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Feature: Automation simplification / averaging


Josh Wolfer

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I would like a way to have cakewalk easily "simplify" or "average" out automation nodes, that were input from a controller. IE: riding fader volume.

Example, I use a midi controller to write initial automation. But then I want to touch it up later. I'd like Cakewalk to intelligently remove as many nodes as it can, to make tweaking with a mouse later on, easier. When working on film, I like to do one live pass on score ducking and then clean it up with the mouse. The main issue is that all of my motions are typically slightly late as I'm reacting to the video on screen (as you'd expect unless you have scenes completely memorized). When there are too many nodes, it makes grabbing the appropriate group and sliding it where it needs to go, slightly problematic because the boundary nodes collide. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't. 

There is a CAL for removing every x nodes, but that's too imprecise to really be useful to me. Other DAWs have simplify functions. I'd like Cakewalk to do so as well. 

In the screenshot, Red shows the actual automation written and blue shows an example of about what I'd like cakewalk to do. Almost like a quantize-ish function (not quite, but I think you get what I mean.)

I know I can just draw a new line with the mouse, but I'd prefer to not make 1000 spaghetti nodes all over the place.
Thoughts?

image.png.84e1f2ffe749baa612cb818e3d65d890.png

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Interesting idea...

Interim suggestion:

Right-click drag over the nodes you want to lose
Press delete
Right-click on the remaining envelope segment and select the curve type you want to use

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Thank you for the suggestion. That's exactly what I do now, it just eats up extra time and I'm trying to increase my workflow efficacy to pump out more work. 

Side note, the select group of nodes then delete seems to be slightly unpredictable. Sometimes it deletes them all and creates a hole (dashed line - no automation) other times it creates a simpler shape (almost exactly as I'm asking for here), and sometimes it just makes a hard line between nodes. 

Pretty odd behavior. But I appreciate your suggestion. 

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I've noticed deletion does have its own mind for selecting shape sometimes!  There's probably logic (first segment's type, last segment's type...) but I've never put my mind to working it out.  You can at least change the shape with a single click!

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pretty sure if the simplification simply remove redundant nodes within a given % of the adjacent ones, that would seem straight forward like the video. if you're asking for it to create curves based on the node pattern as showing in the first post, i'd suggest that is way less intuitive for the programming to make - my interpretation of that would have been a bowl not a descending arc to a point... also, i wouldn't want my gaps (the dotted sections) to be automatically filled since i usually mean them to keep the last position steady until next change without needing to consume any automation processing.

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2 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

pretty sure if the simplification simply remove redundant nodes within a given % of the adjacent ones, that would seem straight forward like the video. if you're asking for it to create curves based on the node pattern as showing in the first post, i'd suggest that is way less intuitive for the programming to make - my interpretation of that would have been a bowl not a descending arc to a point... also, i wouldn't want my gaps (the dotted sections) to be automatically filled since i usually mean them to keep the last position steady until next change without needing to consume any automation processing.

Well, interpolating points with different type of curves is a basic mathematical skill that's been translated into several different, efficient, algorithms a long time ago.

The hardest bit would be to find a GUI design that allows the user to pick up the points and the curve he thinks fit better in a smooth and effective way.

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