Old 02-24-2019, 10:14 PM   #1
SamuelBeckett
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Default Clearer area-item selection

TLDR; the main problem I want to see addressed is this: area selection within items is visually unclear, especially when compared with another primary software I use for audio, Pro Tools.

I've been thinking about how to phrase this one for a little while. Initially I had thought that what I wanted was some kind of separate i-beam tool, but then, no, after messing around with mouse modifiers and actions and such, that proved unnecessary...

I then thought about how it might be helpful to have the option to invert colors on item area selections like in Pro Tools. I still think this is not a bad idea, but it could foreseeably make things complicated with spectral peaks, maybe (?).

At the end of the day, though, I don't know exactly what the best solution is. I just know that, despite all of my theme tweaks, I still find item area selection to be pretty unclear. The visual information IS there, but it's not as intuitive as in, say, Pro Tools, where it is absolutely impossible not to see what sections of items are currently selected.

Pro Tools swaps the color of the waveform and the media item background during selection of items or areas within items, which is what I mean when I say that its area selections are "inverted". I think this would be much clearer than the best I've been able to find so far, which is just 2x "a little brighter".

To iterate on that last point, the problem seems to be that area selection in general is already "a little brighter", which is fine, but when you need one more level of specificity - i.e., what portion of an item is selected - stacking on yet more lightness is not as clear as the PT solution of actually getting darker by applying the inversion of waveform and background mentioned above.

If anyone knows of a good solution to this that's already existing, or if they have questions about what I mean, please let me know! This might not be a huge deal, but I also think it could be easily changed - not that I know much about coding - and improve the quality of visual conveyance within the software considerably.
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Old 02-24-2019, 10:22 PM   #2
SamuelBeckett
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Just to better illustrate what I mean, here is an example. It's not exactly visually pleasing, but it is most definitely clear. Perhaps there is some clever way to up the elegance of it visually, but this is the core change - or at least the direction of the core change - that I'd like to see.

Top is my current view, bottom is something like what I'm proposing.

Hopefully this will also give some context about what I could change in my current theme to improve the visual conveyance.
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Old 03-02-2019, 08:35 AM   #3
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Not sure if bumping is appropriate or looked down upon, but I am a little bit curious if anyone else would find this useful.

I also had another thought, which is that the way that time selection looks - a vertical column spanning the entire TCP - is also part of what makes the time selection a bit unclear to me. It's not actually selecting everything in the vertical column, but the way it lightens everything in the column could make it seem like it is. I can understand why it's like that, especially because loop selection and area selection are unlinked and have to be conveyed in two different ways, but maybe there's another way?

I think the inversion that I'm proposing would solve the problem in the best way anyhow - again, I think my issue is that item selection is basically "lighter + lighter" when I think it should/could be lighter for time selection and inverted for item selection.
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Old 03-02-2019, 12:32 PM   #4
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Maybe someone in the theme forum can give you a clue if it can be done by tweaking already.

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Old 03-02-2019, 12:56 PM   #5
juliansader
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Experiment in the Theme tweaker with "Time selection fill mode". You can get striking inverted colors with some settings.

However, based on the example that you posted, I would suggest that simply changing "Time selection color" to something other than white would go a long way.

As you mentioned above, one potential problem is that the spectral colors of the waveforms are also altered.

Last edited by juliansader; 03-02-2019 at 01:02 PM.
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