Undo Expand Take Lanes?

[Shane Taylor]

New to Cakewalk and one thing I've been unable to figure out from the manual is how to undo accidentally Expanding Take Lanes. When you click this button, whatever audio clip(s) you had on the track get copied to a Take lane. As far as I can tell, you can't reverse that, even with Undo History. You can't COMP it to get it back, because NOW you have a permanent COMP track too.

This also appears to be the only way to do clip automation, i.e., in Take Lanes (which is how I got into this situation in the first place!).

Any advice would be appreciated. SURELY you can undo such a move (or mistake).

Thanks!

[scook]

There is no copy process happening when expanding take lanes. Expand and collapse the lanes as needed using the button and keyboard shortcut.

When the take lanes are collapsed, the clips are displayed in the parent tracks and the take lanes are hidden.

When the take lanes are expanded, the actual lanes hosting the clips are displayed along with the parent track.

All clips are associated with a lane. All lanes are associated with a track.

 

If there are clips in a track, there should be an option for clip automation in the parent track edit filter.

[Shane Taylor]

I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying. But first, you are correct in that you can do clip automation on the track itself. I'm not sure why I didn't see that option previously when looking for it. Perhaps I had already expanded the automation lane looking for it there (for some reason).

For the other issue, thought, if you have a track with a single audio clip on it, and press the GREY Take Lanes button to expand it, according to the manual pg 524 "Any existing clips are moved from the parent track to separate Take lanes", and this in fact happens. The audio clip previously on the track is MOVED to the first track lane when expanded. If you collapse the take lanes, the icon is now pale blue indicating that there is a take, unlike before expanding it. If you delete the take, the track is left completely empty. The original audio is gone. I cannot find any way to UNDO that action, even if a mistake, i.e., you will ALWAYS now have a track made up of a single take. Give it a try and see if you can reproduce.

[David Baay]

This came up in another thread a while back. The only way to 'undo" the activation of the take lane indication is to move the track content to another track, delete the single take lane in the original track, and move the content back -  or just use the new "unexpanded" track and delete the original if it doesn't have FX, automation, control settings our routing that you  need to preserve.

[57Gregy]

Or, as I do, don't use take lanes. 😁

[Shane Taylor]

On 1/17/2023 at 8:50 AM, David Baay said:

This came up in another thread a while back. The only way to 'undo" the activation of the take lane indication is to move the track content to another track, delete the single take lane in the original track, and move the content back -  or just use the new "unexpanded" track and delete the original if it doesn't have FX, automation, control settings our routing that you  need to preserve.

Eeeee... That's elegant (but effective, I guess...). That' good to know when I accidentally hit that little icon again by mistake.

2 hours ago, 57Gregy said:

Or, as I do, don't use take lanes. 😁

I wasn't at the time. I just hit the button my mistake and there I went, down this rabbit hole...

[Xoo]

Think of it as basically a UI indicator - behind the scenes, even with one clip and you've never touched that button, there's still a track lane, sitting there, minding its own business, holding the clip.  I'd argue that it's poor UI having a button change state to indicate you've pressed it once at some stage in your life, but it doesn't really mean anything, so ignore it and don't worry about there being actualised track lanes in existenc; there always were, you just didn't know about it.

[Shane Taylor]

49 minutes ago, Kevin Perry said:

Think of it as basically a UI indicator - behind the scenes, even with one clip and you've never touched that button, there's still a track lane, sitting there, minding its own business, holding the clip.  I'd argue that it's poor UI having a button change state to indicate you've pressed it once at some stage in your life, but it doesn't really mean anything, so ignore it and don't worry about there being actualised track lanes in existenc; there always were, you just didn't know about it.

Good advice. Thanks.

[sjoens]

On 1/16/2023 at 5:11 PM, Shane Taylor said:

If you delete the take, the track is left completely empty. The original audio is gone. I cannot find any way to UNDO that action, even if a mistake, i.e., you will ALWAYS now have a track made up of a single take. Give it a try and see if you can reproduce.

If you mean "I can't get the audio back", it comes back here when I hit Ctrl+Z.

If you mean "The Take Lane button remains dimly lit"... deleting the contents of a Take Lane will not remove the Take Lane itself. You must remove it manually by hitting the "X" button. Presto! the Take Lane disappears and the button returns to it's original gray state and all the world can rest easy once again. 

IOW, the button will remain dimly lit until you remove the Take Lane.

[57Gregy]

On 1/18/2023 at 4:55 PM, Shane Taylor said:

I wasn't at the time. I just hit the button my mistake and there I went, down this rabbit hole...

I thought I remembered seeing a control to "Don't Use Take Lanes", but that may have been several iterations ago. Or wishful thinking.