>> v4: Area selection and editing changes (media item, envelope points, and MIDI)

[AdamWathan]

It was replaced by the same set of actions available in th ruler context, so you can set it up to behave exactly the same way as you could with that option, you just have to assign the specific actions manually. More flexible this way actually, but still really need the marquee options to be available in these contexts to satisfy the anti-right click crowd.

[Shan]

Originally Posted by AdamWathan

It was replaced by the same set of actions available in th ruler context, so you can set it up to behave exactly the same way as you could with that option, you just have to assign the specific actions manually.

Got it going. Thanks!

Originally Posted by AdamWathan

More flexible this way actually, but still really need the marquee options to be available in these contexts to satisfy the anti-right click crowd.

I have a few ideas to add to this that will work. I'm gonna work with this all weekend and give you a shout on Skype. I think we can get this going.

Shnae

[musicbynumbers]

I would love to see time selection adapt to vertically only highlight the tracks/items it's going to affect. It's always been hard to see sometimes no matter how hard I try to edit the theme.

[AdamWathan]

Originally Posted by musicbynumbers

I would love to see time selection adapt to vertically only highlight the tracks/items it's going to affect. It's always been hard to see sometimes no matter how hard I try to edit the theme.

Agreed, this is the foundation of "area selection" in general, just a "per track" time selection so that it is more obvious what it is going to affect!

[Mercado_Negro]

Originally Posted by AdamWathan

Agreed, this is the foundation of "area selection" in general, just a "per track" time selection so that it is more obvious what it is going to affect!

And this is the 1% I'm missing to be 100% satisfied with v4

[jas]

Yes, please - selection per track - for all forms of editing (ripple too).

That same thought spawned these threads, but provoked very little discussion:

http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=1870

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=53538

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=50747

[Subz]

Originally Posted by Shan

Alpha 6

+ Mouse modifiers: explicit support for left-click marquee over empty track space

this is great!!!!!!!!


Please Please also add marquee to "Piano Roll" Context menu


Thank You for listening guys!!


Subz

[airon]

[musicbynumbers]

I would love "invert" as a blend option in the theme editor too

HSG (think that's it's name) gets you close but not quite there.

I find that when you do get good contrast in the item selection marque you either lose the ability to see what items are also selected/can't read the waveforms or letters any more/can no longer see the time selection in empty space (but then again I like to have a black background!

so plus one for invert!

[timlloyd]

Originally Posted by musicbynumbers

so plus one for invert!

Make that 2.

I would love actual area selection in Reaper so much!

[Shan]

Alpha 6

+ Mouse modifiers: explicit support for left-click marquee over empty track space or media items

We now have all the functionality in REAPER to make a real area selection. The following needs to be done:

+ When enabled in prefs, "Clear time selection when edit cursor moves on click in arrange view" does not work when clicking in an item. This would be expected behavior to have with any area selection (Done):



+ It would also benefit to have the arrow cursor changed into a themeable selector cursor for this particular function.

+ Also, "Move edit cursor when pasting/inserting media" will have to function in this mode when enabled in prefs(Done).

+ Make the marquee snap to the top and bottom of the tracks(like the sws zoom. Hint, hint). The marquee will also have to remain displayed after the selection is made and the mouse button is released:



+ Make the white outline transparent to hide it:



+ Also allow the user to adjust the transparency and color of the selection for the themers.

When the above is done, change the name to Area/Edit Selection(The marquee stuff will still remain as is) and make it default at the top half of the item for the R4 release so people know this new wonderful feature is finally here. Include this new area selection in all automation lanes and the MIDI editor. As a side note, if one inspects Logic Studio in detail, it does exactly the above in regards to using it's marquee functions as it's area selection.

With the above, we'll also have the ability to do non-contiguous vertical selections, but not horizontal at this time. This top requested feature of all time definitely needs to be in the R4 release in my honest opinion. It's almost there.

Shane

[musicbynumbers]

WHY.. when we have auto-cross fade off can't we make it so crossfades that have already been created can still be "dual adjusted" by using the top "fade tool" bit AND have their edges adjusted as if you had auto-fade off IF you simply adjust them by their edges (from the middle non fade tool bit)

It seems to me (at the moment anyway) that having the top cross-fade area and the middle "edge adjust" area do the same thing when auto fade is off is a waste of a good opportunity to edit faster!

Does that make sense?

I was frustrated trying to adjust a cross fade (without auto-cross fade on) and finding them "un-associated" any more but didn't want to have to keep turning auto cross fade on and off when I could be using the top or middle of the item for different things!

PS, I know I can use a modifier to move both sides together but I can get the crossfade to extend when adjusting the top edge of an item.

[AdamWathan]

+1 to Shan on all his points, the drawing method is really all that's left to do!

[Silicon/Silicium]

Originally Posted by airon

+1! COmplete time selection should be past except when you select it in rule. I can't see any benefits having a complete time selection when working on items.
also look at the "compact" TCP.

[Shan]

Originally Posted by AdamWathan

+1 to Shan on all his points, the drawing method is really all that's left to do!

+1 billion!

Shane

[Shan]

An Area/Edit Selection love bump.

Shane

[AdamWathan]

airon's screen capture in particular illustrates how much more braindead obvious it is in Pro Tools vs Reaper when it comes to being able to easily see what you are going to affect when running a selection based action.

There just needs to be an option to draw the "marquee time selection" as a time selection that snaps to the height of media items (so that it works when items are in lanes).

The functionality would be EXACTLY the same as it already is, but it would just be drawn as an "area selection" that snaps to item heights and overlays only over the areas where you draw the marquee instead of the whole arrange window. On mouse up, it would still select the items it touched and overlay a selection styled as per the theme editor on top.

So this:


Instead of this:

[run, megalodon]

Yes, I agree with Adam and many of the people above. I've been watching this with interest, wondering if Reaper is about to make a big misstep. I can only imagine area selection in the ways that ProTools does it and Airon proposed.

Taking two steps to find the time selection and then the selected items is a completely unnecessary and trying method. I'd like "real" area selection. Just MHO.

[musicbynumbers]

This would solve so many GUI problems I have had to try and sort out with settings and background pngs

[AdamWathan]

I also believe a "dark" selection like in my image above makes more sense for this functionality than a "light" selection, at least with the V3 theme. It should follow whatever trend is present when selecting an item. So if selected items are darker than non-selected items, selected areas of selected items should be even darker, sort of a selection hierarchy. If selected items are lighter than unselected, than of course the selected area should be even lighter again to make it obvious to the user.

I am not opposed to retaining the drawing of the actual marquee in this "edit selection" stuff either, I think it is actually helpful in some way and doesn't take away from the visual ease of use. The key is just to make sure the time selection follows the marquee itself and snaps to item heights, instead of drawing all across the board.

[Mercado_Negro]

I think this will happen in v4, a weird feeling inside me says Cockos was just putting some things together with mouse modifiers and editing improvements to jump into true area selection later.

Fingers crossed... patience.

[Lawrence]

Airon and Adam nailed this awhile ago. My hope is for true "non-contiguous" range selection. Here's another PT like example.
Obviously being able to make multiple unconnected selections has it benefits when editing.



This from Adam's post would be very cool...

[airon]

Originally Posted by Mercado_Negro

I think this will happen in v4, a weird feeling inside me says Cockos was just putting some things together with mouse modifiers and editing improvements to jump into true area selection later.

Fingers crossed... patience.

That's what I think is happening as well.

The recent addition of being able to glue a time selection area is of course great to have, but the way the time and item selection is drawn is still a bit messy.

Schwa, if I may suggest this, how about using what would work well as a drawing method/colour scheme for area selection on the cross section of the time+item selection as well, sort of as an added layer on top of the time selection veil.
The item+ts and area selection could share that visual trait. Area selection will visually simply be item+ts minus the ts veil across the session, plus the inversion of any empty space, and ennvelope lanes it crosses as well. Thus what the item+ts does will be much more obvious.

[AdamWathan]

This of course would be the ideal visual feedback:



But fundamental design differences between Reaper and other DAWs make it unlikely that we will ever get it that way. In Reaper, an item selection and time selection are totally independent, and for the time selection to have any bearing on an item within it, the item has to be selected as well, hence this mockup where the items are selected and an edit selection is also made on top of it:



In Pro Tools of course, an area selection is the only selection method. Selecting an item merely creates an area selection that matches the position and length of the item you are trying to select.

Unfortunately it seems like this is a necessary evil in Reaper and we won't get the ability to actually only physically select parts of items, the whole item has to be selected with an area being defined additionally.

So since we can't get proper area selection that doesn't rely on selecting an area of an item that is already entirely selected, please at least meet us halfway and give us this item height snap drawing option, it would make editing a whole lot more straightforward

[IXix]

True area selection would be great, multiple areas even better. I hope it can be done.

[buckman]

Sorry to jump in here, and have had a play with Reaper 4 pre.

With regard to Area Selection, it seems that after having a play and settings with area selection, it seems that (for now) that its still only selected via the loop brace at the top?

Is there no way that a single track can be highlighted in Area Selection al-la PT?

Or is that being planned?

I think with the most requests and the build up for v4, it was the first thing i jumped to!

Again apologies if i've jumped in here, and not read 'all' the posts... maybe there's a setting i've overlooked?

[airon]

It may be that the current approach with all the optimizations, additions, tweaks and other bits of magic may actually give us area selection.

But in order to get the non-contiguous area selection that was suggested, I cannot see this working so far. This was the aspect of the request that was actually innovative.

Give it time gentlemen. Right now I find it hard to nail down how I'm supposed to engineer the mouse modifiers in to giving me what I want, as they're in flux and being heavily optimized from release to release.

Some aspects are already present, and you can test them with the mouse modifiers. Take a look at the media item and media item(bottom part) contexts in the preference page of the mouse modifiers. We should at least give it a good spin before we attempt to criticize it for not being identical to what we expected in either functional or visual implementation.

This is being added to and revised with every release.

[airon]

Schwa, I have three small stumbling blocks at the moment.

One is that I cannot clear, copy or paste a mouse modifier context. I had to copy the media item context one by one to the media item(bottom part) context, so I could use the item+ts selection context in the upper half and retain all the standard behaviours in the bottom.

Two, I can't extend or contract the item+ts in the same space I'm making it in. I'm trying to get a selection context identical for the most part to that of a sample editor. The extend/contract part is not there yet. Can it be added to what we have without having to create a new selection context as we asked? Currently I have to remake a selection if it isn't exactly what I required.

Third is that Reaper won't place the edit cursor before I let go of the mouse button. This is the more serious of the stumbling blocks. It means the machine is now slower than me, and is deliberately slowing me down. I routinely find myself undoing commands in Reaper because they were being executed in the old edit cursor location. I argued about this with Justin years ago. Has your stance of having the DAW slow down its operator in such a fashion changed ? I would find it surprising if it hasn't, as Reaper lets me do a lot simultaneously, but not place the edit cursor on mouse-click-down. In other words it takes two clicks to place an edit cursor, but only one click with the middle mouse button to place the playhead.

[schwa]

Originally Posted by airon

The second is that Reaper won't place the edit cursor before I let go of the mouse button.

In what context exactly? Having the edit cursor chase every mouse click even if the click is the beginning of a drag movement, would seriously mess people up.

[airon]

Originally Posted by schwa

In what context exactly? Having the edit cursor chase every mouse click even if the click is the beginning of a drag movement, would seriously mess people up.

In this case for the item+ts context, where I prefer to make selections and simply place the editor cursor for making splits.

The full name of the context is "Marquee select items and time".

[schwa]

So you want the edit cursor to move when clicking on an item to begin a marquee selection? I think that would be unexpected for most users, no?

[airon]

Originally Posted by schwa

So you want the edit cursor to move when clicking on an item to begin a marquee selection? I think that would be unexpected for most users, no?

Not at all. Many people wish to place the edit cursor this way.

Luckily, that context also selects the item at the same time, even with a single click, or else none of my editing commands would work anyway, them being trim and split most of the time.

The marquee selection without the time selection is exempt from this behaviour, that is of course expected. I routinely use the marquee to select items for editing that way across many tracks after I've placed my edit cursor.

[Mercado_Negro]

Originally Posted by schwa

So you want the edit cursor to move when clicking on an item to begin a marquee selection? I think that would be unexpected for most users, no?

If "Move edit cursor when clicking media items" is disabled it shouldn't do that, please. Actually right now that option isn't working properly if you use "Marquee select items and time" in one of your item parts because that moves the cursor

[EDIT] This is what I'm talking about

[fiddler59]

Originally Posted by schwa

Here's an example of something you can do now. Please use this thread to suggest other potential and desired uses. One change that would probably go a long way would be to have a single mouse action that can be used for "select items and time" whether the drag starts in the track or over a media item.

I can't make this happen for the life of me. Do I need to set my mouse with different modifiers or what ??

DB

[airon]

Mercado, I have

Prefes/Editing Behavior/Move edit cursor to start of time selection on time selection change

switched on. That gives me an edit cursor where ever I click(mouse-up-click that is) or click and drag. Maybe that setting is messing with your setup.

[Shan]

Originally Posted by buckman

Is there no way that a single track can be highlighted in Area Selection al-la PT?

If these small changes are made, then yes:

http://forum.cockos.com/showpost.php...3&postcount=51

Shane

[Mercado_Negro]

Originally Posted by airon

Mercado, I have

Prefes/Editing Behavior/Move edit cursor to start of time selection on time selection change

switched on. That gives me an edit cursor where ever I click(mouse-up-click that is) or click and drag. Maybe that setting is messing with your setup.

No, I also have that disabled. That option is great but I don't use it because I don't like to move my edit cursor when clicking on items. In v3, I had this under control thanks to those 2 options. I rarely split items at edit cursor, I use my mouse cursor for this, that's why I don't have any use for moving the edit cursor when clicking on items.

[fiddler59]

Originally Posted by fiddler59

I can't make this happen for the life of me. Do I need to set my mouse with different modifiers or what ??

DB

Whatever the round thing is under the pointer.......I can't make that happen. What do I need to do ??

TIA

David B

[Mercado_Negro]

Originally Posted by fiddler59

Whatever the round thing is under the pointer.......I can't make that happen. What do I need to do ??

TIA

David B

Ahh that's a LICEcap thing, it's not in REAPER. It's just a visual aid when doing animations so people know when you 'clicked' on something

[EvilDragon]

I'd disagree with moving edit cursor upon marquee. However, optional is fine, as long as the default is "off".