Tab found the next transient only on the first selected track, analysed
everything from the cursor to the end of the track on every press, and
Alt+Tab, Shift+Tab and Alt+Shift+Tab ignored Tab to Transient (Shift+Tab
did nothing at all). The toolbar button used the Selector tool's icon.
- A new command, edit.tab {back?, extend?}, does what the Tab keys do, as in
Pro Tools: Tab and Alt+Tab (Option+Tab on a Mac, Ctrl+Tab on Windows and
Linux) move the insertion point to the next or previous clip start, end or
sync point on the selected tracks; Shift+Tab and Alt+Shift+Tab
(Ctrl+Shift+Tab) extend the selection. Alt+Shift+Tab pulls the selection
end back while a stop lies inside the selection, then grows its start.
- With Tab to Transient on, the stops also include the transients on every
selected audio track and the note-ons and note-offs on MIDI and Instrument
tracks. A transient within 10 ms of a clip boundary or note is that stop,
not a second one.
- Transients are detected in fixed 10-second blocks of each clip, so Tab and
Alt+Tab always find the same ones and a long clip costs one block per
press. Analysed blocks are cached while their clips, clip effects and audio
are unchanged: 0.5 ms a press across the demo's five audio tracks, 43 ms
without the cache.
- The Tab to Transient button gets its own icon, an arrow into a transient.
Cmd+Alt+Tab still toggles Tab to Transient. On Windows and Linux the desktop
takes Ctrl+Alt+Tab, and Pro Tools' Ctrl+Alt+T is Thin Automation here too, so
the button and the Options menu are the way there.
No change in behaviour or look: the Edit and Mix windows render
pixel-identical in both themes.
- The Mix strip and the Edit window's I/O column share input_name
(In 1 for a recording track with no input) and route_popup, which
keeps the route menu open while its bus search is typed in.
- The Mix slots and the I/O column's output key share widgets::groove;
the Edit header meter and widgets::meter share level_pos.
- The column list is read once per frame and passed to each track row;
header_width takes it.
- The record, input, solo and mute keys are a table, the slot columns
one loop, and send marks a char instead of a String.
- Inserts look their plugin up once; the unused triangle_right icon is
gone.
The edit modes only partly worked. Shuffle changed Cut, Clear and Paste
but not moves or trims. Spot froze drags and had no dialog. Grid snapped
relative to whichever clip was under the pointer, and Relative Grid
acted like Absolute. Behaviour now follows the Edit Modes chapter of the
Pro Tools Reference Guide.
Shuffle
- Grabber drags lift the clips out (later clips close the gap) and land
them at the nearest clip boundary, pushing later clips right; an empty
track takes them at the session start. The drag outline shows where
each track's clips will land.
- Trims move the later clips (a trimmed start stays put and the material
slides under it). Duplicate, Duplicate and Extend, Repeat and Clip List
drops make room, and Paste over a selection replaces it.
- Moves lift each clip by id and close the hole it leaves, so crossfade
partners and unselected clips keep their audio, and a crossfaded pair
moved together stays a crossfade. Ripples never push clips past the
session start, never split a crossfade (refused with a reason), and
drops never land inside a clip or crossfade.
- A time- or edit-locked clip and everything after it stay put when
Shuffle closes or opens gaps. Edits that would push into one are
refused ("not enough room before a locked clip"), and trims stop short
of it. Insert Time and Cut Time are timeline operations and still move
everything.
- With Automation Follows Edit, automation moves with every ripple, up to
a locked clip, and travels with moved clips; with it off, Shuffle edits
leave automation alone. Shuffle Clear used to move the clips but leave
their automation behind (#232).
- Shuffle Lock: Cmd-click (Ctrl-click on Windows and Linux) the Shuffle
button while in another mode. While it's on, the button shows a padlock
and every way into Shuffle (keys, button, commands) is refused.
- A drag works out every lift and landing point once per target track
(`lift_plan`, `shuffle_slots`, and a `DragPlan` kept for the drag). In a
release build, dragging 100 clips on a track of 20,000 took 29 ms a
frame and a 135 ms drop; now it's under a microsecond a frame and a 5 ms
drop.
Slip, Spot and Grid
- Slip: trims stop at the neighbouring clips instead of overlapping them.
- Spot: a Grabber click or drag, a Trim click or drag and a Clip List drop
open a Spot dialog: Start, Sync Point and End in any time scale, the
Duration, and the clip's Original Time Stamp. Trim clicks pick the
nearer edge.
- Grid: a drag snaps the dragged clip's start (its sync point, when it
has one inside the clip) to the grid. Relative Grid moves by whole grid
steps and keeps the clip's offset from the grid; a cut or copy pasted
in Relative Grid lands as far after a grid line as the copied range
started after one. Holding Cmd (Ctrl on Windows and Linux) while
dragging or dropping from the Clip List swaps Grid and Slip. Grid lines
no longer fall a step short at tempos where a line isn't a whole number
of samples.
- Choosing Grid from another mode picks whichever of Absolute and
Relative Grid was used last; F4 in Grid toggles them, like clicking the
Grid button again. Options > Edit/Tool Mode Keyboard Lock, which did
nothing, now stops F4 and Alt+4 from switching them (toolbar clicks
still do).
- Snap to Grid in Shuffle, Slip and Spot: Shift+F4, Shift-click on the
Grid button or on another mode's button, or hold F4 with F1-F3. The
Edit cursor and selections snap to the grid while clip moves and trims
follow the main mode; the Grid button is outlined while it's on.
- Option+1-4 (Alt+1-4 on Windows and Linux) work like F1-F4, and the `
key cycles Shuffle, Slip, Spot and Grid, skipping a locked Shuffle.
- Insert Silence pushes later material only in Shuffle; in the other
modes it clears the selection, as in Pro Tools.
Also
- Dragging clips from several tracks keeps each track's distance from the
grabbed clip's track. Drops past the last track, or onto a track that
can't play the clips (audio onto MIDI, an aux or the master), are
refused; clips moved onto an aux used to vanish into its unused
playlist.
- Undo and Redo keep the Edit mode, Shuffle Lock, Snap to Grid and the
Grid kind. Start trims keep a clip's sync point on its audio, or drop
it. Imported BWF time stamps are converted from the file's rate (read
from its header) to the session's, and the Original Time Stamp no
longer adds the session start twice. Typed positions that overflow are
ignored instead of panicking.
Commands: `edit.move_clips` follows the mode, and its `track` moves the
first clip's track there and keeps the others' distances. `edit.trim_clip`,
`edit.snap_to_grid` (Shift+F4) and `edit.shuffle_lock` are new, and
`edit.mode` takes `snap_to_grid`. Mode buttons expose their names to
accessibility tools.
Tests: crates/{engine,ui-egui}/tests/edit_modes.rs and the op tests in
edit.rs; the random-edits property test also toggles clip locks.
In Pro Tools, E (with Commands Keyboard Focus on) zooms the Edit window
to the edit selection and fits the selected tracks to the window, and
pressing it again brings back the view from before. SoundCraft had no
Zoom Toggle.
view.zoom_toggle, in its own command module, stores the zoom, the
scroll and the selected tracks' heights in the session's new
edit.zoom_toggle, so the view to go back to is saved with the session.
It then zooms so the selection fills the timeline and gives the
selected tracks equal shares of the track area: Pro Tools' Fit To
Window height. Hidden tracks are left alone. Run again, it puts all of
that back. With only an insertion point the zoom stays and its tracks
are fitted. The UI passes the track area's size; agents can pass
width_px and height_px.
TrackHeight::Fit, which nothing could reach and which drew 88 points
tall, now carries its height in points, so every place that sizes a
track row reads it unchanged.
The Edit window scrolls the first fitted track to the top when Zoom
Toggle turns on, and back to where it was when it turns off, whichever
way it was toggled (key, button, control channel, undo).
As in Pro Tools, E works in the Edit window while Commands Keyboard
Focus (the a-z button) is on, on every OS. A Zoom Toggle button left of
the Zoomer lights while it is on and toggles it too.
This follows Pro Tools' Zoom Toggle settings for audio editing:
Selection for both zooms, Fit To Window, no track view change. Its
other preferences, Ctrl+E (Pro Tools' key with the focus off),
Alt+Shift+E (cancel) and following the edit selection are left out.
Tests cover the zoom, the fitted heights, going back, insertion points,
hostile sizes and stored views, and E and the toolbar button on macOS,
Windows and Linux.
Brandon Thomas
grovebit