FR: add audition and mute buttons to clip headers

[Starship Krupa]

There is room for buttons on the clip headers. They would come in very handy, make it a single click rather than having to know a key combo or invoke a menu command. And of course, for those who would complain that it would clutter things, it would be selectable/deselectable in Track View's View/Display options.

[OutrageProductions]

To mute a single clip (or a group of selected clips) the default keybinding is <k>. Works like a charm. Every single time.

To play a single clip, bind a key to <Go to From> [I've had F7 bound for 25 years], solo track, play. Easy peasy. 

IMO the last thing we need on an already deep and complicated GUI is more widgets taking up space.

Edited May 13, 2023 by OutrageProductions

[Starship Krupa]

2 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

to mute a single clip (or a group of selected clips) the default keybinding is <k>. Works like a charm. Every single time.

And with my idea, it would....

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

make it a single click rather than having to know a key combo

And it would still work every time.

2 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

To play a single clip, bind a key to <Go to From> [I've had F7 bound for 25 years], solo track, play.

That's great.

My idea here is to make it so that it's easier to figure out and access for someone who doesn't know about key bindings. And maybe you yourself aren't aware that there's already a default key binding for Audition Clip, which is Shift+<spacebar>? It's that command (Audition Clip) that I would like to have a little button for on the clip header. It plays the clip solo'd in loop mode. Click on a clip header and hit Shift+<spacebar>. Neat, eh?

So instead of having it only be a keystroke command that you have to read deep into the manual to know about and memorize along with the zillion other default keybindings there are in Cakewalk (and even then, sometimes people who have been using the program for over 25 years don't know about it), it's right there facing the user. Especially the new user.

I would request that Audition Clip be added to the clip context menu, but the clip context menu is already ungodly huge. 30 commands, not even including submenus! I, too am mindful of clutter and the clip context menu is about 3/4 the height of the entire Track Pane when I invoke it on my laptop.

Having commands like Audition Clip only available via keystrokes the user has to memorize is unfriendly UI design. Audition Clip is a very useful command, and to my knowledge it can't be accessed any way other than via selecting an individual clip and pressing Shift+<spacebar>.

Don't get me wrong, I love keyboard shortcuts. They're a way to really level up the speed of getting things done in a DAW and I've advocated for many years that customizable keystrokes be added (and the default ones be added to) in my #2 DAW, Mixcraft. But when something is only accessible by keystroke, it's in effect hidden until the user decides to read through the documentation, which in the case of Cakewalk is a LOT of reading.

And if we're going to have a button for Audition Clip, why not also have one for Mute Clip? Bob Ross said that everyone needs a friend.

2 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

IMO the last thing we need on an already deep and complicated GUI is more widgets taking up space.

....and your O is why....

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

for those who would complain that it would clutter things, it would be selectable/deselectable in Track View's View/Display options.

Just hide it if it harshes your mellow. Easy peasy!

[OutrageProductions]

8 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

...it's in effect hidden until the user decides to read through the documentation, which in the case of Cakewalk is a LOT of reading.

So will the explanation for the hide/unhide of this new widget be on page 1895 or 1896 of the PDF manual (revised)??

So much for the "Paperwork Reduction Act of 1986".?

No really, I get it. Just more important issues on my list. (Retrospective MIDI Record, Sampler Track, etc.)

Until then I'll just use muscle memory every day in my workflow to make a living with this.✌

[Starship Krupa]

3 minutes ago, OutrageProductions said:

more important issues on my list. (Retrospective MIDI Record, Sampler Track, etc.)

Believe me, if someone told me I had to choose between little audition/mute buttons in clip headers vs. an integrated sampler, I'd go with the sampler. ? I'll probably dig retro/idle/background MIDI record once I experience it, too.

Fortunately, it's not a zero sum game and we loves all features great and small. The devs are the ones who decide cost:benefit ratio. Is adding a UI button for an existing command a lot of work? Or not? I dunno. Shift+<spacebar> and K work great for me, a 5-year veteran, and probably for most other veterans who know the commands exist. But how long did it take to find them and memorize them? How important is smoothing the learning curve?

[sjoens]

Check View > Display > Maximize Waveform Height (or show clip headers) = buttons

Uncheck View > Display > Maximize Waveform Height (or hide clip headers) = no buttons

[Base 57]

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

My idea here is to make it so that it's easier to figure out and access for someone who doesn't know about key bindings.

You can only dumb down the program so much.

Learning how to work a DAW is just like learning an instrument. Practice, study, learn... RTFM (over and over and over again} Using the key bindings is always better than mousing around.

That being said, I would be okay with your suggestion being implemented. I have Track Headers hidden so I would never see those icons anyway.

 

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, Base 57 said:

Using the key bindings is EVENTUALLY better than mousing around.

Fix'd! ?

[jimlynch22]

20 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

There is room for buttons on the clip headers. They would come in very handy, make it a single click rather than having to know a key combo or invoke a menu command. And of course, for those who would complain that it would clutter things, it would be selectable/deselectable in Track View's View/Display options.

I think this would be useful. Being able to accomplish frequently used tasks like clip muting with a either mouse or keyboard workflows is a good thing.

[tecknot]

This is an interesting idea and I think it would revolutionize DAWs if no other DAW has this feature.  It would make each clip "live", if you will. The entire TV would be like one big MV.  Interesting...

Kind regards,

tecknot

[Starship Krupa]

4 hours ago, tecknot said:

I think it would revolutionize DAWs if no other DAW has this feature

Actually, Mixcraft has this feature, that's where I got the idea. I don't like to approach the devs with "can Cakewalk have (feature X) just like (DAW X)?"

So I have used the feature, it is incredibly handy. The "Mute" button changes with the clip's mute status, which adds a stronger visual cue as to which clips are muted. Cakewalk only has them change shade, which works but isn't as immediately apparent to me (it is in comparison to non-muted clips, but not as much all by itself).

Cakewalk has a tendency to relegate some functions to keystroke-only. I think of Cakewalk as being "keyboard-y," which isn't surprising given that the OS the program ran on for its first 5 years of existence was DOS. Mouse? What mouse?

Mixcraft, on the other hand, leans toward the mouse (to a fault, IMO). There are so many commands and things that can't be accessed with keystrokes....being able to do things with keystrokes is, I think, considered a luxury or afterthought. When I first started using the program, they had, in the latest release, removed the keystroke command for setting a marker! You set markers by double-clicking in the timeline. I hadn't noticed it when I was demoing the product, because it's so basic. Ever try to comp where you are or have recorded someone else's band and had to either stop the transport to set a marker or hope that your double-click hit the right spot? I found a workaround by the skin of my teeth: it was a command they allowed to be assigned to a MIDI note. So I just set the highest key on my controller to be "set marker." Due to the fuss I raised, they put it back in the next version, but jeez.

Their markers are great, though, they have "tails" that run the full height of the track view. It is SO great for lining up clips and note events.

What I believe is that with new users, the more stuff that can be in well-organized menus, context menus, and front-facing, the better. Otherwise, they have to look up basic operations, within 5 minutes of starting the program they will be stalled, staring at the screen, maybe rage quitting. I also think DAW and NLE users eventually head in the direction of the keyboard, bringing in more keystrokes as they memorize them. So older, "power" users need powerful keyboard command support, which Cakewalk has, and it has big time. Adding more elements to what is immediately visible can just seem like clutter to someone who already knows that Shift+Space is the command to audition a clip (not exactly the most intuitive key combo). Where keystroke-only commands really fail the new user is that there are only so many letters and numbers on the keyboard, so some of them are going to be pretty counterintuitive. Muste, for instance. If I were new, and someone told me that muting clips was done with a key, the first one I would hit would be "M" for "mute." And then I'd get this funny flag-looking thing in the ruler (which would initially seem to be non-delete-able due to there being no right click context menu for markers; instead, Cakewalk users must click on a marker, hold the mouse button down, then reach across the keyboard with their left hand to the "delete" key over on the right hand side of the keyboard.

There is certainly a difference in viewpoint: a veteran user can't imagine why someone would want to go to all the trouble of right-clicking on something, scanning through the resulting context menu, then clicking again when they find the command they want when they could just use a keystroke. They may be forgetting weeks or months it took them to discover and then reliably memorize all those keystrokes. Yeah, RTF 1700-page M. But new users often don't know the nomenclature well enough to even look something up. Even basic terms like "clip" vs. "region," "export" rather than "render" or "mix down," etc. are different from one DAW to the next.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

12 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Cakewalk has a tendency to relegate some functions to keystroke-only. I think of Cakewalk as being "keyboard-y," which isn't surprising given that the OS the program ran on for its first 5 years of existence was DOS. Mouse? What mouse?

ProTools is worse. Not only it is extremely keyboard heavy with its multiple editing modes and such, the keyboard shortcuts are hard coded by default to the US keyboard layout. While you can remap them nowadays, you'll often have to reinvent shortcuts for several operations because changing the keyboard layout changes shortcuts in a way that conflicts with other shortcuts mapped with the US keyboard in mind.