Spotting clips

[johnnyv]

Question: When dragging clips from the clips bin onto tracks, is there a way to just make them spot to the original location rather than that spot window coming up and hitting the "original time stamp" button?

[BScout]

No.

I generally, in slip mode, drag all the clips into the edit window with timeline drop order set "left to right".
Then I change to spot mode and click on each clip to spot it. A little less annoying process.

But there is no way to either spot a selection of clips at once or to auto-spot clips as you drag them to tracks.
Avid has been asked for this for years and it has fallen on deaf ears (despite Avid's NLE Media Composer can do it and almost every DAW.)

I once had to spot hundreds of clips so I did it in a different DAW that took 2 clicks (select all the clips, spot to origin.) Then I exported an AAF and brought it into Pro Tools. It would have taken a day (or more) to do it in Pro Tools. Just one more case of Avid/Pro Tools being painfully behind for customers.

[johnnyv]

Thanks, BScout,

Yes, that was the answer I was afraid I would hear.

Thanks for reminding me of this baffling situation with a DAW that so many professionals rely on day after day.

[nednednerb]

I happily pay SoundFlow $10 a month.

If I had to do this every day, I would spend the hour or two to troubleshoot a script and save time every next day and press a couple buttons once instead of many buttons many times.

You are referring to Avid/PT which have been extensively working on a Scripting SDK.... Guess what it can do, literally, not facetiously?

Nearly everything everyone asks for, not just one or two features, but nearly everything anyone could ask for. But implemented by users for users, not just depending on Avid to install EVERY workflow.

People already complain about bloat. Then they complain about missing features. I want more features and more control. Scripting is a GREAT answer.

You can also pay individuals to write scripts for you, if that's the blocking point. It comes down to.... Is $10 a month and a bit of time worth saving LOTS of time indefinitely?

I think, "totally!"

[BScout]

Originally Posted by nednednerb

I happily pay SoundFlow $10 a month.

If I had to do this every day, I would spend the hour or two to troubleshoot a script and save time every next day and press a couple buttons once instead of many buttons many times.

You are referring to Avid/PT which have been extensively working on a Scripting SDK.... Guess what it can do, literally, not facetiously?

Nearly everything everyone asks for, not just one or two features, but nearly everything anyone could ask for. But implemented by users for users, not just depending on Avid to install EVERY workflow.

People already complain about bloat. Then they complain about missing features. I want more features and more control. Scripting is a GREAT answer.

You can also pay individuals to write scripts for you, if that's the blocking point. It comes down to.... Is $10 a month and a bit of time worth saving LOTS of time indefinitely?

I think, "totally!"

Soundflow doesn’t do anything special. It just makes it more approachable for those not used to scripting or coding. And it is painfully slow at tasks like these because of that reason.

[thin ice]

If you only need up to 5 macros, Keysmith is a great option for free.

[smurfyou]

Soundflow is not the answer for this. It's a kludgey way to automate the same stupid process.

And right now the scripting SDK is not capable of this either.

The correct answer is like BScout said, use other software to do it the sensible way and keep screaming at Avid for this basic functionality that they already offer in their other major product.

[its2loud]

It would not be difficult to automate this with Keyboard Maestro.

[Rich Breen]

yes, I have a KM macro for exactly this (spot to original time stamp) on a function key. Better than nothing, but not a real substitute for the function the OP is requesting.

[Rich Breen]

Just took a look in Soundflow and someone has written an app for it that will spot a pile of clips to original time stamps with one button - it's called "Scott's Spotter".Not saying it's ideal - it would make a ton more sense for PT to just have this capability built in (drag a bunch of clips onto a track and have them all go to their time stamps) but it's something...