Region Glue

[Mogers]

Hi Bob et al

I've been doing some work at an external client's place, and using their SADiE system. Whilst it is impressive in many ways, I know which DAW I'd much rather be using! ;)

However, there is one function available in SADiE that reminded me of something I've been wanting in SAW for ages - a simple "region glue" tool.

I find in my SAWing that I often end up with contiguous pieces of audio that are chopped up into numerous regions. For example, my typical practise is to set up my "source" takes way down the timeline, rename them to the take number (I have a Perfect Keyboard macro to do this), and then copy bits of them to the front end of the timeline where I assemble the "destination" version. Inevitably, what started off as region name "4", ends up as regions "4 | #1003", "4 | #1004", "4 | #1245" etc. And it all becomes a bit of a mess on the screen, and harder to navigate around, especially when zoomed out. Audio-wise, there's no problem of course, as these are butt-spliced contiguous regions.

What would be very nice to have would be a simple keystroke-driven glue function, where if two butt-spliced regions were properly contiguous - i.e. if the last sample of the left-hand region is sample X of file Y, and the first sample of the right-hand region is sample X+1 of file Y - then the butt-splice is removed to create one region.

I know I would use this all the time. What do other folks think?

cheers
Mark

[Dingo]

I'll second that emotion.

[Bob L]

If two regions are butt-spliced and contiguous, all you need to do is simply delete the region to the right and stretch the one on the left to fill the gap... now you have your one region... there is no need for a glue command in SAW becuase there is nothing to glue in that kind of situation. :)

Bob L

[Yura]

Hi Bob et al

I know I would use this all the time. What do other folks think?

Mark

Frankly, I had need it all 2 last years. Not more to say.

But, Bob said: "If two regions are butt-spliced and contiguous, all you need to do is simply delete the region to the right and stretch the one on the left to fill the gap" -
this is not a thing... in this instance we must not delete one region to the right. cause we simply delete our information.

[Mogers]

Hi Bob

I know that I can do this, but when you have lots of regions like this (and with multitrack multiple-take music editing it can often be in the hundreds or thousands) this can be a somewhat tedious operation - which is why I usually end up not bothering and just live with a messy EDL ;) . If I was to do it, then for each region pair I would have to:

move cursor over right region
press Delete key
move cursor near to right edge of left region
hold down Alt
drag mouse along to where I think the end of the right region used to be (not always a simple "drag right as far as I can go", because sometimes you are not filling in a gap)
Added to which I am often not sure whether the regions really are contiguous or not (after much editing and shuffling around), so if I were to do the above then I might inadvertently mess things up.

What I had envisaged was a simple key stroke where you could move the cursor anywhere over the left region, press [KEY], and then if (and only if) the current left and subsequent right regions were really contiguous, they would be joined up as one region. I also envisaged being able to do this to a selected block of regions with the same keystroke, so that a complete tidy up of an EDL could safely be done in one action, rather than many hundreds or thousands of steps.

Hope this makes sense!
Mark

[MMP]

Why are you ending up with so many regions of contiguous data in the first place? If you are editing data out, they aren't contiguous any longer.

I actually would find Region Glue that locked non-contiguous data together for automatic grouping more powerful day to day...even with the boundries still visible.

With so many ways to move grouped regions around, I guess having a large number of regions never really bothered me much. When it does, I usually do a 24bit submix to a new track, copy the regions to a lower layer, and put the submix on the top layer.

How about a Build Track Mix to Layer function?

MM

[MMP]

What would make this function well is if you could actually slide a butt splice and make the reduced region go all the way to zero and stop the slide...right now it forces a zero size error...what is the downside of allowing a region to be removed this way?

MM




If two regions are butt-spliced and contiguous, all you need to do is simply delete the region to the right and stretch the one on the left to fill the gap... now you have your one region... there is no need for a glue command in SAW becuase there is nothing to glue in that kind of situation. :)

Bob L

[Yura]

When it does, I usually do a 24bit submix to a new track, copy the regions to a lower layer, and put the submix on the top layer.
How about a Build Track Mix to Layer function?
MM

But, anyways - this is distructive operation. result - you have the 1st layer
with your previous region data and the 2nd layer with distructive.
But if you would have the possibility to make a glued 100 regions into one unceasing region - you might still have an advantage to manipulate all automation data that remains on it as it was.- result is most simply and transparent (what we allways strive to reach).

[Mogers]

Why are you ending up with so many regions of contiguous data in the first place? If you are editing data out, they aren't contiguous any longer.

My typical way of working is to put all the source takes over on the right (e.g. from 1 hour onwards), and build up the edited version on the left. Using layers isn't really practical here, since in the session there will be numerous false starts, breakdowns, highly variable tempi, and very often many more than 8 takes per piece!

So if I decide that take 1 is the master take, then I copy it from the right (source) to the left (destination). Then I think that a few notes of take 1 need replacing with their equivalents from take 4. So I go to take 4 on the source, and find the bit I need. I could drag in the timeline to mark the bit I need, and then Alt-Left Click in the marked area to create a "drop a new region here" cursor, but this region-to-be can only be dropped onto an empty area of the multitrack, whereas I want it dropped over the existing take 1 destination copy. So the alternative is to do two "K" splits on the take 4 source to mark this patch section, then select the new "patch" region of each track, then move to the appropriate point in the assembled master, do a CTRL-Insert, and adjust to taste. But back in my source files, I now have 3 regions for take 4. And once I've taken a patch here, and a patch there, then the take 4 source can have literally hundreds of butt-spliced contiguous edits in it - especially when I am doing all this in multitrack (typically 16-ish tracks). It gets particularly messy when you subsequently wish to use almost but not quite the same patch at a different point in the master (this is typical in classical music with lots of repeats), and you end up with a desired patch area that in the source is more than one region per track (because of previous patch edits). You could select and copy these multiple regions to the destination, but it's still messy.



I actually would find Region Glue that locked non-contiguous data together for automatic grouping more powerful day to day...even with the boundries still visible.


Yes, this would be good too. In SADiE, you can select a bunch of what we would call regions and then group them - and they appear as one region (in a different colour). This is particularly useful for edited speech - the client I was working with the other day uses this feature all the time for very rapid overall adjustments when putting together radio packages.

cheers
Mark

[Dave Labrecque]

[Post edited due to heretofore ignorance of poster (me)]

Mogers: check out the current region entry grouping functionality; it may help you out.

[Bob L]

Sounds like the way I would work those kinds of edits would be to simply use the SoundFile view for my source files... open the source file into the soundfile view and just mark the section I want and drag it to the MT on a blank track under the track I am editing... then simply grab that new region and slide it up into position and say insert at the message prompt.

This way the source file is never cut up.

As you use a few different soundfiles, they will list out in the Recent SF list and can easily be opened again from that list when you need to go back for a different section. I would think this is faster that jumping an hour down the timeline looking for stuff over and over again.

By the way... if you are simply making a mess of the source files by doing all the splits to use the Ctrl-Insert... you are not really editing the source files and after working a while you have all these separate contiguous regions... again... its very easy to simply Select Mode all the regions to the right of the first one after it gets messy... press delete to remove them and grab and drag the first one all the way out to its end... and you now have your original source file contiguous again.

The cleanup by using a glue function still would be about the same by the time you select everything and use the glue key... I'm still not so sure its a more efficient way to do anything.

I did get an idea for a forced insert operation on the mark and alt-drag concept though from this thread, which I'll put in the next update hopefully, that would allow you to drag and drop marked sections and force an insert on the drop rather than needing the blank track and another drag.

I'll look into the idea further for the glue... but my concern is that in many cases it might appear that the function is broken if the regions are not contiguous. In the case of non-contiguous regions, you really are doing a build mix operation to create a brand new file of the chunk.

Bob L

[Dave Labrecque]

Bob,

Please disregard my previous post in this thread. I was talking out my butt splice. The current MT region entry grouping works great.

Thanks.

[MMP]

Dave,

This is the part that made me think it was multiple regions of the same file with contiguous data...maybe I misunderstood.

MM



i.e. if the last sample of the left-hand region is sample X of file Y, and the first sample of the right-hand region is sample X+1 of file Y - then the butt-splice is removed to create one region.

[AudioAstronomer]

I dont really see why glue region is needed...

Perhaps someone can start over and explain this again? The previous explanations seem kinda silly?

[Dave Labrecque]

This is the part that made me think it was multiple regions of the same file with contiguous data...maybe I misunderstood.
MM
Hmmm... maybe _I_ misunderstood.

[Mogers]

[Post edited due to heretofore ignorance of poster (me)]

Mogers: check out the current region entry grouping functionality; it may help you out.
Hi Dave

You are right - the current region grouping functionality is great, and I use it often. I think what Michael was referring to (and I was agreeing with!) was the ability to group a not-necessarily-contiguous bunch of regions - say an edited speech - and then see them visually as one mega-region, which can be grabbed and moved around without having to do the right-click on Select button and group selection.

For radio work, this would be great - when the client says "can you bring that speech a bit earlier?" you can grab what looks like one region and shift it - easy to see the "region" name, no worries about missing any bits out etc.

Really sorry for any confusion caused today!

cheers
Mark

[Mogers]

Sounds like the way I would work those kinds of edits would be to simply use the SoundFile view for my source files... open the source file into the soundfile view and just mark the section I want and drag it to the MT on a blank track under the track I am editing... then simply grab that new region and slide it up into position and say insert at the message prompt.

This would be fine if I was only working on one track, but I am almost always doing multitrack work - i.e. recordings made of a live orchestra with one mic per track and lots of spill between mics. So when I am inserting a patch into the master, I am usually really inserting 16 or so patches simultaneously.


By the way... if you are simply making a mess of the source files by doing all the splits to use the Ctrl-Insert... you are not really editing the source files and after working a while you have all these separate contiguous regions... again... its very easy to simply Select Mode all the regions to the right of the first one after it gets messy... press delete to remove them and grab and drag the first one all the way out to its end... and you now have your original source file contiguous again.

Good point! But this needs to be done across each track as a separate operation - but will of course be much easier when we have the simultaneous Alt-Drag across multiple tracks that we discussed last week :)


I did get an idea for a forced insert operation on the mark and alt-drag concept though from this thread, which I'll put in the next update hopefully, that would allow you to drag and drop marked sections and force an insert on the drop rather than needing the blank track and another drag.

Great! That would be most useful.


I'll look into the idea further for the glue... but my concern is that in many cases it might appear that the function is broken if the regions are not contiguous.

I would see it working as the acid test of whether the regions really are contiguous - i.e. if it worked, then they were, and if it didn't, then they weren't!

BTW, this is the way it works in SADiE (and please don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting for a minute that you should slavishly copy other systems - your doing things differently is one of the major reasons why SAW is a class above the competition :) ).

Apologies to all for any confusion I've caused on the glue concept... :confused:

cheers
Mark

[AudioAstronomer]

That makes sense... Id love that when working with overly edited drum tracks :)

But this seems like it would have to be able to be "unglued" too to be of any real use...

I can see it as a major pain for Bob to code too.. especially after you "glue" something then make even MORE edits.

Why does buildmix to current hot track not work for you? This is what Ive been doing when I need such a function. I just build that track as a new track, normally only takes a few seconds and then leave my "edited" track near the bottom of the track list. Perhaps an option in build mix to bypass all FX would be good? Would offer you a "glue" like function with a little more power on the side for other uses. Build mix with no-fx takes barely a second or so on my machine for most things.

[Dave Labrecque]

Cool.

Well, I guess you'd save yourself a couple of clicks and gain that name-recognition thing. I do radio spots all the time, and I've had no problem just dragging across the VO regions to select them (haven't even been using the grouping fuction!) when I need to slide the whole thing, and I never have the MT names turned on. I just use the track titles.

Another example of how differently we work, I guess.

You could also look at the Slip Track functions if you haven't already.

[Mogers]

That makes sense... Id love that when working with overly edited drum tracks :)

But this seems like it would have to be able to be "unglued" too to be of any real use...

I can see it as a major pain for Bob to code too.. especially after you "glue" something then make even MORE edits.

today's discussion has evolved into 2 quite separate ideas, and that may be causing the confusion...

(1) the idea of grouping a collection of regions - contiguous, non-contiguous, whatever - into a megaregion, for the purpose of making it easy to visualise and move around. This would indeed require the ability to ungroup as well as group.

(2) the ability to "heal the wound" when you have taken a region and split it into 2 regions. This is what I mean by a glue function.


Why does buildmix to current hot track not work for you? This is what Ive been doing when I need such a function. I just build that track as a new track, normally only takes a few seconds and then leave my "edited" track near the bottom of the track list. Perhaps an option in build mix to bypass all FX would be good? Would offer you a "glue" like function with a little more power on the side for other uses. Build mix with no-fx takes barely a second or so on my machine for most things.
Buildmix to current hot track doesn't work for me in these situations because:

(1) I'm almost always multitrack editing - would require a buildmix per track, and a lot of shifting and moving.

(2) I mix and edit at the same time - tracks I'm editing have inserts, EQs, fader moves, pans etc. It's a recipe for disaster to do this when you're in a hurry - checking everything is turned off, checking the buildmix settings are right (including the mono settings on the output track) etc. I do do it - especially with plugins that seem to behave slightly differently each time you press play - such as the excellent Drumagog - but I find it a bit of a faff ;)

cheers
Mark

[AudioAstronomer]

If you just want to "heal" two regions why can you not delete the second half and alt-drag it?

This thread is confusing me quite a bit heh.

[Mogers]

Hi Robert

You can, but it can only be done one "wound" at a time. And when I'm editing multitrack classical music, I can end up with literally hundreds of these things within minutes - making this "healing" technique somewhat tedious.

My suggestion was for an easier way to do this - single keystroke, applicable to as many "wounds" as you wish, in one operation.

Sorry to have confused you...

all the best
Mark

[Bob L]

Don't miss out on the renaming multiple regions incrementally option... this may help you with your hundreds of regions all named weird after your multiple cuts.

Look that one up in the Help File Menu reference for the Regions Menu.

Bob L