Old 07-12-2009, 03:19 AM   #1
edding
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Default REAL disable track

I can't find a disable track option.
I only can mute a track for save performance.

But i don't want to mute the track, i want to disable it.
In a normal mixing workflow you have a lot of muted tracks that you will unmute adding instruments to the mix.
A lot of times you must use 'unmute all'. When you do this, the 'not-real-disabled' track is active again.

When you freeze a track, normally you just want to disable it, not mute it.

I'v search the forum and the Guide but don't find it.

¿There is a way to REAL disable track?

Thanks.
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Old 07-12-2009, 04:03 AM   #2
Dstruct
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No way currently. I'll post a feature request.

http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=536

Last edited by Dstruct; 07-12-2009 at 04:09 AM.
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Old 07-12-2009, 04:03 AM   #3
musicbynumbers
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Would be nice to have this built in better but there are ways to do it in a macro action or as i prefer using a tabbed project as an archive. (made easier by the sws extensions)

You could create a key command that does something like this when used no selected tracks,
(names are rough but you'll find them)

-offline fx on selected tracks
-select all items on selected tracks
-offline selected media ( might be able to do this per track, can't remember)

Or change offline media for item muting as i'm not sure if that media will be deleted accidently if you "clean project directory", you could also get your macro to hide the track to (from both mixer and arrange if you use sws)


The other way is to have a second project folder called archive with your project so it can be opened in another tab and then you can simple cut selected tracks, change the tab to the new arbite project and then "control and v" to paste the tracks to the archive. You should set the archives tempo to the same or set its timebase to time and not beats if you work with time changes.

Hope that helps.
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Old 07-12-2009, 05:25 AM   #4
edding
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Thanks dstruct to make the feature request.

Thank 'musicbynumbers' for you answer.
I think your last option is the only reasonable way: The risk of lose the offline media is unnaceptable.
However, it's very inefficient. I hope that there might be a solution.
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Old 07-12-2009, 05:41 AM   #5
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Although it's not perfect and we do need it as a feature built in.

Have a look at the sws extensions if you don't have them as there is a cheeky way to turn the process of taking tracks from one project to the achive project very quickly.

but yes we need it in built.

I'm going to see if the offline items function does mean the files will get deleted by project clean but to be honest I doubt they will.
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Old 07-12-2009, 07:25 AM   #6
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If you set media offline they'll be online next time you load the project or if you simply minimize and maximize the application (last can be avoided by unticking "Set media items offline when application is not active" in preferences but this won't allow you then to edit those media files in other applications). Best way to achieve this would be building 2 macros:

Disable selected track(s):

*Item: Select all items in selected tracks
*SWS: Save selected track(s) items' states
*Item: Mute selected items
*Track: Set all FX offline for selected tracks
*SWS: Hide selected track(s)


Enable selected track(s):

*SWS: Show selected track(s) in TCP and MCP
*SWS: Restore selected track(s) items' states
*Track: Set all FX online for selected tracks
*SWS: Unselect all items on selected track(s)


When hiding a track from Track View all items in it are automatically blocked from moving/editing (Reaper's behaviour).

You can use SWS Tracklist to manage those "disabled" tracks.

If you want to have more control you can also save snapshots for track selection. Let's say you want to disable some of your drums elements because you already processed them with "Render Selected tracks to mono stem tracks (and mute originals)". Just select the original tracks and create a new snapshot for their selection so you can recall them easily to enable them faster later. You could use this macro for such task:

Save current track(s) selection:

*SWS: Save current snapshot filter options
*SWS: Clear all snapshot filter options
*SWS: Toggle snapshot selection
*SWS: New snapshot and edit name
*SWS: Restore snapshot filter options


This macro will create new snapshots for your track selection so next time you need to enable those drums elements again you just run it to select them all and then you run the macro for Enable selected track(s).

These snapshots may be also assigned to shortcuts. There are up to 12 snapshots that may be mapped to kc's for easier recall.

If you don't understand something or have something else in mind please let me know, I think we can work something out to adapt this to your workflow.

NOTE: you can find sws' and Xenakios' extensions here:


sws' Extension

Xenakios' Extension
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Last edited by Mercado_Negro; 07-12-2009 at 07:52 AM.
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Old 07-12-2009, 09:51 AM   #7
edding
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mercado_Negro View Post
If you don't understand something or have something else in mind please let me know, I think we can work something out to adapt this to your workflow.
Thank you very much Mercado_Negro. This forum with people like you makes it worthwhile.

The goal of disable track i think, is to discard tracks to mix but not for the project. Maybe you want this tracks to store the unprocesed source of freezen tracks, maybe you want this tracks to store 'not used at the moment' tracks.
If you hide this tracks, you lose visual feedback of your project/song. I think is usefull you know all time what you have in your project/song. Hiding track would despite you easily.

I'm going to use your macros (thanks a lot for your time) but only until mute items. I don't want to hide anything.
The disabled track is going to be a normal track with all items muted.
A Bit ugly and confusing visual feedback but functional.

i think an easy 'disable track' with grayed and blocked track would be easier and more intuitive. I've used a lot in Nuendo 4 (available since the first version).

However, i'm going to use your advice becouse it seems functional.
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Old 07-12-2009, 10:31 AM   #8
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you can also use the sws actions to change the colour to the same custom one each time and if you work it out fully you could do this for track and item. that would help a little.

I think someone said you can also drag and drop icons (perhaps on to multiple tracks) so you could further indicate it with this but could be more work then needed!
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Old 07-12-2009, 11:00 AM   #9
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As musicbynumbers suggests you can change your tracks' color for visual recognition. I'd add this action to the macro Disable Selected Track(s):

*Item: Select all items in selected tracks
*SWS: Save selected track(s) items' states
*Item: Mute selected items
*Track: Set all FX offline for selected tracks
*SWS: Set selected track(s) color to white


Track(s) will recover their original color when you enable them again because
Save selected track(s) items' states stores tracks' colors too.

I'll add a couple of thoughts, to the FR in the tracker, that may improve your suggestion: Lock options for Tracks.
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Old 07-29-2009, 02:31 PM   #10
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Was reading the voting thread posts and there was talk about lock features per track and just thought I'd mention if it hadn't been that this could be added on to track groups without causing too much fuss.

Is there a voting thread for track locking? I have probably already voted for it!

p.s. (not being too lazy to search, just thought this post needed a bump for the new guys to see it and vote!
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Old 07-29-2009, 03:39 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by edding View Post
I can't find a disable track option.
I only can mute a track for save performance.

But i don't want to mute the track, i want to disable it.
In a normal mixing workflow you have a lot of muted tracks that you will unmute adding instruments to the mix.
A lot of times you must use 'unmute all'. When you do this, the 'not-real-disabled' track is active again.

When you freeze a track, normally you just want to disable it, not mute it.

I'v search the forum and the Guide but don't find it.

¿There is a way to REAL disable track?

Thanks.
Won't simply muting the items on the track do the trick?
It works fine for me.
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Old 07-29-2009, 05:56 PM   #12
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But what if you want to go on a muting frenzy and then unmute them all easily? the ones you don't want will also be unmuted too.

it will also offline effects which frees up memory and maybe it will also hide the tracks too so if you want to "show all tracks" you won't also have to rehide the ones you have muted / off-lined.

Also, not sure about reaper but muted tracks in Nuendo are still read off the hard drive as if they were playing to allow you to unmute quickly.

Disabling tracks will stop this happening.

It's good that you asked though as other people might ask the same questions

These are just the first things that came in to my head, anyone think of anymore!
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Old 07-30-2009, 12:23 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by musicbynumbers View Post
But what if you want to go on a muting frenzy and then unmute them all easily? the ones you don't want will also be unmuted too.

it will also offline effects which frees up memory and maybe it will also hide the tracks too so if you want to "show all tracks" you won't also have to rehide the ones you have muted / off-lined.

Also, not sure about reaper but muted tracks in Nuendo are still read off the hard drive as if they were playing to allow you to unmute quickly.

Disabling tracks will stop this happening.

It's good that you asked though as other people might ask the same questions

These are just the first things that came in to my head, anyone think of anymore!
I was taking about muting the items, not the tracks. When the items are muted, soloing/muting/unmuting the track makes no diff, nothing comes out anyway. And I hope that Reaper does not process muted items in any way, but I may be wrong there.

I understand that disabling tracks may have other benefits, especially if disabling as in Dstruct's FR http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=536, but at the moment muting the items works fine for me as a replacement of disabling the track.
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Old 07-30-2009, 01:35 PM   #14
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That's cool but it doesn't stop track plug ins being processed and a some of us have a lot of items in parallel on tracks and some of these will be pre bounce files that should stay muted and it can be complicated to only un mute these particular files that will make this difficult for me but I know you understand that it's different for everyone.

Just wanted to make it clear to all that read this and see that a real disable would be a benefit (but not as high priority as other requests)
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Old 07-30-2009, 04:36 PM   #15
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i dont know how much this helps.
but sometimes in the past if i knew i wont be useing a track again,
or am unsure.
i just save the song under a different project version...
delete the track on the new project version and proceed.
knowing i can always go back to the previous version.
so if the songs called lets say "hug the reaper" ..lol...
i would have lets say as project saves as i developed the song..
huggyreapv1
huggyreapv2
huggyreapv3
for example..
now at v3 i want to disable some traks.
so i save as huggyreapv4 after deleting the traks i want to disable.
then proceed as huggyreapv4 knowing i can go back to huggyreapv3.
(but remember dont clean the project dir.)

heres another SAFE WAY kinda trick to think bout.
lets say you have a situation where you have a perfect song set up..
but you want to experiment but are scared you might foul something up.
lets take huggyreap song as an example.
copy the whole project folder called huggyreap in win ,
paste the copy in win n rename something like huggyreaptest.
now click on the rpr project icon in the huggyreaptest folder.
(not the original huggyreap.)
now before experimenting go into project properties n make sure
the recording path points to huggyreaptest ...
(so there is no impact on the original song folder)
and immediately save as huggyreaptestv1.
youll see the project name change at the top of the traks display to huggyreaptestv1.
now you can go to town experimenting without impacting
the original song folder.
obviously in this second example you can disable traks again without impacting the original huggyreap foldr containing
the original traks.
in summary if worried bout screwing sumpin up..
work on a copy of the song folder containing all the traks.

Last edited by manning1; 07-30-2009 at 04:40 PM.
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Old 07-30-2009, 05:37 PM   #16
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This reminds me that Tim of sws extension fame just implemented recently a great feature to "archive tracks" using a tabbed and linked second song that with his key commands can cause the currently selected songs to be cut, the archive song to be opened in a new tab, paste the tracks into the archive and then save and close the archive project.

Still really would like disable tracks but this is great workaround for now!


The extension is also good when you have projects you want to link together and you can even save all current tabs as a text file that can be opened easily again.

Very cool!
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Old 06-30-2010, 08:58 AM   #17
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We now have a track-lock option, so we're part-way there.

IMO the track name would need to be visible, and every other button on those tracks would not.

I'll add this to the FR Greatest Hits thread too. A good one.
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