.Global SMR
Fantastic. You get pop ups for Solo Mute and Record states. Nice, tight and tidy. Easy to use, gets right out of the way. Its 10 times easier for me to manage large numbers of tracks and manage solo enabled tracks across groups. Best implementation of its type anywhere IMO. No more keyboard shortcuts for this feature here. Great! 
Tags
Look, this is amazingly easy to use and it makes complex projects child play. Just a few clicks to set up your tags and that’s it. Click and go. Brilliant idea and the implementation is just as good.
I personally think the placement and height used by the toolbar is OK.
My only problem now is…how long this thing is going to stay in beta LOL! 🙂
@Zynewave wrote:
I’m curious if you still think “track filters” is a better description than “track tags”. I abandoned the “filter” description because I thought it could be confused with DSP filter processing, as in EQ plugins or synth filter sections, etc.
I agree. Track filters as UA was saying or “filter” does indeed describe what it does but…the again “Track Tags” is shorter and does avoid the confusion with the use of “filter” and its related description for plugins elsewhere.
Bug?
The check button idea is great but I cannot get it to work here. It does not appear to assign/remove at all. ???
I don’t care if you call them Track Tags, PCCTG’s or Waldschweinschnitzel in Kürbiskernpanier mit Braterdäpfeln und Preiselbeerkompott – this feature is absolutely divine! 😀
I actually like how the tracks region is separated from the timeline, marker and tempo regions. The check buttons are also a great idea, though I’d never have understood what they do if it weren’t for popup help. 😉
If there’re still free keys, maybe Alt-click could be used to quickly unselect all tags.
Three peculiarities I’ve seen:
1. Say I have a group track for vocals, and in it, there’s a single track that I assigned my “lead instruments” tag to. If the group is collapsed, then I only see the minimized child track if I select the tag, and the only way to expand the group track in this view is with keyboard shortcuts (which is not a problem for me, personally).
I don’t know if this would work, but here’s my suggestion to “smarten” it up a little: If a track that belongs to a group is tagged, always expand its group upon selecting the tag. Granted, the group stays expanded after this, but I think it’s worth trading this annoyance for the other… This is for when you show child tracks only – there shouldn’t be a problem if a group is tagged as a whole.
2. Select a track -> remove the selected tag from it by clicking on the tag’s check button -> the next track with this tag is automatically selected (look for the active selection color). However, it is actually the track that was just unchecked that still has key focus and thus is selected (as also seen by the unchecked tag mark)!
[Edit] 2.1. Closely related… Select a track (example track has the “vocals” tag) -> select a different tag the track does not belong to (“rhythm section” in this example) -> the first track with this tag will appear as selected, but the tags are not correctly checked off. The vocal track also still has keyboard focus. So switching tags should either force the selection on the track that appears as selected, or should not show a track as selected when it isn’t, in my opinion. :-k
3. If I create a track, it’s invisible at first. You said it would inherit the currently selected tag (or tags?) – maybe it’s just not implemented yet.
@Zynewave wrote:
Creating new arrangements will no longer put the return tracks in a “bus return” group, but will just create single return tracks on the same group level as the normal tracks.
Sounds good, as it means more space, but I hope there’ll be some way around assigning new bus tracks to the busses tag by hand.
Another thing I’m going to implement for the busses, is a “Do you want to create a bus return track for the new bus send?” yes/no messagebox which will appear when you add a bus send that does not yet have a return assigned. That gets rid of the manual work you previously had to do when adding extra sends to your arrangement.
Pardon me if we’re talking different things, but I seem to remember Podium creating both send and return mappings all along, when using the devices menu, as well as selecting ‘new instance’ from the right-click menu?
Something that seems to have gone a bit awry in beta 2:
(As before, the vocal track belongs to a group which isn’t shown in this tag selection)
Another idea I had is a ‘tags’ button in the track properties window that opens when you create a new track: It could expand a simplified tag list panel to the side, so you could assign tags right at (multiple 
) track creation. the panel should remember its state (shown/hidden) after closing the dialog, to be always there for people when they need it, and others who don’t use track tags won’t have to bother with it. Once your tags are set up, this might be even a little quicker than creating ten new tracks and ticking them one by one.
Oh, and I think it’d be nice if child tracks of a tagged group track would show greyed-out tick marks in the track tags window, whenever ‘include child tracks…’ is checked. You’d much more easily see where the group you’re tagging ends, and I imagine you can get a little lost once you reach 30+ tracks.
@thcilnnahoj wrote:
@Zynewave wrote:
Creating new arrangements will no longer put the return tracks in a “bus return” group, but will just create single return tracks on the same group level as the normal tracks.
Sounds good, as it means more space, but I hope there’ll be some way around assigning new bus tracks to the busses tag by hand.
If you let Podium create the bus return track (as per your next question), then it should be automatically included in the “busses” tag.
Another thing I’m going to implement for the busses, is a “Do you want to create a bus return track for the new bus send?” yes/no messagebox which will appear when you add a bus send that does not yet have a return assigned. That gets rid of the manual work you previously had to do when adding extra sends to your arrangement.
Pardon me if we’re talking different things, but I seem to remember Podium creating both send and return mappings all along, when using the devices menu, as well as selecting ‘new instance’ from the right-click menu?
I’m talking about bus return tracks, not mappings. Currently when you first time assign a new bus send to a track, you need to manually go create the corresponding bus return track.
Something that seems to have gone a bit awry in beta 2:
(As before, the vocal track belongs to a group which isn’t shown in this tag selection)
Try the new beta3. I’ve made it so that tagged tracks that are part of a hidden/collapsed group, is now always shown. Check if you still get the visual bug as in your screenshot, and then tell me how your track hierarchy is. Note that in beta2 I dropped the implicit display of collapsed parent tracks for tagged child tracks. So, if a tag includes tracks from different groups, the tracks are not displayed with their actual hierarchy relations. It saves the space used for unneeded parent tracks. In beta1, the master track was always shown as collapsed at the top, which was annoying.
Another idea I had is a ‘tags’ button in the track properties window that opens when you create a new track: It could expand a simplified tag list panel to the side, so you could assign tags right at (multiple
Oh, and I think it’d be nice if child tracks of a tagged group track would show greyed-out tick marks in the track tags window, whenever ‘include child tracks…’ is checked. You’d much more easily see where the group you’re tagging ends, and I imagine you can get a little lost once you reach 30+ tracks.
When I implement multiple track selection, you would just select all the tracks you want tagged, and then click the tag check button to assign the tag to all selected tracks.
@Zynewave wrote:
I’m talking about bus return tracks, not mappings. Currently when you first time assign a new bus send to a track, you need to manually go create the corresponding bus return track.
Ah, suddenly, it makes sense. 😳
Try the new beta3. I’ve made it so that tagged tracks that are part of a hidden/collapsed group, is now always shown. Check if you still get the visual bug as in your screenshot, and then tell me how your track hierarchy is. Note that in beta2 I dropped the implicit display of collapsed parent tracks for tagged child tracks. So, if a tag includes tracks from different groups, the tracks are not displayed with their actual hierarchy relations. It saves the space used for unneeded parent tracks. In beta1, the master track was always shown as collapsed at the top, which was annoying.
It’s the same in beta 3, unfortunately. The hierarchy consists of: Master < Vocals group track < Lead Vocal track. This glitch happens when the "lead vocal" track is shown (without its direct parent group) along with the master track.
I think it’s fine to omit group tracks when only child tracks should be shown. Besides, it looks very nice without the master track. 😉
