Problem shortening a track

[NOLAGuy]

Tried to find help in forum answers or in the docs but no luck. If it's there somewhere, appreciate a link.

Having a problem reducing the length of a track to eliminate unused part at the end.

After using the CAL routine to split a MIDI drum track into each sound on seperate tracks, I wound up with several tracks that extended out atound 70 bars longer than the project end. I tried the standard mouse highlighting and doing the Edit Menu "Delete" but that is grayed out. Tried Ripple Edit Selection as well as Ripple Edit All, doing the same mouse highlighting, which the Edit Menu then has the Delete option not grayed out, but neither option eliminated the unused portion on a track.

At the end of the track there appears the standard 4-hyphen end of bar marker, but could not figure out a way to grab that marker and drag it.

My problem is that even when I set the green tabs length setting in the top bar marker area to the length I want to export to a Wav file, the Export option ignores that and records to the end of the longest track, which requires me to edit the audio file to shorten the overall length, but since this is a work-in-process project, it's a nuisance to do so after every export.

Appreciate any tips, as I never had to "shorten" tracks before, only to delete end parts of content on the tracks.

This has gotta be pretty simple, but obviously I'm getting senile and missing it!

Edited June 25, 2021 by NOLAGuy
clarification

[rfssongs]

I've had the same issue a few times. Sometimes you can view the Event list & get rid of the problem event at the end if something has been tagged on at the end. There are a few times though that nothing I did solved the problem. In this case I either ended up copying everything to a new file or I edited the Audio file & cut it there.

Good Luck

[Harddrive]

I have this too.

I've edited tracks so that they are like the true song in structure and length, and I still have a period at the end which runs in silence until whatever event is at the end is passed. IN Event List, I cannot see this. It seems like there is some pre-programmed song length set in there which cannot be rearranged. Even pulling the green markers does nothing.

Anyone help?

HARDDRIVE

[Byron Dickens]

EDIT/ SELECT/ ALL will show you where there is data beyond the end of your song.  Split all the tracks where you want it to end and delete everything past that.

[NOLAGuy]

4 minutes ago, bdickens said:

EDIT/ SELECT/ ALL will show you where there is data beyond the end of your song.  Split all the tracks where you want it to end and delete everything past that.

I can see the where the track ends and the end marker is the 4 hyphen doohickey symbol. The underlying problem is that when selecting the "blank space" at the end of the track, the EDIT menu has the DELETE options grayed out, so it's not recognizing the selected area. Ripple Edit on the blank space does have the EDIT menu DELETE options not grayed out, but choosing DELETE does not get rid of the blank space to the end of the track.

Seems like there has to be a simple way to do it, and hoped the forum readers would offer the solution. But if no solution in another day or so, then I will forward a note to tech support on the issue. Could be a "bug".

 

[John Vere]

I had an idea a while back when this topic was brought up again. If the Arranger Track had a END module that had code built in to stop the song where it was placed. 
Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus/End

 

[bitflipper]

I've been lobbying for years for start-of-song and end-of-song markers. These would work like regular markers, but have an additional flag and checkbox in the marker dialog, and maybe be shown in a different color. Beyond that, they would behave like any other markers: show in the Marker List, be moveable, name-able and delete-able.

In the absence of such a feature, what I do is create my own start-of-song and end-of-song markers and label them "Start" and "End". Then, when I export, I place the cursor at the Start marker and press F9 to make that the start of the timeline selection, then move to the End marker and press F10. That way, I can precisely control where the export begins and ends and it'll be consistent every time. If I listen back to the exported file and notice it's truncated (e.g. reverb tails or ambience being cut off abruptly), I can easily nudge the End marker a little to the right.

[rfssongs]

6 hours ago, bdickens said:

EDIT/ SELECT/ ALL will show you where there is data beyond the end of your song.  Split all the tracks where you want it to end and delete everything past that.

Sounds like it should work but does not always work, I'm guessing that in these cases there is some kind of a problem with the file.

Edited June 27, 2021 by rfssongs
Syntax

[John Vere]

Actually what I do is always just export my mix and then I top and tail ( add fade out)  in a proper wave editor. That way it's perfect every time. Cakewalk never gets it right. Sure it's an extra step but if you take your mastering seriously it's pretty easy to do this properly. 

Edited June 27, 2021 by John Vere

[Harddrive]

18 hours ago, bdickens said:

EDIT/ SELECT/ ALL will show you where there is data beyond the end of your song.  Split all the tracks where you want it to end and delete everything past that.

Tried that.

There still seems to be something sat at the original song length which denotes song end, whereas if I have excised some bars and shotened the song, the song still rolls onto it's original length.

This never would happen with SONAR 8.

Who do we lobby on here to get this looked at as a 'fix'?

HARDDRIVE

[lapasoa]

Never heard of "Ripple Edit"?

[TimV]

10 minutes ago, lapasoa said:

Never heard of "Ripple Edit"?

He specifically said he tried ripple edit selection and ripple edit all.

[scook]

Never had Ripple Edit fail as described in this thread.

May want to submit the project to support@cakewalk.com 

[NOLAGuy]

47 minutes ago, scook said:

Never had Ripple Edit fail as described in this thread.

May want to submit the project to support@cakewalk.com 

I will submit it, if for no other reason than to see if it might be an odd bug.  Ripple edit always works for me on other tracks that I created or recorded, but these tracks were created by the CAL split drum track into individual part tracks, and normally this routine ends the track at the same point the drum track ended. How it happened is not the real issue, though, I'm just frustrated that I can't highlight the end part of the track and use standard edit features to delete. When using Ripple Edit, at least the EDIT menu has the Delete options not grayed out, but doing the delete doesn't appear to work. Basic question is why the EDIT menu delete options are grayed out when any section at the end of these tracks is highlighted/selected.

 

Edited June 27, 2021 by NOLAGuy
correction

[scook]

I have not used "Split Notes To Tracks. CAL" since Live Synth Pro days and now with 2021.06, drum maps are history for simple note naming.

If a repeatable recipe for the issue can be developed that often leads to a fix.

Bear in mind CAL was deprecated over twenty years ago.

[Byron Dickens]

2 hours ago, scook said:

Never had Ripple Edit fail as described in this thread.

May want to submit the project to support@cakewalk.com 

Never had the method I described fail, either.

[NOLAGuy]

1 hour ago, scook said:

I have not used "Split Notes To Tracks. CAL" since Live Synth Pro days and now with 2021.06, drum maps are history for simple note naming.

Hi scook. Always appreciate your experienced guidance, but could you clarify  what you mean by " now with 2021.06, drum maps are history for simple note naming."

Are you suggesting using drum maps instead of the CAL routine, or that drum maps, as well as the CAL routine, are no longer needed with new features of Cakewalk, given my desired goal is to use different audio FX plugins on certain percussion parts?  

[scook]

Pretty sure most drum map usage is note labeling. With 2021.06, alternate note names in the Label frame are persistent and stored per-track in the project.

One use case for drum maps that still exists is mapping a track to multiple synths. Using a drum map, a single MIDI track drive up to 128 different synths instances. What this method does not allow is mapping the same note to multiple synths. For this and other cases where MIDI data needs to be distributed to multiple tracks, this method works fine for now

 

Many CAL scripts have been made redundant by MFX plug-ins and functions built into the DAW.

I stopped using "Split Notes To Tracks.CAL" because every drum synth I have used for years supports multiple audio outs. The better ones allow the user to assign the instruments to outputs as needed.

[John Vere]

1 hour ago, scook said:

I stopped using "Split Notes To Tracks.CAL" because every drum synth I have used for years supports multiple audio outs. The better ones allow the user to assign the instruments to outputs as needed.

This!  Only drum vst I might use that doesn't have multi outputs is SI Drums. And in the past if I wanted to create separate tracks from a full drum track, I would simply copy the track say 4-6 times and then delete unwanted notes from each track in PVR leaving me with 4-6 drum tracks which each contained the parts I wanted. I can do this real fast.  

[rfssongs]

2 hours ago, John Vere said:

This!  Only drum vst I might use that doesn't have multi outputs is SI Drums. And in the past if I wanted to create separate tracks from a full drum track, I would simply copy the track say 4-6 times and then delete unwanted notes from each track in PVR leaving me with 4-6 drum tracks which each contained the parts I wanted. I can do this real fast.  

Just to expand on that a bit for those who may not realize. If you click on a note on the piano at the side it will select all of those notes in the entire track. From that selection you can delete or drag move notes to a different note. This can be super helpful if you want to change a drum sound.