Comping Bug?

[Gordon Weaver]

I created and recorded vocals in 8 separate take lanes. I used the speed comping workflow to create my comp. I closed the take lanes. Later I decided I wanted to change my selection of takes. When I opened the take lanes the recordings of the original takes were gone, no waveforms at all, vanished without a trace. Take lane 1 now contains my comp and all the other takes appear to be lost. I never chose the flatten option. I never locked the track. I used to do this all the time in Cakewalk and the individual takes were always still available to go back to if needed. Is this a bug? Did I do something incorrectly?

 

[David Baay]

Not sure what might have happened but a few observations and questions:

- Based on the uppermost take lane being soloed it appears that Flatten Comp was excuted at some point whether deliberately or not.

- Are you sure the remaining clip in T1 is your comp, and not just the first take?

- Based on that clip's name, it appears to have had Melodyne applied. Was it Melodyned before comping? Normally a flattened comp would be locked and could not be Melodyned after the fact unless it was unlocked first.

- Are the takes still in the audio folder? They should be unless Clean Audio Folder was executed.

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 06:57 AM by David Baay

[Gordon Weaver]

The uppermost take lane was soloed by me, not by default. I believe the bottom take lane was originally soloed. I did not find flatten comp in the Edit > History at the time I discovered this problem. The clip remaining in take lane 1 is identical to the the comp. I used Melodyne on track 48 after comping. I then recorded the output of Melodyne from track 48 to Aux 1. When that was completed I disconnected the Aux input causing the Aux 1 track to become track 49. I went looking and found that, yes, all of the takes are still in the audio folder. I suppose I could import those audio files back into my project.

I just tested this process in a brand new project and I can report with confidence that I was able to duplicate the problem.  Everything was fine until I used Melodyne on the comped track. Once I used Melodyne all of the takes vanished and the Melodyne processed result now resides in take lane 1.

[David Baay]

15 hours ago, Gordon Weaver said:

Once I used Melodyne all of the takes vanished and the Melodyne processed result now resides in take lane 1.

I kind of suspected something like that. I tried it myself yesterday and didn't see a problem, but I Melodyned a flattened comp after unlocking it. If you Melodyned the unflattend comp clip in the parent track with lanes closed, it makes sense that the Melodyne clip would replace the individaul takes that comp clip represents with the Melodyne clip in T1.

So I'd say it's not a bug, but it could certainly be considered unintuitive if you aren't fully aware of how ARA works and how a comp clip represents take lane clips when lanes aren't showing.

Edited Wednesday at 09:23 PM by David Baay

[Gordon Weaver]

Going forward I will make a copy of the comp track and use Melodyne on that. This way I can still alter my comp track later if needed. This would likely require starting over with Melodyne on the new comp track (or at least the parts I change). I am saying this for the benefit of anyone else that stumbles on this thread looking for a work around.

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Gordon Weaver said:

I am saying this for the benefit of anyone else that stumbles on this thread looking for a work around.

It's perfectly safe to Melodyne a flattened comp in the original track. This doesn't affect the comped lanes at all.  If you want to change it later, you can just unsolo the flattened comp, delete (or mute) the lane, re-comp, re-flatten and Melodyne again.

That said, I always advocate saving a project with a suffixed name before doing major edits so you easily revert if something goes wrong, and I do often archive raw tracks (mostly MIDI in my case) within projects until I'm satisfied with the final product.