Topic: Extend Podium’s track hierarchy concept

This topic has 53 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 11 months ago by UncleAge.

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January 24, 2009 at 20:43 #13922

pavouk100
Participant

IMHO most of the people believe that cost of the feature is the cost of adding it into the product. But usually, the major cost of the feature is maintaining it – including making sure that it plays nice with other features; it is very common to create ‘snowball’-type of SW, where there is so many ad-hoc added complex features that noone really knows well, only a few users can use them and more importantly, they usually have some unexpected interactions with other ‘features’.

IMO, the main Podium strength is how cute, contained, small, well-thought-out it is. Frits does great job keeping all new added features minimal, cute and unobtrusive – there is not many things you need to learn to be able do all you need. This is because there is rather small amount of basic ‘features’ – basic building blocks, but they can be combined together very nicely, and interact in the way as you expect. This is usually not the case of big SW bloated with thousands of specialized complex functions.

Anyway, I’m too off-topic now. Let’s see how will Frits handle Mike’s suggestion – maybe he will be able to come up with some brilliant idea how to implement it and not complicate life for those who will not need it 😉

January 24, 2009 at 21:06 #13923

Pigini
Participant

@pavouk100 wrote:

IMO, the main Podium strength is how cute, contained, small, well-thought-out it is. Frits does great job keeping all new added features minimal, cute and unobtrusive – there is not many things you need to learn to be able do all you need. This is because there is rather small amount of basic ‘features’ – basic building blocks, but they can be combined together very nicely, and interact in the way as you expect. This is usually not the case of big SW bloated with thousands of specialized complex functions.

I could not agree more and that’s exactly why I think that idea is so great.
It is merely an additional routing rule for those building blocks.
It actually offers great possibilities without the need for specialized complex functions. I don’t like bloat either, would not be here, if I did.

But now is piano roll time, the mixer just had its new do. But it would be great, if that one made it on the list for later.

January 24, 2009 at 21:44 #13926

UncleAge
Participant

@Pigini wrote:

I could not agree more and that’s exactly why I think that idea is so great. It is merely an additional routing rule for those building blocks. It actually offers great possibilities without the need for specialized complex functions. I don’t like bloat either, would not be here, if I did.

You know this is one of the things that made me like Tracktion. It was real simple on the surface. And then, once you understood what could be done with racks you knew you could get just about anything done.

Frits’ original idea of the zGrid made me think of T2/3’s racks. Ever since he sat that idea on the shelf I have wondered how he will implement some of the other routing schemes.

February 2, 2009 at 15:46 #14108

MelodyMan
Participant

@UncleAge wrote:

Frits’ original idea of the zGrid made me think of T2/3’s racks. Ever since he sat that idea on the shelf I have wondered how he will implement some of the other routing schemes.

Racks are T’s main strength. Also the possibility to make Rack-presets is a phenomenal feature. Would like to have something similar in Podium. I have just begun to use Podium, and i like it more every day. Although Tracktion will always be the love of my life . Too bad Mackie seems to have abandoned it.

February 2, 2009 at 20:07 #14112

UncleAge
Participant

@MelodyMan wrote:

Although Tracktion will always be the love of my life . Too bad Mackie seems to have abandoned it.

I felt the same way about it for a while, but now, I don’t know… An interesting side effect has been the shift on my end to focus on fewer apps. So far, Live/Podium & SoundForge have been filling the audio needs and Vegas/After Effects has been filling the video needs. Tracktion, eXT, Reaper and demos of FLS, Sonar and Samplitude have fallen to the wayside for me.

I haven’t transfered all of my projects out of T3 because I can’t mimic that functionality in Podium yet. I’m waiting ’til a little later this year when Frits tackles the midi/midi initiative. Until then it looks like the winning team of Live & Podium will continue on until further notice 🙂

May 27, 2009 at 21:55 #15215

Mike G
Participant

Hi All,

Not sure if this is the right place for this post, maybe should be on its own thread but it was related in my mind…

How about this, you have several effects that you use often and so you make a track template out of it. (say a stack of 4 effects with all their settings… eq, reverb, distortion, chorus)
But what if the track template could be “grouped” (like grouping drawing objects in MS word) and then used as a VST plug-in in it’s own right?
This grouped thingy would be called a composite plug-in and I suppose it would have to be stored in your project template or something.
Maybe you could even pick some parameters from the plug-ins used inside the composite plug-in and expose them as the “main tweaky bits”.

Just an idea, what do you think?

Thanks,
Mike G

May 28, 2009 at 00:52 #15216

UncleAge
Participant

I think most apps that have this call them preset “chains”. Not a bad thing to have. I keep a few setup in another app I use for my voice-overs. I keep a gate-compressor-eq chain setup for each of my mics. I also keep a few chains setup for a few other people that stop by every once in a while to record. It makes the setup process a lot quicker.

May 29, 2009 at 06:23 #15229

koalaboy
Participant

I really like the track hierarchy, but I get very confused trying to manipulate it.

I tend to use the context menus to move above/below other tracks and into groups.

I can never actually work out how to move out of a group 😳

Preset chains, especially with a hierarchy can be very powerful.

May 29, 2009 at 10:55 #15236

druid
Participant

I thought you could just click and drag it out of the group? Or am I thinking of something else? Quite possible, haven’t done much with Podium recently.

June 1, 2009 at 02:13 #15261

kyran
Participant

The thing Mike G suggest sounds a lot like the racks you have in ableton live. I really like that concept.

If we could combine a chain of plugins into a reusable group and assing buttons to them that show in the inspector if you have selected the chain (like the eq does now).

October 30, 2009 at 18:32 #16651

Pigini
Participant

Up, Up, Up with that great idea!!!
At the time Mike suggested it the changes in the midi editor were on.
Maybe now is a better time to look at it again?

December 5, 2009 at 05:24 #16916

Zynewave
Keymaster

Sorry for not participating in this thread sooner. I have a hard time imagining how this would work. If it is to be a true reversal of the signal flow, then I see lots of conflicts. I guess there should be a group track option called perhaps “reverse signal flow” or “route output to child tracks”. What happens with the audio when it reaches the bottom of the hierarchy? Does it hyperspace up to the group track above the reversed flow track to continue its way up to the master? And what if you have a group track further up the chain which is also reversed?

A simpler solution would be to have a group track option like “ghost play on child tracks”. This will not do any reversal of the flow, but instead automatically replicate the events placed on the group track on all the lanes of the child tracks. The events on the group track would then be muted of course. The events on the group track would be drawn semi-transparently on the child tracks.

December 9, 2009 at 10:00 #16943

Pigini
Participant

I think Mikes first post gives the best idea of what he means.
I understand the whole idea more like a splitter or routing-clamb, not like a normal track and not like a reversal of the signal flow. Much more like a new element in podium that would allow some of the routing capabilities known from modular hosts, but implemented in a way that suits podium.

December 9, 2009 at 20:10 #16945
Mike G
Participant
I’m not sure I follow what you mean by “reverse signal flow”, so my comments here may be of no use whatever!!

In my mind the best way to think of it is as a different way of doing send and return. (sort of!!)

Currently in podium…
```
[grp 1 [track 1

[      [track 2

[      [track 3
```
… you can merge signal from track 1,2 & 3 into a single group

My idea is that as well as merge, you could allow “duplicatation” of a signal.

So…
```
[Track 4 [grp 1 [track 1

[track 5 [      [track 2

[track 6 [      [track 3
```
Track 1,2 & 3 get merged into group 1

Output of group 1 gets duplicated and sent 3 ways..
1 copy of signal goes to track 4, another copy goes to track 5, another to track 6
Aim of this is to apply different sets of FX, so Track 4 could have some EQ
Track 5 with some reverb and different EQ
Track 6 EQ and delay etc…

Above example is with audio
But same metaphor would be great to have with midi, sending same midi input signals to different devices, which would be amazing if you could also “filter” the midi notes by note ranges etc..

Hope that helps.
And just to restate, this is not something I personally “need” but it was an idea I had that I thought could com under the category of maybe being an attention grabbing feature for new users.

And maybe an easier way of visualising routing options that have also been discussed in other places (Although it may well be that it is less flexible and less easy ot understand!!)
December 9, 2009 at 23:50 #16947

Zynewave
Keymaster

Ok, I misunderstood the suggestion of a reverse signal flow.

I can see the logic in your parallel routing (in addition to the current serial routing), but I can’t see a simple way to incorporate this in the current hierarchic track display. It would be helpful if someone can produce a screenshot mock-up of how this should be laid out in the inspector, tracks region and mixer.