CCs colors, why all black in the end?

[tusitala]

Hi, is there a way of not having CC information end up being all black like this:




I know that if deactivate snapping I can see the original color, but I love the precision that Reaper allows us to have when drawing CCs, I just would like to see the normal original track color, instead of seeing all black like this.


Thanks for your help!!!
-t

[Tod]

Originally Posted by tusitala

Hi, is there a way of not having CC information end up being all black like this:




I know that if deactivate snapping I can see the original color, but I love the precision that Reaper allows us to have when drawing CCs, I just would like to see the normal original track color, instead of seeing all black like this.


Thanks for your help!!!
-t

Actually that's good, because it gives an indication of how dense they are, which is the reason they show like that. Like you, I like the ability to have many events per quarter note for the precision, but I also like the way it shows how dense they are.

By the way, there is a script that will eliminate all the duplicate redundant CCs.

[tusitala]

Originally Posted by Tod

Actually that's good, because it gives an indication of how dense they are, which is the reason they show like that. Like you, I like the ability to have many events per quarter note for the precision, but I also like the way it shows how dense they are.

By the way, there is a script that will eliminate all the duplicate redundant CCs.

You're right Tod, but since I always write CCs that are this dense I end up with all black CC lines, regardless of the track colours I chose...that's why I was wondering if there was anything I could do.

But it's a very minor and innocent thing that I don't consider a problem at all, so I'll just live with it.

Thanks!!!
-t

[juliansader]

I wondered about the same thing in the old thread MIDI Color Map Explanation, and Commala answered:

Originally Posted by Commala

I was just having a look into this:

When you create a midi item with no assigned colour, they will be automatically assigned a colour from the channel section of the midi note colour map. You can see this by looking at that item's colour swatch in the midi editor tracklist.

So what is happening is that when the midi editor is set to colour notes by track, the outlines of selected notes are using this randomly assigned colour. What's weird is that if you explicitly colour an item, you'll see that reflected in the tracklist, but the note outline colour will remain the randomly assigned colour.

If the track has not been coloured, the entire note will appear this random channel colour, not just the outline.



On a somewhat related note:

I'd love to see the whole 'colour by track' option get an overhaul. It's graphically very inconsistent, but it makes sense why. If you think about it, Reaper depends on the midi note colour map to render the notes. There is (currently) no mechanism to take an external rgb value and render notes to appear as if the map contained another column based on that colour. Remember, each column in the map could be composed of any number of separate colours, gradients, etc. How/where do you apply an external rgb value to an existing column to get a visually consistent output?

Possibly, a "key" column could be added to the map specifically for this function. It would likely give most predictable results if the themer made that column a desaturated and value balanced replica of the other columns in the map. Then, Reaper could colourize that column according to the custom colour input, and thereby achieve (greater) consistency across all note-colour modes. Although I find that hue-shifting gives better results than colourization, that might be much more complicated to implement than this already sounds.

I agree with Commala that "colour by track" needs an overhaul.

[Tod]

Originally Posted by juliansader

I agree with Commala that "colour by track" needs an overhaul.

Hi julian, I think tusitala's talking about color by velocity, at least that's the way it appears in his picture. However, I agree with you about "Color by Track", there are many times I've wanted to use it, but because of the way it appears, not only in the CCs but the notes too, it's especially difficult if you want to see more than one track.

@tusitala, I mentioned the script that will eliminate all the duplicate redundant CCs, in fact I think it was Julian that made it, thankyou much Julian.

What have you got your "Events per quarter note" set at, the higher it's set at, the more dense the events are. I've got mine set at 512,which is pretty high, however with Julians script it's no problem.

[juliansader]

This is something that has bothered me for quite some time, so I have submitted a bug report:

MIDI editor: Color by track / item problems, particularly with dense CCs.

Originally Posted by Tod

Hi julian, I think tusitala's talking about color by velocity, at least that's the way it appears in his picture. However, I agree with you about "Color by Track", there are many times I've wanted to use it, but because of the way it appears, not only in the CCs but the notes too, it's especially difficult if you want to see more than one track.

Indeed, Color by velocity also has problems, and I submitted a FR long ago: MIDI editor: Color CCs by channel when notes are colored by pitch/velocity.