Playlist missing; not on the list, but still "in use"

[automaciej (Maciej Bliziński)]

I tracked some drums in Ardour 8.4 on macOS 13.6.4. I used the “New Playlist for Rec-Armed” button in the Rec section (CTRL+R) to record takes. Then I made a track group and used the “P” button to switch between takes. An excellent workflow, pleasure to work with.

Now, there’s a snag. I noticed that the “Take.10” playlist didn’t fully switch as expected. Most tracks switched to “Take.10” but two didn’t.

I inspected the SNR TOP 1 track to see the playlists there.

Indeed, no “Track.10” there.

So that’s bug #1. It’s kind of worrying, losing playlists like that. During the tracking I didn’t interact with any specific tracks, I just kept creating new playlists on the Rec page and hitting record.

Continuing my investigation, I inspected the sources list, and it appeared like the sources are still there. I thought I’ll reconstruct the missing playlist. So I went to the SNR TOP 1 track to re-create the missing playlist.

I clicked the New Playlist option.

And put in the playlist name.

Ardour susprised me again, saying the playlist name is in use.

We just saw a second ago that it’s not on the list of playlists.

So, maybe the playlist is still there somewhere, only not showing for some reason?

Has anyone else seen this? Is this a bug or am I holding Ardour wrong?

[x42 (Robin Gareus)]

Is it listed under “Select…” ?

There are various subtle issues with listing playlists. e.g. Copy Track > Share Playlist. It vanishes from the list on the original track, but can still be found under “Any” in the Dialog.

[automaciej (Maciej Bliziński)]

Not listed under Select:

When I click “ALL tracks” nothing happens:

Also not visible when I click “Copy from”:

[automaciej (Maciej Bliziński)]

Investigating a little more.

I found the sources I expected, and found out that on one track the corresponding playlists was named “Take.5” - what tipped me off was that it was the only track with a “Take.5” playlist. All the other tracks had a gap there, there was Take.4 and then Take.6. So that’s the first case. I’m not sure how that happened.

The second case was a track I added mid-session - this you can call the PEBKAC case. I added a new track, and didn’t create a new take (set of playlists) in the Rec view, and pressed record. That track got the default playlist name, which is equal to the track name.

I tried renaming the stray playlists to “Take.10”. Ardour said the playlist name was already in use. Then I saw that it did rename the playlist after all. I then tried switching tracks in the group, to see if the new “Take.10” tracks would appear as well, but they didn’t. When I want to switch to “Take.10”, I need to switch the two extra tracks manually.

It would be good to know how Ardour identifies playlists that belong to the same take, and tell it that some particular playlists should also belong to that take.