Problem displaying takes in lanes

[semiquaver]

Please ignore: user error!

[Tallisman]

http://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/47820/lanes.gif

it is hard to tell from your image what is wrong.
it looks right to me.

.t

[flowheimer]

it is hard to tell from your image what is wrong.
it looks right to me.


I'm guessing he sees the same thing I see:
Lanes must occupy all the vertical space within a track, and therefore lane height is determined by take density; lanes in sections along a track with fewer takes are taller and vice versa. Having any sort of incomplete overlap in takes (like a punch in) creates a sort of columnar effect.

I can understand wanting to maximize the track real estate, but, realistically, breaking up the visual linearity of a take is very distracting. I tried REAPER during a vocal overdub session and, after twenty takes or so, found myself counting lanes from the top down to keep track which segment belonged to which take. Comping a bad singer is work enough as it is. This only makes it harder. I gave up after one verse and went back to using my usual software.

Also, having the takes stack into full-height columns seems to be presuming that edits will fall on the boundaries of take segments, which is often not the case.

I see an item in the Options menu called "Show overlapping items in lanes". I though this might mean "one lane per take", but
having the item checked doesn't seem to do anything.

This is a workflow issue which I feel needs to be addressed.

Is there a solution for this?


flowheimer

[flowheimer]

This is not an OS X-specific issue. I did a search for "lanes" and found this thread.

]-[

[flowheimer]

I dug through the forums... looks like I'm not the only one put off by this feature.

That's good.

[semiquaver]

Yah - it follows from the way that Reaper does takes - afaict takes are combined into a multi-take file - the limitation being that all takes must be the same length. So if you have two identical length takes and then add a third, shorter take to the stack, you end up with two files: 1 short file with three takes in it and onle file after that one with 2 takes in it. So your first two takes have been split at the end of the third take(if you follow me).

This could work ok - when you are not viewing takes in lanes it makes sense - wherever there are different numbers of takes you see a different take-stack. But when you view in lanes its crazy, with takes not being in the same lane - not much use.

Another quibble I have is that when you "implode" takes, shorter takes are lengthened into loops rather than padded with silence to make them the same length - which I found pretty non-intuitive.

In short the take system could probably use a little thought - my guess is that requiring takes of identical lengths is probably the culprit.

[flowheimer]

Long, long ago I thought about what the ideal DAW comping interface might be like. It seems that with Logic 8 Apple may just have unwittingly (they didn't ask me) designed exactly what I had in mind. Actually, I have yet to use Logic 8 but from what I can tell from watching videos it's pretty much exactly what I dreamed up.

Maybe Reaper could incorporate a slick take/comp interface sometime in the future.

FH