Clip Contents Moves Unexpectedly

[marcL]

Simply reproducible bug:

1. Import an audio clip
2. Split a short section in between
3. Edit this section in Melodyne (region FX) and render the Melodyne clip (region FX > Melodyne > ...)
4. In the clip's lane: If you try to move the splits into the Melodyne clip to make manual crossfades, either moving the splits or making the crossfades moves the contents of the 2nd clip arbitrarily.

I have tested this behavior also in the newest version on my laptop (2022-02 build 039), because on my daw pc I use 2021-01 build 098. But it does not make a difference, this does not work in both versions definitely!

There are so many situations where I have those annoying contents moves (not only with such Melodyne clips)! This is something that makes me sick the last years! Clip editing with CbB is a real horror.

[sjoens]

When editing audio clips under certain circumstances, the content can become corrupted to the point I have to undo a series of edits and start over.

Bouncing between edits seems to help.

[msmcleod]

From what I can tell, the clips or the content aren't actually moving, but what you're actually seeing is the clip being drawn slightly differently due to where the split points are.

When you're zoomed out, the drawing of a clip is average of the waveform as it's trying to draw several sample values in a single pixel.  The number of samples that are being averaged are changing as you are effectively changing the length of the clip by moving the split point.

As you zoom in to the point where samples are more obvious, this effect is lessened to the point where it doesn't happen at all.

But audibly, the clip is fine.

[sjoens]

In my cases visual & audible corruption occurs, thus the need to undo &/or bounce.

[marcL]

20 hours ago, msmcleod said:

From what I can tell, the clips or the content aren't actually moving, but what you're actually seeing is the clip being drawn slightly differently due to where the split points are.

When you're zoomed out, the drawing of a clip is average of the waveform as it's trying to draw several sample values in a single pixel.  The number of samples that are being averaged are changing as you are effectively changing the length of the clip by moving the split point.

As you zoom in to the point where samples are more obvious, this effect is lessened to the point where it doesn't happen at all.

But audibly, the clip is fine.

Because I've heard that sometimes it is only a "visual effect", I tried to bounce and was frightened by the result: The contents had really moved! And because the project had just been created I exclude the possibility of a corrupted project!

Therefore, as a work-around I moved the changed clips to another lane and changed the starts/lengths of all clips that they overlap (instead of moving the splits). And then I moved the clips of the second lane back. Like this I had much more success! But still there were some minor issues, the beginnings of the clips in between were not aligned, but the rest of the clip was. I also saw that in the original clips the end of the first clip was a straight line in the length that was the discrepancy. If I zoomed in I could see visually how a clip was moved just by coping (with Ctrl-Shift-drag).

To cut a long story short: IMO it is nearly impossible in such situations to position the splits and the crossfades correctly. And it's really a pain if you did a long manual work (days) to align and quantize the clips properly and then the result is moved by shifting splits and making crossfades. I agree with you that in some cases they are not really moved, but it is not always like that! So more and more I lose my confidence to CbB edits and have to check each single step. This takes a lot of time! ?

Also: I see that the behavior is not always the same. If it had only to do with the zooming level, then I would expect it always the same! E.g. with the current project above I imported one long clip and split 6 short sections from the rest that I edited with Melodyne. When I tried to move the splits afterwards and make crossfades to bounce it to 1 clip again, not all 6 clips were behaving the same. With some of them the moving effect was only at the end, with others it was already at the beginning. Very strange!

IMO CbB is quite solid for working with MIDI, recording audio and mixing ?. But I would be glad if editing would be equally solid, because I prefer some things of it over other daws (e.g. the great, professional Radius stretch algorithms with AudioSnap).

Sorry, for writing that much! ?