Cannot open folders containing tracks_SOLVED... sort of

[Billy86]

I've got four folders in track view: drums, guitars, vocals and keys. I can't open any of them. I click on the > icon and it changes to the down chevron icon, but the folder doesn't open. It jus sits there, kind of grayed out. All the tracks inside those folders are also not visible in the console view. I've had this happen a couple of times now, and I don't know why. I have workspaces set to "none." I saved/closed/reopened the project (this sometimes helps with glitches, but it didn't help). Any ideas how to fix this? I can't access more than half of my mix...

EDIT: So, somehow all the tracks in every folder (and only the tracks inside folders) were mysteriously in a hidden state in the Track Manager. Don't ask me how that happened. 

Edited Wednesday at 12:46 AM by Billy86

[msmcleod]

FYI - when using the track manager:

1. Clicking the hide button on a visible folder will hide all tracks within the folder
2. Clicking the hide button on a hidden folder a folder will ONLY unhide the folder itself, not the tracks within them
3. ALT + Clicking the hide button on a folder will unhide the folder AND all the child tracks. 

It sounds like you may be did 1 & 2, rather than 1 & 3.

 

[Billy86]

hi @msmcleod. Thanks for the tip. Don't recall doing any of those things, but... now that you point out the click conventions... they seem really counterintuitive.

If "Clicking the hide button on a visible folder will hide all tracks within the folder"... then why wouldn't "Clicking the hide button on a folder will unhide the folder AND all the child tracks"  (essentially a toggling move), not be simply Clicking the hide button again, and not with the ALT+ key. If anything the ALT+ Click seems to be a rather "special use" case. Which begs the question...

Why would one want to unhide a folder but NOT unhide the tracks inside that folder? Isn't the reason you would unhide a folder is so you can get to the tracks inside of it? 

 

[msmcleod]

They're that way:

1. To ensure the folder hiding rules are respected (i.e. you can't have visible tracks inside a hidden folder, so all of them have to be hidden)
2. To allow you to easily unhide the folder without unhiding the tracks - bearing in mind you may not want to unhide all of the tracks in all nested folders.
3. To provide a quick way of unhiding all hidden tracks within a folder, when the folder itself is not hidden and may have a mixture of hidden / unhidden tracks.

As to why you'd unhide a folder and not unhide the tracks inside... that's very much tied to a specific workflow.   You may choose to group audio tracks/midi tracks/aux tracks associated with a single instrument together, but choose to hide some of them (e.g. the audio track, or the aux track) to make the track view less busy. 

I'd argue as to why hide the folder and all its tracks when you can just collapse the folder?