I’m pretty sure this is not implemented, but I thought I should ask before filing a feature request in Mantis.
I’d like to (temporarily) link two (or more) recorded (audio) regions for editing, so that fades in/out, cuts, resizing, stretching, etc. all are made on both tracks at once.
The idea is to edit the DI and amp tracks for recorded guitars (recorded simultaneously). The edits should be done to both tracks.
I am aware that I can select both tracks and then fade and do other edits, but it would be more convenient if they both get linked until manually unlinked, as sometimes one of the tracks gets deselected by accident when clicking around.
You cannot “link” regions in the way you describe.
You can put tracks into a group, and enabled the “edit” and “select” shared properties for the group. This will propagate region selection across all tracks in the group, if there are indeed equivalent regions in each track. There are at least two options for the definition of an equivalent region, but if the tracks were recorded at the same time, either one should workd.
Indeed it works, I also record amp and DI, then edit both at the same time by grouping them. What I find is that sometimes signals do not reach the interface at the same time at a few points, I tend to prioritize DI and have the amp for reference, later when having completed the edition I reamp again the DI.
The only little problem is cutting: if I select the cut tool and click on one track in the group, only that track is cut. Even if both tracks were selected before, selecting the cut tool unselect the tracks.
This can me remedied by clicking on one of the track titles on the left. This will select both tracks again (after selecting the cut tool) and cutting will cut both tracks.
True I usually use the playhead for the edit point as well as I find it more precise, but if someone is used to the cut tool, it is likely to be more familiar to them for the mouse to be the edit point at least getting started. That being said the shortcut of ‘Move Playhead to Mouse’ is a single keystroke ‘p’ and then followed by the Split command ‘s’ means that with two keystrokes I can get more precision and similar behavior without needing a different tool. The fact I can hold ‘p’ until I place it correct helps as well, providing for easy placement as needed.
Seablade
Oddly I just noticed that enclosing a lower case ‘p’ in parenthesis doesn’t show as (p), but instead as § which I have seen before but am not familiar with the character or the markdown translation to that. Learn something new…
Maybe you should write a post about editing workflow, I also picked up from you the middle button dragging, which has become fundamental for my workflow. You seem to have a good experience and a particularly fine set of tricks for this job.
Feel free to remind me, I am not against making a video or three here and have most of my setup ready to do so, I am just lacking time right now. Sometime in the summer (Well June/July months, whatever that is to you) I may actually have time again:) Would probably help my students as well to have the videos and not just me lecturing in class.
Now, after trying split for a bit, I do like it overall, but it has a similar problem to cut. When I split the two selected tracks, they get deselected and I have to select them again to split them both again, so one extra click of the mouse. It’s better than cut, since I can click anywhere on the tracks, instead of having to click on the track titles on the left.
If I could cut/split both tracks in a group, no matter if selected, it would save me some clicks. Not a big deal at all, but it would same me some clicks and prevent me from cutting a single track without realizing.
The ‘deselect after split’ I think I saw get addressed in the current A6 code, but have not checked. I agree it is a bit frustrating as I like to go through and do my splits first then remove what is not needed and it makes it more difficult (Well at least by a tiny bit:).
One thing I have not tried yet. I wonder what would happen if you made all tracks EXCEPT what you want to cut/split hidden. I believe if no tracks or regions are selected split operates on all visible tracks (Don’t believe it operates on hidden tracks IIRC). Since nothing is selected, that could allow for one other option to improve this particular workflow I suppose, but obviously I would want to test to make sure it did what I wanted and did not operate on hidden tracks.
A couple of things that may help. First, if there are selected tracks rather than regions, the ‘s’ key operates on all regions at the edit point on the selected tracks. Also, there’s the “Edit | Preferences | Editor | Editor Behaviour | After splitting selected regions, select:” setting, which defaults to ‘no regions’, but has a couple of other options that might suit your workflow better.