Topic: 1.48

Just downloading.. sounds very promising 🙂

DSP

I’ll appreciate any feedback you have on this new method of displaying wrapped tracks.

It looks certainly nicer, but I wonder if having it selected by default is not a risk to confuse people a little more with the real signal flow ?

This would open up for an option to hide the track lanes for effect plugin tracks. As these tracks are not meant to have any events on them, they are just wasting space in the track timeline.

I agree, this will be a nice option.
Does the Edit and the other buttons for the plugins will be still visible ?

I’m not sure that I have well understood (this damned english language ! 😕 ) but it seems to be a good improvement…

I’m in two minds about this Frits… and I think acousmod is onto something

I love how alot of spaced is saved in the mixer, and it’s generally less cluttered now. But if you apply this to the track section, and remove the effect lanes as you mention above and have them edited by clicking on lines: I think this is going to lose the idea of the heirarchy and possibly have even less meaning for new users.

tracks would no longer appear to be grouped around other tracks. especially if the effect tracks were “hidden” by default (only lines displaying) i think the visual flow of audio could get lost.

but I wonder if having it selected by default is not a risk to confuse people a little more with the real signal flow ?

Maybe. Anyone else care to comment on this?

I think if it is left as is, (being set as the default behaviour) but with a short but detailed explanation in the Podium guide it should help avoid any confusion.

The new option in the mixer view is a definite improvement.

I also intend to add a view option for hiding tracks in a collapsed group track. That is the tracks that currently are drawn as very thin bars. When you have a lot of automation tracks, even collapsing the group still occupies a lot of space.

Agreed. An option to hide those tracks would be very useful.

Here are some suggestions that may help…

1. You could have a simple H button (for hide) right next to the SMR trio of buttons that reside just under the Param area (far left of Podiums arrange page). This could hide any tracks in an already collapsed group track. The H button could be a quick way to also restore hidden tracks quickly by simply clicking it again to disable it which will restore any hidden collapsed tracks to view again.

2. An option could be added to the Track properties option (available when right clicking on a track). I think as the hiding of tracks is related to the layout of a project a “Hide tracks when collapsed” option could be added here under Layout.

Once that box is ticked as soon as you collapse tracks within a group they will automatically be hidden. An option could be added to the right click menu for tracks that might say “reveal hidden tracks”. That way you set the option once in Track properties to hide collapsed tracks automatically and simply right click on a track to select the “reveal hidden tracks” to open them again.

3. Another option that is similar to the first is to add a H button to the track itself again next to the SMR buttons. Again, just as in option one enabling this button will hide collapsed group tracks and disabling it will reveal them again.

4. Another option could be to simply add an option to the track right click menu to hide collapsed tracks, and then of course this menu will offer the reveal hidden tracks option mentioned earlier, when a user wants to view his hidden collapsed tracks again.

How might these tracks be represented at track level?

1. All hidden tracks could be represented by a single block with the word Hidden on it.

2. Another option is to do away with a block representation and just use the word Hidden to give the user a constant visual reminder that there are hidden collapsed tracks there.

3. Dedicated track type for hidden tracks. When creating a track via the right click Add track route or even copying a track there could be an option to create a Holder track (hidden track lane). This would be no different to a normal track visually apart from being thinner and only being used to hold or store collapsed tracks.

Of course a holder track lane or track type could automatically be created when using any of first 4 suggestions raised earlier in this post. So for instance hitting the H button would automatically create a Holder track (for hidden tracks) anyway.

Hope this helps.

@Zynewave wrote:

Agreed. An option to hide those tracks would be very useful.

Here are some suggestions that may help…

I don’t think it has to be that customizable. I would add a ‘view’ menu button to the track inspector (similar to the view button in the mixer), with a ‘hide collapsed tracks’ option. When enabled, all tracks within collapsed group tracks would be hidden. Not just parameter tracks. The collapsing/unfolding of tracks would then behave just like e.g. browsing objects in the list boxes. You still have the ‘+’ button on the group track to indicate that there are tracks within that are hidden.

Agreed. The current view menu (in the mixer) actually works very well, so something along those lines added to the track inspector should be fine. It will keep things simple and will be a very useful addition to Podium. Keeping the ‘+’ button is a good idea as well.