Positive feedback: Smart Swipe is awesome!

[Starship Krupa]

I just stumbled on this really handy timesaver, I think I did a search and it turned up in an old list of release notes.

As a self-recording drummer, who all the time has to perform operations across 4 tracks at once, hop behind the kit, get up, go over to the DAW, repeat until inspiration is a distant memory, anything that saves a few seconds of repetitive drudgery adds up quickly.

Like for instance Quick Grouping, I use it all the time. I wish I could use Quick Grouping in parts of my life outside of Cakewalk. Cntrl-click to select shave gel nozzle, sink faucet, shower handle, then hold and whoosh! the shower's off, sink's on, blob of gel ready, all set for a shave.

If you don't know what I'm talking about with Smart Swipe, check page 215 of the current Reference Guide.

If you don't feel like clicking, I don't know if I can 'splain it, but:

Say you want to Mute or Solo 10 tracks (or buses) that are all adjacent, which is a use case that does happen a lot, most people group all of their guitars, strings, drums, vocals, whatever. Click on the Mute button on the first one, hold your mouse button down, and swipe across the buttons on the other 9 and you're done. One gesture replaces 10, or if you selected the tracks for Quick Grouping, 3 or 4.

Obviously, it's most useful in the Track and Console Views, but it works for certain operations in the Piano Roll, Staff View(!), and Step Sequencer.

You may think that this belongs more in the "Tips and Tricks" sub, except that it is my shot across the bow to warn that I shall now commence to pester the Bakers to add Smart Swipe functionality to EVERYTHING APPLICABLE. ??

For instance, it doesn't work on Freeze, which seems odd, since Quick Grouping does. And a couple of the buttons seem not to be working in Track View, like Phase and Interleave didn't get their Smart Swipe when they were put back, so mind that if you check it out. I'm sure los panaderos will take care of it.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Starship Krupa

[John Bradley]

9 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

For instance, it doesn't work on Freeze, which seems odd, since Quick Grouping does.

Is there a way to Freeze more than one track/instrument at a time? Haven't found one.

As it can take a while to freeze each track, it'd be nice to be able to select several, hit 'freeze track(s)' and wander off to get more coffee.

[Starship Krupa]

If you continue reading to the end of the sentence you quoted....you see where I say "Quick Grouping does?"

I was not kidding.

Select the tracks you wish to Freeze (which you can do by swiping, if they are adjacent), hold your Ctrl key, and click the Freeze button on any selected track. Then kick back as all those tracks freeze.

[chris.r]

10 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

You may think that this belongs more in the "Tips and Tricks" sub, except that it is my shot across the bow to warn that I shall now commence to pester the Bakers to add Smart Swipe functionality to EVERYTHING APPLICABLE. ??

Yep, pretty impressive timesaver, in vein of S1 quick workflow a bit. Next... maybe a swipe over plugins in the console to bypass all of them in the same row with one swipe, pleeez?  

Edited August 9, 2020 by chris.r

[Starship Krupa]

18 minutes ago, chris.r said:

in vein of S1 quick workflow a bit

It may be a holdover for all I know. I think the release notes I saw were for improvements added in S3 but I can't be sure.

[John Bradley]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

Select the tracks you wish to Freeze (which you can do by swiping, if they are adjacent), hold your Ctrl key, and click the Freeze button on any selected track. Then kick back as all those tracks freeze.

Neat. I don't usually have the freeze button visible, so I never would have tried that. Odd that I can't select multiple tracks and freeze more than one at a time via the right-click menu. 

Then again, no one's every accused Cakewalk of being the Most Consistent Thing Ever.

[Starship Krupa]

I'm a big fan of the Quick Group feature, use it every time I mix. But as with some similar features in Cakewalk, it's implemented inconsistently in that it works on some things, and then it doesn't work on other things that you would expect it to or in the way you would expect it to, as in the case you note, where it only works when you do it with the button, not with the context menu.

I suspect that this is due to the scenario of for instance Quick Groups being implemented as a feature, then several years later, these other features get added and it just doesn't occur to the developers to have Quick Grouping apply to the new features.

With a program as old as Cakewalk, where so many features have been added at different times in different phases by development teams with different personnel, things like that are inevitable, and that's what feedback is for.

For me, an elephant in the room is all the things that Undo doesn't undo, like mixer knob movements. Sometimes I slip with the mouse, and sometimes I adjust the control on the wrong strip. Having Undo apply to those moves is pretty essential, and Cakewalk just doesn't do it.

[John Bradley]

6 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

For me, an elephant in the room is all the things that Undo doesn't undo, like mixer knob movements. Sometimes I slip with the mouse, and sometimes I adjust the control on the wrong strip. Having Undo apply to those moves is pretty essential, and Cakewalk just doesn't do it.

<enthusiastic agreement intensifies>

Edited August 10, 2020 by John Bradley

[kc23]

On 8/9/2020 at 11:12 AM, chris.r said:

Yep, pretty impressive timesaver, in vein of S1 quick workflow a bit. Next... maybe a swipe over plugins in the console to bypass all of them in the same row with one swipe, pleeez?  

As far as I know, swipe is part of the multitouch implementation, which predates StudioOne by a long time. I´ve been using it for several years now.

 

20 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

For me, an elephant in the room is all the things that Undo doesn't undo, like mixer knob movements. Sometimes I slip with the mouse, and sometimes I adjust the control on the wrong strip. Having Undo apply to those moves is pretty essential, and Cakewalk just doesn't do it.

Right click whatever mixer view or track view knob or fader, and on the context menu you´ll have a "revert to"-the previous value that control had. Is a just one-level "undo", but it is there.
Having said that, I also wish knob and fader moves were part of the "real" undo command.