Select time ignoring snap + remove selection

[MonkeyBars]

Hi there!

I'd love to set up a mouse modifier that does this. However, one cannot combine mouse behaviors with actions as far as I know – or is it possible?

To clarify, I'd love an item mouse behavior (on left or right drag, say) which creates a time selection and then removes/cuts the area of the item in that time selection.

I settled for creating 2 different actions which I can use with either a key shortcut or a mouse click:

• Remove area left from mouse to edit cursor
• Remove area right from mouse to edit cursor

But it's a bit annoying to have to remember two key combos or mouse modifiers depending on whether the mouse is left or right of the edit cursor.

I suppose thise could be done with a script, but is there a way to do it with just a custom action?

[nofish]

If you use SWS extensions, the current SWS pre-release contains an action "SWS/NF: Eraser tool (perform until shortcut released)" which does something like this (if I understand correctly).

Looks like this in use:


A few gotchas though...
- Obeys snapping
- Should be assigned to a shortcut without modifier (to not clash with other mouse modifiers)
- Preferences -> Editing behaviour -> 'If no items are selected, some split/trim/delete actions affect all items at edit cursor' should be turned off.

[MonkeyBars]

Amazing, this is EXACTLY what I wanted! Thank you so much for your quick reply.

However it definitely has numerous bugs. The bugs in Ripple mode make it nearly impossible to use. Perhaps in the final release it will work properly.

1. Sometimes (often if you drag your erase over multiple items, e.g.) the erase tool fails to turn off when the shortcut is released. I haven't figured out all the triggers for this, but it's very confusing as the cursor seems to change back to normal while the erase mode is still on.

2. Starting the mouse drag outside an item and dragging in causes the erasure just to keep going in the direction of the drag until the whole track is deleted after or before the drag point. Nasty!

3. If erase during play, often get a nasty audio crack.

Ripple-only bugs:

4. The erase goes way too fast to be usable.

5. You need to release both the shortcut AND the mouse button for it to stop. (Should be mouse only like with any drag behavior.)

6. If the mouse cursor moves outside (or something?), even if the shortcut + mouse drag are released, it causes the same bug as 2. above. This is a definite dealbreaker

[nofish]

Thanks for the usage report (to give some background, I added this to SWS because I also wanted to have something like this).

I'll look into the reported bugs and try to fix, but I can already say, it's a quite 'hacky' approach doing this so I'm not sure if it makes it to a really useable / bugfree version...

[jonboper]

Wow, I'd love to have something like this for editing narration...

No pressure @nofish, it seems like a big ask, so I'm not putting this on you, but the concept is amazingly utilitarian.

[nofish]

Did test myself now and I see it's indeed unuseable in its current state in Ripple mode. (To be honest, I totally forgot about testing it with Ripple editing, because I rarely use it myself. )

May be difficult to get the current behaviour working correctly with Ripple but I came up with another approach:



i.e. item sections are not deleted immediately but only after releasing the assigned shortcut, which seems to play better with Ripple. (In the gif I have 'Ripple per track' enabled.)

Do you think this would still be useful ?

===

@Mods

Since this is about SWS pre-release, feel free to move this to the SWS pre-release thread...

[MonkeyBars]

Yes I think it would still be useful... but when I was using the tool in Ripple mode (single track), the delete went really fast and just kept scrolling and deleting. It didn't look at all like your screencap.

By the way, the audio crackle I heard is probably unrelated to the script, as it's happened to be doing other edits during playback after all.

I have actually created TWO custom actions that do something similar to the erase tool, just without a drag action. However, due to the limitations of the available actions, I had to make one for each direction (left and right):

[nofish]

Originally Posted by MonkeyBars

Yes I think it would still be useful... but when I was using the tool in Ripple mode (single track), the delete went really fast and just kept scrolling and deleting. It didn't look at all like your screencap.

Yeah, I realized the original functionality (as is in the current SWS pre) is unuseable with Ripple. What you see in the second screencap is the redone functionality (will be in next SWS version).