Ardour Session End Marker

Hi all,

New to using Ardour and running into an issue that seems very very simple but I can’t figure out.

I’ve got recordings and playbacks that go way past the session end marker. But I can’t figure out how to move the session end marker! I can’t click it or move it manually.

I need to move it so I can export the whole of the recordings and the playback tracks, not just where the end session marker is.

How do I move the yellow “end session” marker?

Thanks in advance.

That is mysterious. Click+drag should work for this.

Perhaps you have snap-to-grid enabled, with a rather coarse grid so you’d have to drag a long distance for it to snap to a new location?

Alternatively use the range tool (press ‘r’), select a range, right-click and in the context menu: “Set Session Start/End from selection”

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Hmmmm. Well, the set from selected range seems to have worked at least. Thanks!

Click + drag should definitely work. Look into figuring out the snap modes that Robin mentioned. Its something I ignored for a long time and in hindsight it would have made my workflow much faster.

It’s best to never click on the end marker. The end marker normally moves automatically when new regions are recorded past the end marker. But if you manually move the end marker then it stops advancing automatically. I hope this behaviour is fixed in Ardour 6, because imho it is unintuitive and there is no visible way to change it back.

There are no plans to change that behavior. If you manually edit the end marker, we assume that you have something specific in mind, and that Ardour should stop “auto advancing”.

Adding a way to reset the behavior is a possibility.

Also, regarding “intuitive”: Reflections on "Intuitive"

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Thanks for your reply Paul. I understand that design decision must be taken and they will never please everyone, including me :slight_smile: What I mean by intuitive in this case is that there is no visible clues of the end marker changing behavior when you touch it. The meaning and usage of invisible mechanisms don’t come through to the user. After all the GUI is there to give hints to the user of the programs functions and state :slight_smile:

I hope we get the possibility to reset the behavior in Ardour 6 and I will be happy. Also the end marker might change color (turn gray perhaps) to give user a clue that a functionality has been disabled.

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Meanwhile you can use Menu > Window > Scripting

Session:set_end_is_free(true);

and “run”.

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Thanks Robin :slight_smile: