (tho different... I always deleted the clip portions not used and comped them to a single lane... The new paradigm seems to create such a composite layer view when lanes are switched off and that might work fine for me and save a lot of hassle...

We'll see...

Keni

I saw that bit, Keni.  I wish they had shown using two sections in one clip and maybe one out of another.  

It looks like there has been a significant improvement but I'm interested if we've scored a touchdown on this play.