Marker enhancements/vertical guides/rulers

[Starship Krupa]

I've been doing my first heavy-duty comping with Cakewalk, trying to learn as much as I can about the tools and behaviors, and I ran across something that I've used when comping in the other DAW's and NLE's that Cakewalk just doesn't have, which is a way to set vertical guides (or rulers).

In most the other programs I've used, these were part of markers. Every marker you set has a "tail" that runs all the way from the timeline ruler at the top to the bottom of the last visible track. Observe:

This allows the user to visually align various objects and events.

A marker (or ruler as they are sometimes called) such as this may be placed off-grid, so that for instance, if one has audio events that do no line up to the global grid they may turn off snap-to-grid, set a marker by ear, then turn snap back on and still have this line to use for lining things up to.

In the capture I'm using above, I have an off-grid automation node, which could line up to a syllable in the vocal or some other audio event.

To make this happen, Cakewalk's current marker system would be enhanced to have these "tails" that could be switched on or off, or there could be another type of marker in addition to the ones we have now. I like the former option, because it would make for less timeline ruler clutter and merely be an enhancement to an existing feature rather than a whole new thing to get used to.

In use, it eliminates a lot of zooming in to examine and place events (and zooming back out), as well as a certain amount of turning snap off and on, depending on implementation. It also provides more visual indication of sections of a song, or whatever else one uses markers for.

[scook]

While waiting maybe this will do...

Before the Aim Assist line was extended through buses, I wrote an autohotkey script to draw a vertical line through SONAR at the current mouse position bound to Windows+a. I compiled the script for those who did not have autohotkey installed. The original source is here. The

Else If WinActive("ahk_exe i)SONARPLT.exe")

needs to be updated to support CbB. I could compile a version that supports CbB if needed.

[Starship Krupa]

Cool, thanks!

I guess I need to install AutoHotkey in order to try it? I'm not familiar with the program.

[scook]

Autohotkey is a handy tool

In this case, since you are not familiar with it, I compiled a new version of Aim Helper that supports both SONAR and CbB. The link is just above the old themes near the bottom of my Google page