HELP! Is there a way to Paste a copied Selection multiple times??

[david40]

If I have a couple of beats of a drum audio I want to Copy and Paste over and over I select the section of the audio and do a Copy. Then I Paste the selection to where I want it. But if I go you paste it again the Paste menu item is grayed out as though once you Paste an item it gets erased from the "clipboard" and I must copy the original selection again. This is very inconvenient, Is there a way to retain what I copy to the clipboard so I can paste the selection over and over without the need to copy it over and over??

 

Thanks

[Andres Medina]

19 minutes ago, david40 said:

If I have a couple of beats of a drum audio I want to Copy and Paste over and over I select the section of the audio and do a Copy. Then I Paste the selection to where I want it. But if I go you paste it again the Paste menu item is grayed out as though once you Paste an item it gets erased from the "clipboard" and I must copy the original selection again. This is very inconvenient, Is there a way to retain what I copy to the clipboard so I can paste the selection over and over without the need to copy it over and over??

 

Thanks

Yes, use Edit/Paste Special instead: you can select the number of repeats.

[david40]

 

Thank you for your reply.

I am aware of this feature but as far as I know it will only repeat the selection in a series. I want to be able to repeat the individual Paste in multiple locations. (For example, a drum track of a kick drum has measures where the drummer messed up a dozen measures here and there. Rather than have him record a whole new track I can select a measure of audio that's good and then paste that over all the bad spots.) It would be a lot easier if what I copied was available to paste again and again with going back to re-copy it over and over.

The universal way Copy/Cut/Paste works in every Windows application I have ever used is that whatever gets Cut or Copied, is retained on the Clipboard until until you Copy or Cut a new selection, or close the application.  Several applications I use, upon Shutdown, actually ask you if I want to save the selection on the clipboard to use in another application. I can't understand why Cakewalk does not follow this universal convention? Is there a work around for this?

[User 905133]

24 minutes ago, david40 said:

The universal way Copy/Cut/Paste works in every Windows application I have ever used is that whatever gets Cut or Copied, is retained on the Clipboard until until you Copy or Cut a new selection, or close the application.  Several applications I use, upon Shutdown, actually ask you if I want to save the selection on the clipboard to use in another application. I can't understand why Cakewalk does not follow this universal convention? Is there a work around for this? [emphasis added]

• I just did the following:
  • Created a short recording on an Instrument Track
  • Used my mouse cursor to highlight/select a 2 measure section
  • Used Ctrl+C to copy the highlighted/selected measures into what I assume is a copy bufffer
  • Created a MIDI Track
  • Placed the cursor at a random spot on the  new track
  • Used Ctrl+V to paste a copy
  • Moved the cursor to another random spot
  • Used Ctrl+V to paste a second copy
• I repeated this several times.
• Next I repeated the cut-and-paste process several times with an audio track.  
  • Ctrl+C and Ctrl+ V worked.

What steps did you use?  If you used the same steps, maybe someone else can offer possible explanations for why it might not work for you.  Maybe there's something that I have enabled that you don't?  Possibly one of the Menu Bar > Edit >  Select options? 

Edited February 21, 2023 by User 905133
fixed typo (past --> paste)

[david40]

The only difference is that I am doing it inside an audio track not MIDI and I am Pasting to the the same audio track I copied the clip from. I just tried it again and I was able to paste the selection three time before it disappeared from the copy buffer. The fourth try the Paste button was grayed out. Maybe it has something to do with Windows 11 or they have a time limit as to how long something can remain in the buffer?

Edited February 21, 2023 by david40

[User 905133]

I'm on Win 10 Pro, so maybe that's part of it.  Also, I was copying to a clean track but you might be doing a copy and replace. I defer to others for possible explanations.  

[sjoens]

Windows 11 here. I just Ctrl+C'd an audio clip and Ctrl+V'd it 20 times in the same track. Then inserted a new audio track and continued the process till my keys broke. 

Current track must be in focus (track name highlighted). On occasion I would loose the paste function but it should work as long as you don't interrupt the process with another process.

Edited February 21, 2023 by sjoens

[sjoens]

1 hour ago, david40 said:

I am aware of this feature but as far as I know it will only repeat the selection in a series.

Yes but then you can move each copy where you want them to go. If you're still having trouble with copy/paste, this may work for you.

[Andres Medina]

3 hours ago, david40 said:

 

Thank you for your reply.

I am aware of this feature but as far as I know it will only repeat the selection in a series. I want to be able to repeat the individual Paste in multiple locations. (For example, a drum track of a kick drum has measures where the drummer messed up a dozen measures here and there. Rather than have him record a whole new track I can select a measure of audio that's good and then paste that over all the bad spots.) It would be a lot easier if what I copied was available to paste again and again with going back to re-copy it over and over.

The universal way Copy/Cut/Paste works in every Windows application I have ever used is that whatever gets Cut or Copied, is retained on the Clipboard until until you Copy or Cut a new selection, or close the application.  Several applications I use, upon Shutdown, actually ask you if I want to save the selection on the clipboard to use in another application. I can't understand why Cakewalk does not follow this universal convention? Is there a work around for this?

I understand.

To my knowledge, there is no need to use Copy multiple times. Just copy and paste as many times you want in different sections of your project.

At least in my system it is working as described. See video.

By the way, there is also the option to Copy-Paste Special-Link to Original Clips if you want to edit the "master" clip later: the linked clips will update as well.

 

[Promidi]

I just copied an Audio clip to the clipboard.  Then I pasted it multiple times to multiple random times and tracks. 

It worked fine here.

At no time did the clipboard empty.  At no time did I have to recopy the source.

[Lord Tim]

One thing I've found in the past is if you copy a section, you can paste it as many times as you like and it works as expected. However, if you just move or nudge some other clip (so not actually doing a Cut or Copy operation, just shifting the clip around in some way) it'll clear the clipboard. Not in front of the DAW to test that at the moment, so I can't remember if this was solved or is still a thing in the current release. Give that a go and see if you get similar results - it might be something we can track down and give some repeatable steps to the Bakers to look at.  

[Promidi]

Confirmed.  Moving any clip (MIDI or Audio) clears the clipboard.  (PC as per sig)

This is intended.

See:
 

 

[Lord Tim]

Well there you go! The old memory actually works!

I'd love to have a Clipboard View in the Browser where we can have multiple copied items on there so we can go back and refer to them whenever we want. I do get the "moving the clip is seen as a cut / paste, so therefore clears the buffer" operation thing, but it'd be nice at least to have that temporarily store the previous pasted item somewhere and restore it later - it always seemed to be an odd limitation.

[User 905133]

6 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

I'd love to have a Clipboard View in the Browser where we can have multiple copied items on there so we can go back and refer to them whenever we want.

This would be handy.  I'm wondering what's actually in the buffer/on the clipboard. Is it the actual audio or midi data? Or is the source, the start and end points, and the data type options chosen?  I had assumed the latter. If so, changes to a project in time (placement/location within the project) might mean all clipboard items would have to be updated quite often with typical editing. Just wondering about that.

Edited February 22, 2023 by User 905133
word change

[57Gregy]

Um, speaking of 'old memory', I'm certain I saw, somewhere, an option in Windows to save multiple items in the clipboard.
Let me look around. On W10 here.

[Lord Tim]

Yeah, that's Win+V (if you have it enabled in settings). Just gave it a go then by copying a bunch of clips in Cakewalk and checked the clipboard viewer, and it says it's empty, which is consistent with nothing actually being pasted outside of Cakewalk when I use CTRL+V.

That's got me really curious now. I think we need to call for a Baker to get some real answers!

@msmcleod @Noel Borthwick - where/how does paste work in CbB anyway? Is a multiple item clipboard a realistic FR or is it going to be a huge can of worms to try to implement?

Edited February 22, 2023 by Lord Tim

[57Gregy]

Yeah, I found it. Haven't tried it. So Cakewalk doesn't copy to Windows, but to some internal space?

 

[Lord Tim]

22 hours ago, User 905133 said:

I'm wondering what's actually in the buffer/on the clipboard. Is it the actual audio or midi data? Or is the source, the start and end points, and the data type options chosen?  I had assumed the latter. If so, changes to a project in time (placement/location within the project) might mean all clipboard items would have to be updated quite often with typical editing. Just wondering about that.

 

20 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

That's got me really curious now. I think we need to call for a Baker to get some real answers!

Hmmm... you know, sometimes it actually helps to actually go read the original linked thread instead of just wondering. 🙄 Turns out Mark actually answered this:

Quote

This is especially true in the case of audio, as the audio itself isn't copied to the clipboard - just its position within the audio files on disk (which may have changed by any subsequent move).

Yeah, so that guess was right @User 905133. I can see this being a huge headache to do if it's just pointers. Any number of operations could be performed since the original copy, making this unpredictable at best. To get it working like I was suggesting with the Clipboard Browser idea, that would essentially need to have copies made of each thing as their own saved WAV / MIDI files, which would be a really slow process if you're doing a lot of editing, and potentially disk filling if you're not careful. Mega Worm Can ahoy!

[Starship Krupa]

23 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

I can see this being a huge headache to do if it's just pointers. Any number of operations could be performed since the original copy, making this unpredictable at best.

It occurs to me that no wheels need be reinvented here. How does it work in other, similar, audio/video editing software? If most of them work a certain way and Cakewalk doesn't, that suggests a change might be due. We're talking "standards" here, but in addition to Windows/Microsoft standards, there are also standard behaviors among similar apps, which should probably be paid attention to. I know that developers dislike the argument that since a given feature works so handily in a competitor's product, their product should also do it the same way, but I think there's no call for it to be needlessly idiosyncratic either.

Compliance/use of the Windows Clipboard can be as robust as even working between two different apps that share the same datatype (pixels, text, etc.).

In your example, if it's confined to being within Cakewalk, let's posit that the user copies a section of audio or MIDI data to Cakewalk's clipboard, and then subsequently they perform half a dozen operations on the original timeline clip, then invoke Paste again. It sounds fraught with troubles, but keep in mind that assuming they made the changes to the original data using Cakewalk, Cakewalk should have no trouble handling that. After all, Cakewalk remembers what it does, doesn't it?

Bets are off if the user alters an underlying audio file with Explorer or another program, but that's true for other operations as well. We must be careful when doing anything to our audio data that isn't started from inside Cakewalk itself.

So let's say I select a section of a clip, Copy it, then delete the entire track. My expectation, unless I have explicitly copied to the clipboard again since the original copy, is that I will be able to continue to Paste that same section as many times as I want to into new tracks, old tracks, other simultaneously open Cakewalk projects, etc. Whether I use the Move or Split or Draw or Delete tools in between those operations shouldn't clear the clipboard.

(It doesn't 100% obey that now, but it's still how I'd expect it to work) When I'm working in a pixel editor that has a Move function, I can select an area of the picture, Copy it, then select the same or another area of the picture and use the Move or Delete (or whatever) tool, and that doesn't clear the original selection from the clipboard. There's a lot of pixel editing workflow that would go right up the creek for me if that were the case. Copy some pixels, then add a layer, switch back to the first layer and delete a bunch of stuff, move some stuff using the move tool (not Cut/Paste) change the hue, then Paste the pixels I copied earlier on top of the new layer. I do that kind of thing all the time.

It sounds like how Cakewalk is different is that it's treating its Move tool operations as a Cut/Paste macro, which IMO, may be the way that it is, but if so, it ain't standard. Use of the Move or Cut or Split or Draw tools should not change the contents of the clipboard. If I'm reading it correctly, it's not as if the clipboard then gets filled with the clip the user just dragged so it's not even a full Cut/Paste.

[sjoens]

MS Excel has a Clipboard Pane displaying it's contents where you can paste from, delete and clear the clipboard. Maybe CbB could implement similar in the Browser or ???

[Lord Tim]

That's the thing though, that's just text. You can have great swathes of text on a clipboard without much of an impact.

Now imagine this in CbB - you copy a chorus section of 3 tracks, all of which stretch out to the duration of the entire 7 minute long song (hey. it's prog rock, this is the short one on the album!). What it does currently, according to what was mentioned in the other thread, is say "right, you want THESE tracks, from THIS point to THAT point" and just references the original files.

If you were to copy this to a clipboard, like I was suggesting earlier, if would have to copy these WAV files. And not just the section you've copied from (because if you think about it, if you pasted in a chorus somewhere else and you think "you know, I really need that slight lead-in" it just wouldn't be there, since the WAV would have been bounced to a new clip. Or instead, it would be copying several 7 minute long WAV files to a clipboard, and pasting them back in with the ends slip edited. Anyone who has done a Save As with Copy Audio Files checked will know how long that can take. Even a bounce to clip operation to do the cropped clip thing is fairly expensive with time and disc space.

Really problematic, and I can see what it hasn't been brought in now.

That said, Erik has a point too - how do other DAWs (in particular) handle this kind of thing? I haven't done any testing on this myself as yet.