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jeffy_strong
Posts: 12
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 Posted - Fri Aug 08, 2003 11:50 am |
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Hi everyone, I just got Cool Edit Pro and it seems pretty sweet so far. I've used Pro Tools and Cakewalk Home Studio, so I have experience with audio editing. I'm just trying to firgure out all the tricks to CEP. I was hoping you guys could help speed up that process!!
When editing in the Multi Track View, I noticed that whenever I move one block over another on the same track, they just overlap each other. Is there a way I can set it so that the block I move replaces the existing one instead of just overlapping it? Or do I have to just snap them together at the exact point where I want one to end and the other to begin? (that takes a lot more time)
Also, when using the volume envelope, is there any way to increase the volume past the 100% 0 db level? Now I know that the over all volume for the wave block can be adjusted, but I just want to gradually increase the volume of a short section using the envelope and then bring it back down to normal volume, while adjusting it accordingly throughout the track. I'm used to being able to do this with other editors, so I'm hoping that this isn't a limitation of CEP.
I hope I'm being clear here :)
Thank you so much!!
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Dawgman
Posts: 30
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| Posted - Fri Aug 08, 2003 1:30 pm |
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I can't help you much with the overlap problem, but I can offer some advice I picked up about your volume question.
For a while, I also wanted to know why CEP would only let you edit DOWN using the volume envelopes. Hey, that's just how it's written, so we have to work around it. Here's how: (this is a bit tedious, but it'll get you where you need to be) If there's a segment that you know you need to give a little boost to, start by dragging the volume envelope down to the middle of the track on both ends. The next thing to do is to raise the entire track's volume to +6 to compensate for lowering it. This will keep everything at the same volume it was before you did anything. Now, if there's a portion you need to crank up a bit, go ahead and use the volume envelope, as you now have the upper headroom to use.
This is how I allow myself the flexibility to go UP if necessary. Like I mentioned, it gets tedious if you need to do this with each and every recorded segment. Veteran producers would ostracize me for suggesting this, since properly recorded stuff wouldn't necessarily require this type of editing. However, I'm of the mindset that you just never know. What if you got all the way through an entire mix of 24+ tracks and didn't decide until the LAST moment that you wished that pan-flute solo had been a wee bit louder in the third measure???
Another way to edit portions of segments is to simply splice around that portion, and right-click to raise the volume. I don't care for this for two reasons: 1) You can't see the volume edit this way and 2) I don't like my segments having a buttload of splices in them.
Good Luck. I hope this helps.
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jeffy_strong
Posts: 12
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| Posted - Fri Aug 08, 2003 1:51 pm |
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Thanks for the reply! I had considered your method too, but I was hoping it wouldn't come down to that....I really can't believe they designed the envelopes that way. Hopnestly, it's a weak spot compared to other audio editors...
Can anyone help with the overlapping? LOL, please don't tell me that this is just the way it is! I thought CEP was supposed to be the best of the best!! When I wanna make a quick, yet smooth edit, the overlapping thing just doesn't help.
Thanks everyone 
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ozpeter
Location: Australia
Posts: 3200
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| Posted - Fri Aug 08, 2003 5:54 pm |
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If you are looking for automatic crossfades of overlapped material, it's not a feature. When two blocks overlap on the same track or on different tracks, you will hear both of them at their original level during the overlapped portion. To get a smooth crossfade, highlight the portion of each block that's to be crossfaded and use the crossfade command from the edit menu. Note also that the ends of blocks can be adjusted (dragged) if that facility is turned on in the view menu.
Just to complicate matters, I recall there was a bug in version 2.0 affecting overlapped blocks on the same track. Ensure you are using version 2.1 if you have that situation.
- Ozpeter
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Davd
Location: Australia
Posts: 5
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| Posted - Fri Aug 08, 2003 8:32 pm |
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Another way to fix the volume problem is to actually go into the wave that you want louder and amplify it by however many decibels you want (usually make it louder than you need) then go and turn it down in the multitrack. The only problem with this is if the track is close to peaking but it's usually quicker than bringing the volume bands down and then up where you want it to be louder.
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ozpeter
Location: Australia
Posts: 3200
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| Posted - Sat Aug 09, 2003 12:41 am |
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I think part of the design of Cool Edit reflects the 32-bit philosophy, where the huge dynamic range on offer means that you can think more in relative terms than absolute terms. Until the final normalise you're working with balance, not level. (I hope that's intelligible.....)
- Ozpeter
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django
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 48
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| Posted - Sat Aug 09, 2003 7:25 am |
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| jeffy_strong wrote: | . Hopnestly, it's a weak spot compared to other audio editors...
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| jeffy_strong wrote: | . Hopnestly, it's a weak spot compared to other audio editors...
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yes, it's rather annoying.
here's what I do for the occasional short section. if the rest of the track is fine.
highlight the section
split it (edit/split or set up a shortcut for split)
shift right click drag to copy to an adjacent track (it's a good Idea to lock in time first.)
drag both ends of the envelope to zero and adjust up where required.
as far as the overlap goes, again I find it a lot easier to put blocks on adjacent tracks so I can see exactly what's going on.
block edge editing lets you um... well edit the block edge without moving the audio. you can use that whether the blocks are on the same or different tracks. if on the same track, Just drag the edge of the bottom block to where you want it to stop and the top one where you want it to start I usually set a cue pointwhere i want the cut.
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jeffy_strong
Posts: 12
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| Posted - Sun Aug 10, 2003 12:13 pm |
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Thanks to django and marsmgr1, you both provided solutions for what I described. I was hoping that this would be easier! I'm actually kinda bummed out because I assumed that CEP would be more "friednly" than the other audio editing software I've used, but, in some respects, I was mistaken.
I would like to be able to simply drag one block over the edge of another in order to "splice" them together, and yet they are still two blocks that don't overlap. I'm so used to being able to do this that it's really a pain not to be able to, but I guess that this is not an option with CEP. It appears that the easiest way to do it, that I have found, is to use block edge editing until I get both blocks to the point where I want them to join and then "snap" them together. They should have designed the program so that when you drag a block over a portion of another one, a menu pops up that asks you if you want to blend the two blocks (overlap) or replace the existing portion of the block with the one you dragged over it. That's how Cakewalk does it and it's incredibly convenient, but this is a Cool Edit forum so I guess all I can do is request that CEP would incorporate this feature....
As far as raising the volume with the envelope, they should really add this feature in 2.2 as well (if there is goign to be a 2.2...)
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django
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 48
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| Posted - Sun Aug 10, 2003 6:15 pm |
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| jeffy_strong wrote: | I'm actually kinda bummed out because I assumed that CEP would be more "friednly" than the other audio editing software I've used, but, in some respects, I was mistaken.
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unfortunately when moving from other software you will always notice the annoying bits where the comparison isn't so good perhaps more than the overall balance. I used to work with cakewalk and sometimes still do on the rare ocasion I need midi but I find cep's strongpoints far outweigh it's weaknesses. In fact, now I come to think of it I did all of my audio editing in CE even when I used Cakewalk.
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Dawgman
Posts: 30
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| Posted - Mon Aug 11, 2003 6:12 am |
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I agree fully that CEP's strengths far outweight its weaknesses. Since we're tossing out wish-for features, I'm going to once again ask/hope that something be done about that volume bar defaulting to the top of each segment you record. Of course I'm no programmer, so go ahead and let me have it, but how tough could it be to just have the volume edit bar default to the middle of the segments?? That's all it would take!
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jeffy_strong
Posts: 12
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| Posted - Mon Aug 11, 2003 8:08 am |
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| Quote: | | I'm going to once again ask/hope that something be done about that volume bar defaulting to the top of each segment you record. |
That's exactly what I'm talking about when I'm talking about increasing the volume envelope past the 100% level. I would assume it would be very simple to fix this, so why don't we start a petition for this feature? LOL!
BTW, is there anyway to make the cursor automatically move to the place where you hit the stop button? When I'm really zoomed in and ready for an edit, it would be great if the cursor would stop when I hit the spacebar and stay at that location, instead of staying in the place where I started listening. You know what I mean? Is this possible? If not, that would be another great optional feature!
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bonnder
Posts: 215
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| Posted - Mon Aug 11, 2003 8:58 am |
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jeffy_strong - you might post your suggestions here if you haven't already:
http://www.audiomastersforum.net/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=18
Put only one suggestion per "thread" - per the "Adobe wishlist Rule" at the top - so that all suggestions are immediately obvious from the thread list and don't get buried inside a thread.
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Graeme
Member
Location: Spain
Posts: 4663
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| Posted - Mon Aug 11, 2003 10:17 am |
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| jeffy_strong wrote: | | BTW, is there anyway to make the cursor automatically move to the place where you hit the stop button? When I'm really zoomed in and ready for an edit, it would be great if the cursor would stop when I hit the spacebar and stay at that location, instead of staying in the place where I started listening. You know what I mean? Is this possible? If not, that would be another great optional feature! |
There's no way to make it do this - a pity, I know, something which I would like myself. The stupid cursor even returns to the start point if you hit 'pause' - how daft is that?
My workaround is to have 'snap to cues' turned on and then, as the file plays through the point/s I'm interested in, I hit F8 and drop a marker. Now it's relatively easy to position the cursor close to the point of interest (although, of course, it's later in time).
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ozpeter
Location: Australia
Posts: 3200
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| Posted - Mon Aug 11, 2003 4:54 pm |
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Sometimes I think Graeme and I are using two different products! Here, I have two cursors - a playback cursor (white, solid, but I may have changed the colours) and a selection cursor (yellow, dotted). When I pause, the white cursor stays put on the pause point. If I want I can click on it which sets the playback cursor to the same position (well, almost - "snap to playback cursor" might be handy), or I can press F8 while still paused and a cue mark gets dropped on the precise point. Whether that's the ultimate best arrangement is debateable but it's not a total disaster, surely?
- Ozpeter
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jeffy_strong
Posts: 12
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| Posted - Mon Aug 11, 2003 5:15 pm |
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Basically, my question was whether or not I can set the selection (yellow) cursor to automatically move to the point where I press stop. As Graeme said, it doesn't seem like I can. Once again, I'm just used to other audio editors doing this, so I was wondering if CEP (or I guess, AA) can do this as well.
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ozpeter
Location: Australia
Posts: 3200
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| Posted - Mon Aug 11, 2003 11:08 pm |
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If you set it up in the keyboard shortcuts, two keystrokes will do it (sorry I can't give you one!) - map a key to 'pause' and another key to 'anchor selection left while playing'. On my machine, that's the "[" key and the "]" key ends the selection - I don't know whether that's standard setup or not.
So you hit pause, then hit "[". Eureka. Or don't even pause, just use [ and ] on the fly to make your selection.
If you use a controller like the "CommandPost" you can assign multiple keystrokes to its buttons, then set up whatever behaviour you like (more or less, within the constraints of the keyboard shortcuts).
- Ozpeter (Does this help your situation too, Graeme?)
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Graeme
Member
Location: Spain
Posts: 4663
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| Posted - Tue Aug 12, 2003 3:54 am |
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| ozpeter wrote: | | Sometimes I think Graeme and I are using two different products! |
So do I  .
| ozpeter wrote: | | Here, I have two cursors - a playback cursor (white, solid, but I may have changed the colours) and a selection cursor (yellow, dotted). When I pause, the white cursor stays put on the pause point. |
Now, this doesn't happen for me. When I hit pause, the playback cursor returns to the selection point. v1.2a behaves as you describe.
Mmmm... time for a re-install, perhaps. Actually, I'm using the version which was downloaded from Syntrillium, but I do have a boxed version - which I've never even unpacked - so perhaps I might try installing that and see what happens.
All very odd  .
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ozpeter
Location: Australia
Posts: 3200
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| Posted - Tue Aug 12, 2003 5:59 am |
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I look forward to further installments of this strange saga!
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jeffy_strong
Posts: 12
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| Posted - Tue Aug 12, 2003 12:52 pm |
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| Quote: | | If you set it up in the keyboard shortcuts, two keystrokes will do it (sorry I can't give you one!) - map a key to 'pause' and another key to 'anchor selection left while playing'. On my machine, that's the "[" key and the "]" key ends the selection - I don't know whether that's standard setup or not. |
Well, I tried your method. It works, but using pause is kind of a pain because I can't change the location for playback until I actually hit stop. Your solution is sort of a half fix: Yes it's cool that I can make the selection cursor move to the position of the plaback cursor, but I have to hit the stop button in order to move it from there.
The real solution to this problem would be just to have one cursor for selection and playback! What's really the point of two anyway? Cakewalk uses only one and it just makes it so much easier and less of a head ache. That's the simple solution, but a "snap selection cursor to playbaack cursor" would suffice, but it's basically doing the same thing as if there were only one cursor.
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ozpeter
Location: Australia
Posts: 3200
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| Posted - Tue Aug 12, 2003 5:20 pm |
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| Quote: | | but using pause is kind of a pain because I can't change the location for playback until I actually hit stop. |
Here, pressing the playback button which has a circle round it will play from where I've put the selection curson regardless of whether I placed it during pause mode - in other words I don't have to hit stop.
The 'trouble' is that there are so many ways to set it up, given the possibilities of the keyboard shortcuts (do trawl very carefully through all 400+ of them to pin down which are relevant to transport control and selection control) and the configurability of the transport keys themselves (right click on each of them to see the various options - no doubt you've already done that). So the way it works for me, having fine-tuned it to my personal preferences over some time, and having fine-tuned myself so that my interaction with it is instinctive, which took time coming from another system (on a Mac to boot), may well be different from the way it works for you - I've forgotten what the standard setup is now!
I have no problem with the general behaviour and design of the selection and playback cursors apart from wishing that I could play from the end of a selection (and a few other related wishes) which have been expressed here and elsewhere enough times already. So I won't mention them again. Oops, I just did.
- Ozpeter
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jeffy_strong
Posts: 12
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| Posted - Wed Aug 13, 2003 3:05 pm |
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| Quote: | | Here, pressing the playback button which has a circle round it will play from where I've put the selection curson regardless of whether I placed it during pause mode - in other words I don't have to hit stop. |
Yes I understand that, but in order to move the playback cursor to another location after you pause, you do have to hit stop. The main reason that I want the selection cursor to always follow the playback cursor is so that I can quickly stop the playback with the space bar, I have the selection cursor right there so that I can quickly make a selection and edit, and then start the playback again with the spacebar. This isn't possible with your method. The best solution that I can see is one cursor. In this case, simple is better as well as quicker for edits and playback.
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ozpeter
Location: Australia
Posts: 3200
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| Posted - Wed Aug 13, 2003 6:22 pm |
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But one cursor would mean that playback and selection would always be from where you happened to stop, which personally I'd hate. The playback cursor is just a phantom marker, it doesn't actually do anything, so really there is only one functional cursor anyway.
If only you and I could meet around a machine and show each other our way of working, it would be so much easier to appreciate each other's point of view! - but as things are, I'm happy and you're not and I don't think that's going to change. Oh well.... :)
- Ozpeter
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jeffy_strong
Posts: 12
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| Posted - Thu Aug 14, 2003 7:20 am |
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LOL, you're right, it is often difficult to explain things this way in clear terms. Persoanlly, I would love it if "playback and selection would always be from where you happened to stop", not only because that's what I'm used to with other programs, but after working with CEP, it is a much better method. Maybe it's just better for me because of the type of work I do with CEP, I don't know, but I think it should definitely be an option, don't you think? Either that, or the "snap selection cursor to playback cursor". I usually only hit stop when I hear somthing I want to fix, so if I'm cruising along and I hit stop, then I then have to find the exact spot again where I heard the problem. It would be so sweet if the cursor was already there, in the exact place where I hit stop. I'm all about convenience and time-saving!
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