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Cakewalk By BandLab Video Tutorials


DeBro

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I would prefer not to be using my full real name on forums, I signed in through Bandlab. Unfortunately, I also seem to be unable to delete a post once it has been posted here. Are there any options to change these things here? thanks.

Edit: Nevermind, worked it out! But still cannot delete a post once posted, is this the way it is supposed to work?

Edited by Tezza
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1 hour ago, Tezza said:

I would prefer not to be using my full real name on forums, I signed in through Bandlab. Unfortunately, I also seem to be unable to delete a post once it has been posted here. Are there any options to change these things here? thanks.

Edit: Nevermind, worked it out! But still cannot delete a post once posted, is this the way it is supposed to work?

That's the way it worked on the old forums (cant delete posts). Just edit the post and leave the tag "Removed". Its basically the same thing.

The problem with deleting posts is it leads to confusing and dysfunctional conversations where one can get lost very easily when comments are missing.

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Thanks for your support on my tutorials, I just checked again today and I now have 30 people have looked at them,, I guess I can't expect more than that as the only way anybody would find them is if I post it here. My text Based MIDI tutorial has been well received and is very focused on just a few things you can do in Cakewalk with midi. It made for total beginners but a few long time users have PM'd me with positive feedback.  

I set my bandmate up today with the laptop and he's very pleased I made the videos, even if they are not professionally done they are very straight forward. I didn't post those as they were very specific to our projects. 

To do a professional job I would need to write out a script and stick to it. I find it's easy to wander off topic because Cakewalk has so many tangents.  

And as I was demonstrating features often something would not work properly ??  The new Export button decided to go hide and I still have no clue why I did that.  I ended up then having to show him how to customize the upper task bar..geeze.  

 Making the videos made me explore Cakewalks options as I went along. I think I doubled my Knowledge after this was over...    One of the issues was setting him up with just the one screen. I haven't suffered that in a long time.  I must have learned over a dozen new things about the multidock and how the workspace can be manipulated ,, like double clicking the Multi dock makes it jump full screen.  And I think I finally have wrapped my pointed little  head around screensets and lens ( after how many years??) 

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On 1/31/2019 at 4:56 PM, SomeGuy said:

Honestly, time is a precious resource.  I'd much rather they distribute a PDF user guide so that we can search and view while on the go.  I'd much rather read the manual while I'm riding shotgun or between sessions at the training center than waste hours of my time watching YouTube videos.

Not having a PDF manual, at least the old Sonar Platinum manual with the obvious caveat that some things may differ, is awful.

I have time in between activities while out and about, but I'm definitely not going to sit in front of YouTube and waste that much time.  I want an actual PDF user guide.

You know, I really wanted to discuss this in it's own topic, but, if we look back, and compare the Audio tutorial scene to others (like image editing, video editing, 3d, vfx...) the audio comunity, rareley had actual recorded audio turorials (be in audio format or video format). In it's vast majority they were written articles for years (How I'm I supposed to know how N thing sounds from reading an article!?). In the explosion of youtube and streaming, this trend remained for years up until recent channels and brands started doing tutors for their own products. If you do short videos, easily identifiable on it's topic (for search and index reasons), I'd say a video is infinitley better than any written article.

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On 2/6/2019 at 2:16 PM, Logan_4600 said:

You know, I really wanted to discuss this in it's own topic, but, if we look back, and compare the Audio tutorial scene to others (like image editing, video editing, 3d, vfx...) the audio comunity, rareley had actual recorded audio turorials (be in audio format or video format). In it's vast majority they were written articles for years (How I'm I supposed to know how N thing sounds from reading an article!?). In the explosion of youtube and streaming, this trend remained for years up until recent channels and brands started doing tutors for their own products. If you do short videos, easily identifiable on it's topic (for search and index reasons), I'd say a video is infinitley better than any written article.

How are you supposed to know how N thing sounds from a YouTube video, often badly recorded and super compressed/transcoded?

You  know the same way Homo Sapiens discovered cooking.  You try it and see.  That's the most optimal way to learn.  Context Sensitive Help was developed to facilitate this. Anytime you had an issue, you pressed F1 and the help file popped up on the screen explaining to you what this thing is.  The current help system for CbB is awful.  The website is not responsive.  Web Browsers eat up lots of RAM and CPU.  The search is worse than that of a PDF reader.  The Website is horribly laid out and not very "responsive."

Don't think I've stated that YouTube tutorials were "utterly bad."  I simply stated that they were a waste of time, because many of them waste  tons of minutes (which add up) bloviating about things that don't matter, or are tangential to the subject... like:

Gibson's old SONAR macOS Alpha and the BandLab iOS app in a video talking about Installing Cakewalk by BandLab (~2:30 long, but doesn't actually start talking about the installation process  until 0:55 in.  Meanwhile, nothing was said about the actual installation process itself - especially pertaining to how you can put the Content Folder on a different drive if you do an Advanced installation; or how to set up your Project Directory in a specific place.  Watching that video is literally a waste of time... yet, it exists.  No disrespect to the creator,  but it's 2:30 of filler content that really accomplishes nothing at all except to "just be there."

Meanwhile, a user could just open up a Quick Start Guide PDF distributed with the application and all of this is spelled out to them, in more detail.

Text is superior to video because you can fit more content and explain things more thoroughly in that medium.

No one wants to produce  30-45 minute videos for every feature, but that's literally what you'd have to do to offer as much useful information as an actual user guide or context sensitive help system.

I just want the documentation to be more accessible, as in other products.

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I agree with most of what you are saying Someguy, regarding the vast majority of instruction videos are sort of long winded and most are never to the point. 

And ya, it's funny the audio is so bad, I just discovered I can use a lot of my hi end VST plug ins in the effect bin of Vegas Movie studio. 

But youtube seems to do something as the audio is perfect when I play the movies I make. I know all about how to take audio to the max. But once uploaded to b youtube the audio is always at a lower level and distorted. So I'm having to read up on this and it's a whole new ballgame. I'm almost tempted to purchase the Nugen mastering plug in. It has a setting for Youtube.  As I make my tutorials I try to keep them at 4 minutes and pick a single topic. It's hard to do. 

I think I still prefer using screen shots. Then you can have the best of both worlds,, the picture and the text. But videos are easier to make and you do have the advantage of including the sound which is important sometimes when making a point. 

 

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2 hours ago, Cactus Music said:

I just discovered I can use a lot of my hi end VST plug ins in the effect bin of Vegas Movie studio. 

Yes, that's one advantage of using Vegas as your video editor if you have Cakewalk, DX/DXi plugin support, I also found Cakewalk lit up with all my Vegas plugins...nice!

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On 2/10/2019 at 9:03 PM, Cactus Music said:

But youtube seems to do something as the audio is perfect when I play the movies I make. I know all about how to take audio to the max. But once uploaded to b youtube the audio is always at a lower level and distorted.

Hey John - Here's the straight dope right from the horse's mouth. Good luck!

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On 2/10/2019 at 6:26 PM, SomeGuy said:

How are you supposed to know how N thing sounds from a YouTube video, often badly recorded and super compressed/transcoded?

You  know the same way Homo Sapiens discovered cooking.  You try it and see.  That's the most optimal way to learn.  Context Sensitive Help was developed to facilitate this. Anytime you had an issue, you pressed F1 and the help file popped up on the screen explaining to you what this thing is.  The current help system for CbB is awful.  The website is not responsive.  Web Browsers eat up lots of RAM and CPU.  The search is worse than that of a PDF reader.  The Website is horribly laid out and not very "responsive."

Don't think I've stated that YouTube tutorials were "utterly bad."  I simply stated that they were a waste of time, because many of them waste  tons of minutes (which add up) bloviating about things that don't matter, or are tangential to the subject... like:

Gibson's old SONAR macOS Alpha and the BandLab iOS app in a video talking about Installing Cakewalk by BandLab (~2:30 long, but doesn't actually start talking about the installation process  until 0:55 in.  Meanwhile, nothing was said about the actual installation process itself - especially pertaining to how you can put the Content Folder on a different drive if you do an Advanced installation; or how to set up your Project Directory in a specific place.  Watching that video is literally a waste of time... yet, it exists.  No disrespect to the creator,  but it's 2:30 of filler content that really accomplishes nothing at all except to "just be there."

Meanwhile, a user could just open up a Quick Start Guide PDF distributed with the application and all of this is spelled out to them, in more detail.

Text is superior to video because you can fit more content and explain things more thoroughly in that medium.

No one wants to produce  30-45 minute videos for every feature, but that's literally what you'd have to do to offer as much useful information as an actual user guide or context sensitive help system.

I just want the documentation to be more accessible, as in other products.

A YT video showing me broad strokes is still 1000 times better than a "the crack of the snare is around 3k, search for it.... use the force" phrase. C'mon guys. Audio tutorials were for years full of secrecy surrounding actual audio. Thankfully that's changing thanks to streaming. And, I know, it can be heavily compressed or somewhat distorted in YT videos, but it's still years light from a "chek the 'muddy bits' at 400hz of X instrument'.

Then, of course, like written material, there can be a broad range from good material or tutorials, to really missleading and uninformed information.

But, besides all of this and what you say. Isn't it quite weird to be talking about audio tutorials and, for years, never had actual audio? How, in the good God's name, I'm supposed to know and differenciate what 'air', 'brown', 'omph', 'crack', 'sizzle', tracks interactions, phase,(and a large etc etc etc) is if I don't actually hear it. Or how you train your ears if the material given to you is just writen. I could keep going with examples and items, but, I bet you get the Idea.

Maybe, for a full DAW learning, videos can be exhausting, but I'm talking mainly mixing and ear training for mixing.

 

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2 hours ago, Logan_4600 said:

A YT video showing me broad strokes is still 1000 times better than a "the crack of the snare is around 3k, search for it.... use the force" phrase. C'mon guys. Audio tutorials were for years full of secrecy surrounding actual audio. Thankfully that's changing thanks to streaming. And, I know, it can be heavily compressed or somewhat distorted in YT videos, but it's still years light from a "chek the 'muddy bits' at 400hz of X instrument'.

Then, of course, like written material, there can be a broad range from good material or tutorials, to really missleading and uninformed information.

But, besides all of this and what you say. Isn't it quite weird to be talking about audio tutorials and, for years, never had actual audio? How, in the good God's name, I'm supposed to know and differenciate what 'air', 'brown', 'omph', 'crack', 'sizzle', tracks interactions, phase,(and a large etc etc etc) is if I don't actually hear it. Or how you train your ears if the material given to you is just writen. I could keep going with examples and items, but, I bet you get the Idea.

Maybe, for a full DAW learning, videos can be exhausting, but I'm talking mainly mixing and ear training for mixing.

 

Your last sentence explains where you're coming from. If your main concern is learning how something sounds, then of course a video would be more helpful. There are probably thousands of videos already out there that cover all aspects of mixing.

I personally don't find them very useful for reference.  For example, say I want to know how to set an automation node to specific level. I don't want to search for a video on automation, watch the whole thing hoping that at some point it answers my question. With text, I can just go to what I'm looking for. 

Fortunately, I still have the manual for Platinum. I also still make frequent use of Scott Garrigus's SONAR  X3 Power. When you need a clear explanation of how to do something, his books can't be beat.

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15 minutes ago, TimV said:

I also still make frequent use of Scott Garrigus's SONAR  X3 Power. When you need a clear explanation of how to do something, his books can't be beat.

I agree on this. I made the mistake of giving mine away thinking a new Power Book was coming :(

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On 2/14/2019 at 3:30 PM, Logan_4600 said:

A YT video showing me broad strokes is still 1000 times better than a "the crack of the snare is around 3k, search for it.... use the force" phrase. C'mon guys. Audio tutorials were for years full of secrecy surrounding actual audio. Thankfully that's changing thanks to streaming. And, I know, it can be heavily compressed or somewhat distorted in YT videos, but it's still years light from a "chek the 'muddy bits' at 400hz of X instrument'.

Then, of course, like written material, there can be a broad range from good material or tutorials, to really missleading and uninformed information.

But, besides all of this and what you say. Isn't it quite weird to be talking about audio tutorials and, for years, never had actual audio? How, in the good God's name, I'm supposed to know and differenciate what 'air', 'brown', 'omph', 'crack', 'sizzle', tracks interactions, phase,(and a large etc etc etc) is if I don't actually hear it. Or how you train your ears if the material given to you is just writen. I could keep going with examples and items, but, I bet you get the Idea.

Maybe, for a full DAW learning, videos can be exhausting, but I'm talking mainly mixing and ear training for mixing.

 

Except the user guides are nothing like that... so the exaggeration is neither appropriate nor logical.

Secondly...  User Guides and Tutorials can be done in multiple ways...  Take Blackmagic Design, for instance.  They have a Fairlight Tutorial Book with 4-5GB of  footage that comes with it so that you can follow along with each lesson.

So no...  It's not that audio tutorials have never had audio.  It's just that the audio tutorials that you've taken/read have failed to provide it.  Providing sample audio and tutorials so that users can follow along has been very common, for at least a decade...  Adobe, iZotope, and others have all done this  for several years... 😉

Ear training from a YouTube video...  Cute. 

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On 2/11/2019 at 12:03 AM, Cactus Music said:

I agree with most of what you are saying Someguy, regarding the vast majority of instruction videos are sort of long winded and most are never to the point. 

And ya, it's funny the audio is so bad, I just discovered I can use a lot of my hi end VST plug ins in the effect bin of Vegas Movie studio. 

But youtube seems to do something as the audio is perfect when I play the movies I make. I know all about how to take audio to the max. But once uploaded to b youtube the audio is always at a lower level and distorted. So I'm having to read up on this and it's a whole new ballgame. I'm almost tempted to purchase the Nugen mastering plug in. It has a setting for Youtube.  As I make my tutorials I try to keep them at 4 minutes and pick a single topic. It's hard to do. 

I think I still prefer using screen shots. Then you can have the best of both worlds,, the picture and the text. But videos are easier to make and you do have the advantage of including the sound which is important sometimes when making a point. 

 

MasterCheckPro.png

That's because your movies are encoded for stereo playback.

How well will this work in a video trying to teach you how to pan surround sound on YouTube, when the creator renders it as stereo or YouTube downmixes it to stereo?

The only way to get any value out of that, is to actually be given the media to follow along with the tutorial - using the actual software.

(Assuming the user has the appropriate hardware.)

People are reacting as if I said "Death to all YouTube Tutorials" and want them all replaced with PDF files.  That is not what I stated.  What I stated is that Cakewalk should provide the PDF Documentation and CHM Help Files because that stuff works, and almost all of it still applies to Cakewalk by BandLab.  Removing it doesn't help anyone.  It does the opposite, for no reason other than "this is what they've chosen to do."

And all you have to do is perform any search on that documentation site to see how bad it is.  It's not like I didn't try to use it 😛

Edited by SomeGuy
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1 hour ago, SomeGuy said:

And all you have to do is perform any search on that documentation site to see how bad it is.  It's not like I didn't try to use it 😛

I have to agree with this.  Yesterday I was looking up information about the Edit Filter (just to verify that was the proper thing to call it).  The search function did not come up with anything and the term "Edit Filter" is not in the index. I even looked in the SPlat manuel PDF that I have  saved. It took me 20 minutes to find something that I should have found in seconds.

Which brings me to... @Cactus Music posted in another thread earlier tonight reminding us to use the "Help Module". I opened that up, hovered my cursor over the widget and there it was... Edit Filter.

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On 2/2/2019 at 7:59 AM, Scott R. Garrigus said:

I'll be publishing new tutorials on this channel in the near future as well... https://www.youtube.com/user/ScottGarrigus?sub_confirmation=1

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://www.garrigus.com
* Cakewalk SONAR Video Tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/user/ScottGarrigus?sub_confirmation=1
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Publisher of the DigiFreq music recording newsletter: http://www.digifreq.com/
* Publisher of the NewTechReview consumer tech newsletter: http://www.newtechreview.com/

@Scott R. Garrigus thank you - looking forward to it! 

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On 1/31/2019 at 8:38 AM, DeBro said:

Back in the old forums there were statements made about the lack of videos made using Sonar suggesting its unpopularity. Well, there have been a plethora of quite recently uploaded video tutorials on YouTube using Cakewalk By BandLab. For any newbie coming into these forums asking questions, I think a sticky should be made of these videos which are very informative. Below are a few YouTube channels I've found.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwqZ0GPSfFgbc8gLCxaYngRGVvlaf57gl

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSfPaEe4wG_TxprjqVLxh9yAH-zGhA8bH

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDkWv3OTMpOHb2hMjuNWBQWyuhhIF6bHj

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeySI9gLWqezjlplGQqTJyhrbvCvKdzTk

Thanks @DeBro for links!
Just adding page shot below to clarify what the links point to...

2nd link:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSfPaEe4wG_TxprjqVLxh9yAH-zGhA8bH
caf6eb7fc3456b8e77141d35c0b0c4e6-full.jp

Edited by TheSteven
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