EDIT workaround or Feature Request

[rtcstudio]

I'm in 6.2.3 on Mac OS 10.3.2

Say I have a session and it has around 50 or 60 tracks. Several of those tracks are alternate guitar passes, old BGV tracks I don't want to let go of yet, and some old percussion tracks from the tracking date. These tracks are hidden in the Show/Hide list. ALSO the Lead Vocal track has several alternate playlists from which I've comped a final playlist.

Now say the song has two choruses after the second verse and I decide to edit out that chorus repeat. Pro Tools only edits the tracks that are showing. If you don't "unhide" the other tracks, the edit will not take place there, and all those tracks will now be in the wrong place after the second chorus of the song. AND the alternate playlists in the Lead Vocal track will also now be in the wrong place after the second chorus.

I made a feature request to the ProAxxes guys and they took it down. They said the reason it is this way is that post guys sometimes will hide tracks but don't want anything there to ever go away, so the destructive edit would bug them.

But for music guys, this would be a nice feature to have. I know you can just "show all" for the hidden tracks, but that doesn't fix alternate playlists. I'd like to be able to keep all my tracks together in sync in case I want to go back to something later in the song, like one of those alternate vocal playlists to grab an alternate phrase or two. If I do that now I have to try and duplicate my edit.

Couldn't there be a Preference for this, to make edits happen across all tracks hidden or not, and all playlists? Or is there a work a round?

[Drew Mazurek]

I've posted about this before as have others. It'd be nice to be able to toggle a pref or something to do this sort of editing.

[rtcstudio]

Yes, it makes me NOT want to use playlists ever again. At least if I used individual tracks and unhide them I can make true global edits.

For music this is basic, can't believe you wouldn't put this in as a user choice in Prefs. You could even have an optional warning dialog for the post guys, much like there is not if you edit automation data on one member of a group while the other members are hidden. (This operation will affect.....)

[O.G. Killa]

honestly I like having the playlists not get edited. I very frequently will have a full length, :60, :30, :15 and sometimes even a :7 edit of the full length. Instead of having protools sessions and/or tracks all over the place...I just select the all group, choose duplicate playlist on the first track and add the name of what it is going to be (30, 60, etc) and then make the edits...then duplicate again and make another smaller edit and so on...

It makes it very organized for me to have all my different versions on alternate playlists in one PT session. I would be kinda pissed if they made it so that every playlist would get edited if you did one. But on the other hand I can see your dilemna. It's a tough call.

You do know you can move all those alternate playlists to new tracks very quickly?

[Drew Mazurek]

not practical with drums when you have 10 tracks etc.

[rtcstudio]

honestly I like having the playlists not get edited. I very frequently will have a full length, :60, :30, :15 and sometimes even a :7 edit of the full length. Instead of having protools sessions and/or tracks all over the place...I just select the all group, choose duplicate playlist on the first track and add the name of what it is going to be (30, 60, etc) and then make the edits...then duplicate again and make another smaller edit and so on...

It makes it very organized for me to have all my different versions on alternate playlists in one PT session. I would be kinda pissed if they made it so that every playlist would get edited if you did one. But on the other hand I can see your dilemna. It's a tough call.

You do know you can move all those alternate playlists to new tracks very quickly?

All the more reason to make it a Preference choice. It should be a simple thing to make global edits have a preference setting so that you can work your way and I can work my way. I don't want it either/or but both!

It would be hard for me to explain to the record companies that "all your versions are in the same session", they like to see separate sessions for each version of the mix (album version, AC lite, AC aggressive etc.), although I think your method is kinda cool. But it seems like it might be difficult to work that way if I'm using playlists for 10 alternate vocal takes, alternate guitar takes etc. and have 60 or more total tracks in the song.

I do know you can put the playlists to separate tracks, but there again you have to go through another step to get there, AND you have to go through another step to unhide those tracks when you need to edit a song. And then REhide the tracks. Once I comp the vocal, I don't want to see those tracks much, but I'd like to have the option to grab a phrase if in the eleventh hour of the mix if I don't like the performance of the vocal in a certain spot.

I put in the feature request and they said they'd red flag it. Sounds like there's not a workaround except for using real tracks and unhiding them so for now that's what I'll do.

[bryston]

I'm suprised they have not implemented this yet. Besides HD, I also have an audio editor from another manufacturer thats going on six years old. It has always had two edit modes called quick and full, which you can toggle with one bottun. Quick mode just cuts the first layer and full will cut all layers. One would hope they can implement this at some point. There are times when both are usefull.

Ken

[rtcstudio]

Okay, after working with this a while...It's not so bad if I commit all my playlists to actual audio tracks. Then I can deactivate the ones I would normally leave in a playlist list or hide in the SHOW/HIDE menu.

At that point, since they are deactivated I can use the feature in the SHOW/HIDE menu to "hide>inactive tracks" and conversely "show all tracks". I just have to remember to do that before and after a global edit.

But this still discourages me from using playlists. If I have 13 songs in one big session (like the live show I'm mixing now) it's not as quick and easy as it sounds to drag all those takes to actual audio tracks.

A preference for global editing accross all playlists and hidden tracks would be better.