The arrange view's background for MUTED tracks is way too dark, distractive and messy

UknownSource · 10-06-2021, 10:23 AM

the arrange view's background for MUTED tracks is way too dark, distractive and messy.
it seems like not enough thought has been invested behind the idea.

Is there a simple way to change the look of it?

It could be better if we could have some way to change the colors of the items for muted track instead of the arrange view's background

For me It is much more beautiful and logical to make the items colorless or something like that, maybe even fade the colors of the items for muted track.

this is way too messy imho:

Phazma · 10-07-2021, 07:39 AM

Vagalume · 10-07-2021, 09:12 AM

Well, we are with you in your suffering ... try to explain it to the devs ... good luck. You can bump any of the previous FRs if you want ...

tonalstates · 10-07-2021, 09:22 AM

+1111

bFooz · 10-07-2021, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UknownSource

it seems like not enough thought has been invested behind the idea.

After all the years I came to the believe that this is the basic Reaper ideology behind the scenes.

Reflected · 10-07-2021, 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bFooz

After all the years I came to the believe that this is the basic Reaper ideology behind the scenes.

I'm afraid that I tend to agree with you but I couldn't find any better alternative to Reaper yet... :/

crossed feelings...

ernzo · 10-07-2021, 11:34 PM

I never had a problem with it, and actually like it..

If the track is Muted it gets Dark,
so my attention focuses on the tracks that are Bright/Not Muted.

And that's good.

I can also focus on the Darker/Muted tracks if necessary,
they're dark but not as much as to represent a problem..
(using Default Analog v1.8 tho)

Still, I guess there could/should be a Dim/Darkening Control for this,
it wouldn't be too hard to implement by the Devs..

But that's uncharted territory.

Phazma · 10-07-2021, 11:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ernzo

I never had a problem with it, and actually like it..

If the track is Muted it gets Dark,
so my attention focuses on the tracks that are Bright/Not Muted.

I guess different brains process visual information differently. Hence why we have so many options and themes for Reaper. For me personally both dark and bright tracks call for attention at the same time in different ways, making the project look more complex and disorganized than it needs to be.

Furthermore a fixed mute-color doesn't work well with all possible design choices for themes, reducing the flexibility in theming. I would for example prefer white gridlines on dark background but when muting tracks, which then become even darker, the contrast between track and gridlines would increase, making muted tracks kind of more evident. This forces me to use black gridlines so that the track just gets blacked out, instead of getting even more contrast and focus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ernzo

Still, I guess there could/should be a Dim/Darkening Control for this,
it wouldn't be too hard to implement by the Devs..

It has to be hard to implement. This is a decade old request that pops up every month. The devs are surely aware that many people want this and if it would be easy to implement they would certainly have given us control over this long ago. It has to be buried very deep inside the code and possibly things would break if it was changed.

ernzo · 10-08-2021, 12:12 AM

Right..

Again I use Default Analog v1.8, so it may be less of a problem,
having a completely different look than Default 6.

However being so subjective and Theme dependant,
there's little to do about it besides of that hypothetical generic control..

But one could always try any of the other 1000 themes on the stash,
surely one of them is gonna be in the sweet spot in that aspect.

So you can use that,
or try to implement what's good on/to your preferred Theme.

Phazma · 10-08-2021, 01:10 AM

Thing is, the dark mute color is some kind of overlay which automatically 'adapts' based on the background color of the tracks. So darker themes have even darker mute overlay than brighter themes. No matter which one you use, if the difference between track BG color and muted track BG color is too strong for your taste it will be so in all themes (only using black gridlines helps as opposed to using white gridlines for afore mentioned reasons). I have experimented with this a lot in the theme I use and no matter what I did, nothing really made it better.

So for those of us, who don't like the color/intensity of muted tracks, we are stuck with it until the devs decide to do something about it.

coolbass · 10-08-2021, 08:06 AM

I like it the way it is!🙂

Ilia Tilev · 10-09-2021, 10:31 AM

+1 It would be cool to give us an option at least

gxray · 10-09-2021, 01:30 PM

Just disassemble the REAPER binary in something and change it yourself.

If you want something _that_ bad, you ought to just figure it out yourself instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you IMO. You'll never get what you want that way.

It's like sitting on the couch asking someone to bring you the TV remote from across the room and them refusing. You can keep asking, or you can get up and go grab it lol -- choice is always there.

This probably violates REAPER's terms-of-service, and would require learning a little bit about how to do this sort of thing, but I genuinely believe it's an attainable goal.

This is a guess, but I would imagine there is a single value somewhere that is similar to a scaling factor or luminance thing, and that the muted-track color is impacted by it.

Phazma says:

Quote:

Thing is, the dark mute color is some kind of overlay which automatically 'adapts' based on the background color of the tracks. So darker themes have even darker mute overlay than brighter themes.

Probably a good place to start would be to attach to the runnning REAPER.exe, and then record a profile of JUST changing themes. So: attach, bring up the themes menu, start profiling, switch themes, and quickly stop profiling.

You should wind up with 1-3 seconds of application calls. Inside of that probably lies the answer.

But I dunno very much about this and I could be completely wrong. Worth a shot if it really bugs you that much though.

Reflected · 10-10-2021, 10:15 AM

*facepalm*

gxray · 10-12-2021, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reflected

*facepalm*

I'm dead serious, the first time this was requested was over a decade ago.
If you think about it rationally:

It's been asked for since at least 2008, which was 13 years ago
365 days in a year, that's 4,745 days passed
Let's pretend that today we magically received this feature
That would give you a 1/4,745 chance (or 0.0002) on any given day that suddenly the thing you want is going to happen

Of course the odds are lower than this, since it still hasn't happened yet, but for arguments sake it's fine.

You tell me which is statistically more likely to happen first:

Teach yourself the fundamentals of reverse engineering, take the binary apart and do it yourself
The feature being done by the devs

I imagine if you gave it ~4 hours every weekend of structured learning, you could probably do it in a year or less.

So then the only question becomes: "Do I want this thing bad enough to invest <XYZ> large amount of my personal time into it?"

If the answer is no, then by my reasoning, there's not really much else to be said about it.

Pink Wool · 10-13-2021, 12:24 AM

I think you said enough here:

Quote:

Originally Posted by gxray

This probably violates REAPER's terms-of-service

Phazma · 10-13-2021, 12:30 AM

gxray gave a good example of why the devs should care about implementing this option. Someone with the right skills might want it so badly to even consider hacking Reaper and then distributing a modded (and possibly broken) version to other people who want it it too.

Pink Wool · 10-13-2021, 02:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phazma

gxray gave a good example of why the devs should care about implementing this option. Someone with the right skills might want it so badly to even consider hacking Reaper and then distributing a modded (and possibly broken) version to other people who want it it too.

So now it's evolving into a "code this or else..." scenario? Weird to see this come from established forum members...

Phazma · 10-13-2021, 03:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pink Wool

So now it's evolving into a "code this or else..." scenario? Weird to see this come from established forum members...

I didn't intend it to be read in such a threatening way, however I acknowledge that it definitely sounds like this after re-reading.

My answer was directed more towards gxray and that I expect what he wrote would probably rather have the effect of giving the devs more reasons to consider implementing it and actually increases the odds of it happening, instead of encouraging a hack because showing that the odds are so small, which I believe was his intention.

I did hope that what has been written might actually motivate the devs to tackle the issue, tough I agree that it is rather pressuring and the wrong (and probably useless) way to motivate. I could have kept the comment to myself, especially the second sentence.

My English skills are probably not nuanced enough and sometimes I may come over as pushing but I want to make it clear that "code this or else..." is never my intention and I apologize if what I wrote sounds pressuring to the devs, who have just released a phenomenal update tackling a long-time issue I had which I didn't expect to be tackled!

Sarasota_FOH · 10-13-2021, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pink Wool

So now it's evolving into a "code this or else..." scenario? Weird to see this come from established forum members...

I'm just kidding B-)

-

Mevzu · 10-27-2021, 03:43 PM

Hello guys,

My apologies if im wrong, but isnt this possible via the theme color tweaker action where you can change colors?
Correct me if im wrong, but there was an option to change the layer of muted tracks like you can select add multiply etc.
There you can change the opacity also or at least how much it adds to it.
Again im not an expert in these kind of thing and i could be wrong about it but a few months ago i tweaked some colors
in a theme and also that dark layer thing, but like i said since im not an expert in it i forgot what i changed to make it like that.

UknownSource · 10-31-2021, 12:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mevzu

Hello guys,

My apologies if im wrong, but isnt this possible via the theme color tweaker action where you can change colors?
Correct me if im wrong, but there was an option to change the layer of muted tracks like you can select add multiply etc.
There you can change the opacity also or at least how much it adds to it.
Again im not an expert in these kind of thing and i could be wrong about it but a few months ago i tweaked some colors
in a theme and also that dark layer thing, but like i said since im not an expert in it i forgot what i changed to make it like that.

I couldn't find away...

TDI90 · 08-01-2022, 04:14 AM

I found this thread for muted clips being too dark.

I used the Theme development/tweaker.

Filter for unsoloed

Change the colour and/or the overlay mode. I used full black and "Add 0.60" as a starting point, and I am happy.

White Tie · 08-01-2022, 05:55 AM

Ew what a horrible old thread. Anyway, yes, the mute colours are now themeable.