How to Copy Paste Track

[alan933]

This should be the easiest thing in the world but I have been stuck on this for 30 minutes trying to figure it out.

After selecting the track and then the from-thru measures , in this case 3-26 , If I go to edit, the only option enabled is "cut" . "copy" is not enabled.

A few times I got copy to work but it would paste to a different track  even if I selected only one track.

What are the mysterious steps to do this?

[Lynn Wilson]

You only have the timeline selected but no clips.  Lasso the clips to be copied or hit the track header to select all the clips.  That's all you're missing.

[David Baay]

To select using the default Smart tool without risk of moving the clip, you can either lasso by right-click and drag across any part of the clip and release to select the whole clip, or left-click and drag in the lower half of the clip to select a time range. When you right-click, the cursor will change to cross-hairs marking the start of the lasso 'box', and when you left-click and drag in the lower half, the cursor will be a simple vertical Select cursor rather than the four-pointed Move cursor you get in the top half of the clip.

As noted by others, you need to pay attention to which track is Focused/Active as indicated by the track name being highlighted. This will be the target track for the paste, regardless of what's selected. And the paste will start at the Now Cursor position regardless of where the beginning of the selection is.

Play with selecting, copying and pasting different parts of one or more tracks to different times in one or more other tracks and the advantages of separating Selection and Focus will become clearer. Use the Paste Special option (Ctrl+ALt+V) to get more options for pasting multiple tracks to one track, pasting repeats, etc.

[57Gregy]

After you select the track, what happens when you hit Ctrl C? Then Ctrl V with the cursor where you want the paste to go.

[alan933]

1 hour ago, Lynn Wilson said:

You only have the timeline selected but no clips.  Lasso the clips to be copied or hit the track header to select all the clips.  That's all you're missing.

Ok thanks, but do you mean the blocks on the right? If so I have tried to select those in past with a mouse but end up moving them with the cursor , the having to undo. The interface seems clumsy for selecting those.

[alan933]

1 hour ago, 57Gregy said:

After you select the track, what happens when you hit Ctrl C? Then Ctrl V with the cursor where you want the paste to go.

IT pastes it to track 3 instead of track 2 . This is very confusing.

[Lynn Wilson]

12 hours ago, alan933 said:

Ok thanks, but do you mean the blocks on the right? If so I have tried to select those in past with a mouse but end up moving them with the cursor , the having to undo. The interface seems clumsy for selecting those.

You have the track selected (piano) but not the MIDI clips.  Your now marker is in the right place if that's where you want the copied clips to start; just lasso select those clips and the copy and paste functions will work either in the edit menu or by ctrl-c and ctrl-v.  It's critically important that the Now marker is in the correct track and location of where you want to paste the clips.

[57Gregy]

15 hours ago, alan933 said:

I have tried to select those in past with a mouse but end up moving them with the cursor , the having to undo

To select multiple clips, hold the Ctrl button down when clicking them.

[Herky Acuff]

5 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

There's a big difference between Selected Track(s) and Active Track. That's the key to understanding what stuff will be copied and what the target track will be.

Let's look at this as an example:

You can see tracks 34 - 37 have their numbers highlighted, which I got by clicking the number itself (or holding down CTRL and selecting multiple numbers). That means they've been Selected. If you don't have a time range chosen on your ruler, then any cut/copy/delete actions will affect all of those tracks or, if you have a range selected, it will work on all of those tracks but only in the range you have on your ruler.

But do you see how track 37 has the name selected? That means it's the Active track, which I got by clicking into the track name area. So anything you paste into a track will treat that as your target, or the first of how many tracks if you're pasting in multiple tracks worth of data. 

You can Select as many tracks as you like, but there can be only one Active track.

Wow I never knew this about the active track. This explains a lot, including me pasting clips into the wrong places, countless times. Thank you.

[John Vere]

Click on clip to highlight Hold CTRL  and drag to new location. 
CTRL copies the clip 

If you hold SHIFT at same time it will maintain place on time grid. 
 

Just holding shift will move a clip to new location. 
 

When choosing a track by clicking the number I always use ALT mouse wheel and zoom out to see whole project to make sure everything got highlighted 

Edited August 11, 2023 by JohnnyV

[tecknot]

Hi alan933,

I suggest using Paste Special.  This way you can put the copied clip exactly where you want it (along with a number of other options).

Kind regards,

tecknot

[alan933]

On 8/10/2023 at 10:38 AM, Lord Tim said:

There's a big difference between Selected Track(s) and Active Track. That's the key to understanding what stuff will be copied and what the target track will be.

Let's look at this as an example:

You can see tracks 34 - 37 have their numbers highlighted, which I got by clicking the number itself (or holding down CTRL and selecting multiple numbers). That means they've been Selected. If you don't have a time range chosen on your ruler, then any cut/copy/delete actions will affect all of those tracks or, if you have a range selected, it will work on all of those tracks but only in the range you have on your ruler.

But do you see how track 37 has the name selected? That means it's the Active track, which I got by clicking into the track name area. So anything you paste into a track will treat that as your target, or the first of how many tracks if you're pasting in multiple tracks worth of data. 

You can Select as many tracks as you like, but there can be only one Active track.

But can't you see in screen shot I have track 2 as active. So why does paste put it to track three?

Sorry for late reply, too much home and work stuff to deal with.

[alan933]

On 8/10/2023 at 7:27 PM, JohnnyV said:

Click on clip to highlight Hold CTRL  and drag to new location. 
CTRL copies the clip 

If you hold SHIFT at same time it will maintain place on time grid. 
 

Just holding shift will move a clip to new location. 
 

When choosing a track by clicking the number I always use ALT mouse wheel and zoom out to see whole project to make sure everything got highlighted 

problem is its multiple clips but that ALT + mouse wheel is super helpful , thanks.

[Glenn Stanton]

the mouse wheel is your friend: shift+wheel = left <> right; crtl+wheel = up <> down; crtl+alt+wheel = enlarge <> shrink audio waveform; and alt+wheel = zoom centered on pointer. once you let those 4 methods become second nature then moving to where you need to, and zooming in and out becomes really fast,

[John Vere]

20 hours ago, alan933 said:

problem is its multiple clips but that ALT + mouse wheel is super helpful , thanks.

Then use Ctrl to highlight the clips you want and then use Ctrl again holding left mouse and drag and drop. 
I don’t see the problem as there’s possibly 10 ways to copy and paste clips in the track pane. Try them all and use the one that works best for you. I’m a mouse person so I prefer those options. 

Edited August 23, 2023 by JohnnyV