Take Lanes state Today

[micv]

On 1/5/2019 at 10:10 AM, Noel Borthwick said:

 

Clip envelopes are per clip and have no relationship to lanes. As Keni mentioned only track envelopes are displayed in lanes not clip envelopes. If you move a clip its clip envelope is completely independent from any envelope on the track.

I know that there's Clip env in the Track itself and Clip env in each Take Lane.  I'm talking about the Clip env in the Take Lane.

Perhaps my terminologies are wrong, but here some specific examples : 

1. Let say you have  clips, (Record 1, Record 2, Record x) in a Take Lane, and you want to lower the gain for the clip Record 1.  So you create a gain env in that Take Lane, now you have gain env for all the clips in that Take Lane, i,e, Record 2, Record x  also have gain env.   Wouldn't it be better to, say, right click on Record 1 and create a gain env just for Record 1? 

2.  Now you create some nodes and change the gain for the various part of Record 1.  Now copy or move Record 1 to another Take Lane, yes the env is copied with the clip  but try to add/delete nodes or change the gain level of the env of the copied or moved clip, it won't let you do it. 

3.  Let say you leave the Take Lane gain env active (Clip Automation selected), and you draw some env for some clip on another Take Lane but within the same time frame as Record 2, now suddenly Record 2 have the nodes drawn onto its env, when you don't intend to touch Record 2 at all.  This behavior is not consistent but occurred more than enough to be annoying.

 

 

 

[Noel Borthwick]

1 hour ago, micv said:

1. Let say you have  clips, (Record 1, Record 2, Record x) in a Take Lane, and you want to lower the gain for the clip Record 1.  So you create a gain env in that Take Lane, now you have gain env for all the clips in that Take Lane, i,e, Record 2, Record x  also have gain env.   Wouldn't it be better to, say, right click on Record 1 and create a gain env just for Record 1? 

When you choose the edit filter to edit an envelope it will add clip envelopes for ALL clips on that lane. You can still right click the clip you want an add an envelope manually.

1 hour ago, micv said:

Now you create some nodes and change the gain for the various part of Record 1.  Now copy or move Record 1 to another Take Lane, yes the env is copied with the clip  but try to add/delete nodes or change the gain level of the env of the copied or moved clip, it won't let you do it. 

It will. When you copied it to the new lane the envelope is not "active" so you cant edit it. You can still shift click the envelope to activate it or set the edit filter on the new lane to allow editing.

1 hour ago, micv said:

Let say you leave the Take Lane gain env active (Clip Automation selected), and you draw some env for some clip on another Take Lane but within the same time frame as Record 2, now suddenly Record 2 have the nodes drawn onto its env, when you don't intend to touch Record 2 at all.  This behavior is not consistent but occurred more than enough to be annoying.

This sounds like a bug. I tried to repro it but couldn't unfortunately.

[micv]

18 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

You can still right click the clip you want an add an envelope manually. 

Could you confirm and show me where in the menu it is?  I don't see any envelop in the Right click menu.

 

22 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

It will. When you copied it to the new lane the envelope is not "active" so you cant edit it. You can still shift click the envelope to activate it or set the edit filter on the new lane to allow editing.

For me the env cannot be activated in the Take Lane once moved out of the that lane.  You can collapse the lanes and go to the Track and edit the clipthere but not in the Take Lane.

[saxon1066]

On 12/27/2018 at 1:01 PM, Logan_4600 said:

Hi everyone! Back to business in the new forum! So, if many of you, like me, followed the continuos releases of Sonar through the years, I bet y'all remember how divisive Take Lanes were, and, mostly, how buggy they were. I've tried, really tried, but Track Layers were so essential to my workflow that I'm still on 8.5. So, beign 2018, post SPlat era, what is the state of TL? Is there any other new retro-feature that resembles Track Layers? How did you overcome them?

Yep, I loved layers and hated the new lanes (I think I got that right--it was the new thing that I hated).   I was vocal in that old discussion.  I always do multiple takes of every instrumental performance, sometimes up to 50 takes!  (Because I suck as a musician).   I have gotten around the loss of track layers by using track templates:  I pack 8-10 tracks into a track folder, save them as a track template, and use the tracks as if they were track layers.  It actually works better for me, since now I can archive any tracks that I want to save for review later, saving CPU, whereas you couldn't archive an individual layer.  When I want to do some more takes, I just import my pre-configured track template--a track folder packed with tracks.  I do all the editing and comping with those tracks, and pasting clips back and forth between the tracks is bug-free.  Also, the mute and solo buttons are larger this way!  I was often mis-clicking those in the layers.

Edited January 9, 2019 by saxon1066

[Royal Yaksman]

I wonder if both sides could be appeased by giving some new functionality to the comping tool? Right now if you select the comping tool, it only works on takes in lanes. If you hover over a normal track (non take lane) with the comping tool selected, you don't get the option to use the tool. Perhaps the option could be added to the comping tool, so that if you select it and try to click on a non take lane clip, it presents a pop up that allows you to select which tracks you will be comping and the output destination of the final composite track. But here's the thing. It doesn't automatically group the selected tracks into lanes. It keeps the selected tracks as individual tracks and gives you the power of comping on standard tracks, albeit with creating a new track to house the new composite.

This would allow people to retain any envelope information and maintain any fx or editing choices if they decided to move clips around the track view. Essentially it would give two options for comping, one being the established lanes comping and the new (somewhat old) functionality being tracks comping.

For simplicity I think a way to think about this could be similar to ripple editing. Where when you are ripple editing, you turn ripple on, complete your ripple edits and then turn ripple off. Likewise with track comping you could turn track comping on and from that point any selections, splits, clip movement etc. is all non-destructive, you create your composite (or multiple composites) and then turn track comping off.

Another thing this method of track comping would allow is easy creation of glitch sequences from tracks or instruments that were not recorded at the same time and they wouldn't even have to be the same instrument as you could select any track to comp with any track.

[Grem]

On 1/7/2019 at 10:31 PM, micv said:

 

Could you confirm and show me where in the menu it is?  I don't see any envelop in the Right click menu.

 

 

I thought it was there like Noel said. But when I looked, I could not find it either!

[Logan_4600]

I'm actually surprised seeing that there's so many of us that, after all this time, still miss Layers. I feel kinda' reliefed by it.

[Noel Borthwick]

On 1/7/2019 at 11:31 PM, micv said:

Could you confirm and show me where in the menu it is?  I don't see any envelop in the Right click menu.

 

For me the env cannot be activated in the Take Lane once moved out of the that lane.  You can collapse the lanes and go to the Track and edit the clipthere but not in the Take Lane.

I think I misspoke you can manipulate clips envelopes on individual clips from the context menu on the envelope but you cannot add envelopes to a clip that doesnt have them from the menu. Sorry for the confusion. The only way to add clip envelopes is via the edit filter.

Also I think there is a bug when there are multiple clips on different lanes with envelopes like you see. I can activate it but its not allowing editing. We'll bug this up and fix it for a future update. Thanks!

[micv]

Perhaps I can suggest a small change that could further enhance Lanes and not alienated the Layers camp:

Currently if the lanes are collapsed, the 'parent' track shows all clips (including muted clips)  for any lane that is not muted.  Which makes the track view cluttered, confusing (active clip could be hidden below muted clip) and thus not useful for editing.

What if the track only shows active clips?  So after you have selected the clips you want to keep in the lanes, you can use the track to do editing.  Yes you can use Flatten Comp, but I almost never use Flatten Comp since it's destructive process.

[Keni]

9 minutes ago, micv said:

Perhaps I can suggest a small change that could further enhance Lanes and not alienated the Layers camp:

Currently if the lanes are collapsed, the 'parent' track shows all clips (including muted clips)  for any lane that is not muted.  Which makes the track view cluttered, confusing (active clip could be hidden below muted clip) and thus not useful for editing.

What if the track only shows active clips?  So after you have selected the clips you want to keep in the lanes, you can use the track to do editing.  Yes you can use Flatten Comp, but I almost never use Flatten Comp since it's destructive process.

I'm with you 100% here. Track gfx vs. lane gfx is a big issue for me. The situation you describe is one of them.

Another being the user ability to disable the track view gfx when lanes are exposed. That extra image is incredibly confusing to my eye. I can easily see which clips are promoted as the are full color next to the muted color.

 

Then the issue of zoom? If i have the lanes open, why would i want the track image larger than the clips? I am editing the clips in the lanes. Currently if i zoom an area of lanes, i get a zoom of the track with small lanes beneath it.

 

 

[chris.r]

8 hours ago, Keni said:

Another being the user ability to disable the track view gfx when lanes are exposed. That extra image is incredibly confusing to my eye. I can easily see which clips are promoted as the are full color next to the muted color.

But then, seeing smooth transition of the waveform from clip to clip is much helpful.

[Keni]

46 minutes ago, chris.r said:

But then, seeing smooth transition of the waveform from clip to clip is much helpful.

Yes. That's why i wish it to be switchable. There are times (few) where it can be helpful.

[Starship Krupa]

Given the depth of the feature set of Cakewalk and all, even though I've been using it since April I still consider myself a "newbie."

I pick feature by feature to really delve into as my needs demand. Currently it's Lanes.

I've read people complaining about the Lanes workflow and all and I had been thinking "well, I probably don't have so much to worry about, my comping needs are probably not that sophisticated; at most, I just record half a dozen takes in Loop mode, do a little cuttin' and pastin', and that's it."

Here are my findings.

First, I started out in Comping Mode, 'cause, like, I wanted to do some comping later on, and the documentation said it would "create Take lanes and overwrite any pre-existing sound in the part of the track you are recording into." Which was a little scary with the "overwrite" part, but I figured that it's an NLE, nothing actually gets overwritten, they mean the previous takes or clips will get muted when I make subsequent takes. Right? And I said Store Takes In A Single Track, because hey, otherwise I'm not getting Lanes, I'm getting a whole new track each take, which is not what I want, I want to comp from lanes.

And yes, that's what happened, I got a bunch of lanes with takes in them, except that if I messed up anywhere and made a take that wasn't exactly the same length as the one(s) that came before it, subsequent takes would get split up into clips and could wind up seemingly anywhere. They'd get put over into the previous take lane,  the next one, I thought at one point one wound up underneath other clips, it was like a serial killer had come through with a chainsaw and sliced up my takes and reassembled them with other aborted takes.

So I ticked the box for Create New Lanes On Overlap and it stopped putting my clips in the wrong lanes, but it still kept chopping them at the boundaries of the previous takes.

Then I tried a recipe from a forum member for Sound on Sound mode where I also selected Auto Punch and  Mute Previous Takes, but that resulted in no waveforms being drawn on the screen, no metering during recording, basically, no visual feedback whatsoever that recording was taking place other than the playhead moving. And as I later discovered, MIDI would not record in this mode. It resulted in nice, non-chopped up takes, though.

All of the monitoring and waveforms worked if I took it out of Auto Punch, but then I lost the muting of the previous takes and it quickly turned into a cacophany, like Robert Fripp on Ex-Lax.

Last was Overwrite Mode, which seemed promising at first, although when I asked about it on the forum, nobody replied.

Then I discovered why nobody wanted to talk about it.

The description was similar to Sound On Sound, "Choose this option to overwrite any pre-existing sound in the part of the track you are recording into." Same except missing "create Take Lanes," but I knew that it created Take Lanes, so why not give it a shot? The "overwrite" had to just refer to muting the previous takes, they couldn't mean actual destruction of audio data. Right?

Set 'er up for a 2 measure loop, and just let it go while I practiced a guitar line. 19 takes and all is happy. I cut one short and start again to see how it handles a short take, see if we get the serial killer effect.

Hit Record again, play some more guitar and then Stop.

The results? Not serial killer, it's more like Left Behind! I now have Lanes 20-32, which all have the audio I just recorded, and 1-19 which are empty. For some reason, Cakewalk thinks I want all my previous lanes to be not just muted, but actually devoid of their contents. Not deleted, which would free up some screen space, but just sitting there with nothing displayed in them. I was able to Ctrl-Z and get it back, so the recording is still there in the file, but the lanes have been emptied. I haven't seen the movies, but it reminded me of the trailer for Left Behind where they're just left holding empty clothing.

What I was not able to do in any mode was record multiple straight takes of audio in varying lengths without having the program chop it up into clips against my will, sometimes moving those clips to adjacent lanes.

I accept that the chopping up thing in Comping Mode is a feature for a workflow other than what I'm doing, and that's fine, but can we be given the option to turn it off? Or a way to adapt one of the other modes to the workflow I describe? Sound on Sound would work great if I could mute previous takes, Overwrite would work great if I could disable Left Behind mode and have it not empty the audio from my previous lanes, so we're not that far off.

[Starship Krupa]

On 1/4/2019 at 6:08 PM, Misha said:

If it fixes the issue of placing newly recorded take lanes into previously muted lanes,  it will make Cakewalk near perfect for me.

I believe that Noel has said that this is a feature, not a bug. Maybe the idea is that the next take is assumed to be one that you wish to comp with the last one, but that is seldom the case with me or the people I record. We record lots of complete (or aborted) takes, then audition them to find the good bits and comp from there.

Having takes all mixed up with each other or cut up into clips makes that task needlessly complicated.

From Preferences, I thought that Create New Lanes On Overlap was the answer. But the way it works is Create New Lanes On Overlap And Cut The Newly Recorded Takes Up Into Clips Based On The Length Of Previous Flubbed Takes. So it's almost the answer, but not quite.

[Misha]

13 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Having takes all mixed up with each other or cut up into clips makes that task needlessly complicated.

Erik, I believe you did not understand what I was referring to....  I was talking about new material being recorded on previously muted take lanes.

see attached.

[Keni]

28 minutes ago, Misha said:

Erik, I believe you did not understand what I was referring to....  I was talking about new material being recorded on previously muted take lanes.

see attached.

Yes Misha.

 

I agree that this is obviously in need of attention. I too have run into it. IMHO, I belueve the system needs to restrict new recordings on muted lanes. Very counter-intuitive.

 

[Starship Krupa]

15 hours ago, Misha said:

Erik, I believe you did not understand what I was referring to....  I was talking about new material being recorded on previously muted take lanes. 

That was one of the things that I was seeing, and I thought I remembered Noel saying something about how that was how it was supposed to work in Comping mode, but on the subject of lanes, there is plenty of "not understanding" on my part, so I will cop to just about anything. ? Mea culpa.

Maybe he said that that was how it was supposed to work with UNmuted take lanes and I misunderstood? In any case, if it's a bug, please fix it, if it's a feature, please give me a way to bypass it.

When we have a  preference that allows us to select Create New Lanes On Overlap, it seems odd to create the new lanes but then go ahead and put half of the new material in the old lanes, or it does put the material in the new lanes, but for whatever reason cuts it into clips whose boundaries reflect the start and stop points of the previous takes.

Like Fantasy Island? "You said you wanted new Lanes, Mr. Krupa. You never said anything about putting your Takes in them." (Roarke smiles enigmatically).

[Grem]

Here is my work flow. I give this example to try as show how Take Lanes work very well and without any of the problems encountered in past posts.

 

I have my song that I am going to record vocals on. I set up the loop points  on the first verse. Start loop point a measure or two before the vocals are to start. End loop point just a few beats, maybe a whole measure after the first verse ends.

Then I set up Punch In/Out points within the start/stop loop points. So what I have setup is a repeating section of the song that auto punches in/out. Then I start to record as many takes as I feel is getting it done. Sometimes 5-8, sometimes as many as 20-25. It's never the same. Nor does it need to be. But every take recorded will be the same length.

 

Now I move on to the Pre-Chorus/Chorus and set up the same type of loop points and auto punch in/out. And then I record. And here is the part that Noel was talking about I believe. When I start recording, it places the takes in the same lanes as my first verse takes. I can do as little or as many takes as I want. If it's less, then there will be empty lanes left over. If I go over , it just adds lanes as needed. And because it does this, I can record the whole part on the same trk and not end up with 100's of lanes on one trk, which would happen as many of my songs have three to four verses, three or more chorus, bridges, outros on and on. Me doing 20 takes for each part it adds up.

 

Then I move on down the song till I get it done. I do this for the vocals, the lead/rhythm guitar, bass guitar, what ever is needed.

Then I come back and comp a rough take to use as a guide to record the other parts. Once I have the whole vocal/guitar part like I need for that phase of the song, I flatten the comp. The great thing about flattening the comp is that as the song progresses I can go back anytime and un-flatten it, and I can see which takes I used, because it was remembered and reapplied when the flatten trk was undone.

 

It really is a great system that I don't want them to change (and hope they don't).

 

Now I haven't even explained how I can go through about 20-30 takes for each part of the song like it was nothing. Then add that I do this for the vocals, bck voc, rhythm /lead guitar, bass guitar (which sometimes is well over 150 takes) and you begin to see what a time saver this is.

 

 

[Starship Krupa]

Thanks for the detailed workflow description, Grem.

The existing modes and their variations might work without a hitch for me as well if my songs could be recorded entirely in bites that didn't run the entire length of the song.

You're setting out with the idea that you are making a song that will be comped together, and planning and tracking accordingly.

Where I run into problems is when I want to lay down drum or rhythm guitar tracks that go for the entire length of the song, and I want to play them like that and just do a minimal amount of comping. I might do 5 takes, but they're 5 takes of the whole song, not 5 takes of the bridge, 3 takes of the first verse, 6 takes of the second verse, etc.

I sometimes actually nail a take and don't do any comping at all. It goes right from recording to mixing, just use the editing tools to cut the lip smacks and breath sucks out of the vocals, maybe nudge a kick or snare or bass note, no "comping" as such in the sense of assembling the track from various independently recorded parts.

How I mostly do my tracking up is that I set Cakewalk up to record in Loop mode with Loop Markers that are 2 measures farther apart than the length of my song.

Then (for instance) I sit down at the drums, hit "R," wait through the first bar, play through the song, let the cymbals ring through the empty measure, then repeat as many times as it takes for me to get a "keeper."

This works a TREAT as long as I play through the full song each time and let it loop. I will end up with what I want, which is either a pile of takes with a full good one I can use, or multiple takes I can stitch together. Nice, full-length takes, each in their own lanes, pre-grouped, OH-L, OH-R, Snare, Kick.

If, however, I drop a stick 2 measures in while tracking and decide that I don't want to sit through the entire song to wait for it to start over, that's when things get more difficult. If I stop the recording, top it, and start over, it will of course leave a stub clip. And then when I start recording again and Cakewalk comes to that point in the tracking, it will stop recording in the current clip in the current lane and start a new clip adjacent to the stub clip in the previous lane and continue the recording in that clip.

Since my goal in all this is complete song-length clips, this messes me up.

I don't like to play the game of "I think it would be pretty simple to" but it doesn't seem like we're that far from having a Take Lanes mode that would make people like me happy. I think if it could work just like Sound on Sound mode, but mute the previous takes, that's how I want to record. Or a checkbox for Restrict Take To Its Current Lane or whatever.

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

If I stop the recording, top it, and start over, it will of course leave a stub clip. And then when I start recording again and Cakewalk comes to that point in the tracking, it will stop recording in the current clip in the current lane and start a new clip adjacent to the stub clip in the previous lane and continue the recording in that clip.

That's unusual. If 'Create New Lanes on Overlap' is enabled, CbB should put the whole new take in a new lane. I played around, and was unable to make it do otherwise, regardless of where a 'stub' from a previously aborted take started and ended.

But if you don't intend to keep partial takes, you can just Ctrl-Z to undo the aborted recording, which will delete the partially recorded lane and heal the splits in previous takes.

Edited January 15, 2019 by David Baay