[Traverso-user] AudioClip Grouping, how to deal with them

[Remon]

Hello all,

I'm currently working on AudioClip Grouping, and I'd like to propose some 
ideas, current state and a request for comments.

Since Traverso uses the soft-selection concept, there isn't need to 'Select' 
an AudioClip to be able to do something with it, pointing with the mouse 
cursor on it is sufficient.

However, often we want to dispatch the action to multiple Clips at the once. 
For that we need a way to 'Group Clips' (which in other softwares equals 
selecting multiple clips).

In Traverso this was possible before by using < S > on a clip to add it to a 
Group, and some more actions are available to remove it from the Group, 
invert the Group, add/remove all Clips to the Group etc.

From a contextual point of view however, how do we look at an AudioClip Group? 
E.g. when pointing to an AudioClip that is part of a Group, and opening the 
context menu with < Q >, what are you expecting to see?

* A Menu that lists all the available actions for the 
context 'AudioClipGroup', and submenus (AudioClip??), Track and Sheet?

* Or just AudioClip, and somehow hope that 'some' or 'all' of the AudioClip 
actions like Drag [ D ], Remove << R >> and Gain [ G ] implicitly are applied 
to all Clips in the Group?

* A Menu that lists the AudioClipGroup actions in the AudioClip section (the 
top level menu itself!) in a special way, e.g. the first item is an inactive 
bold-gray one: "AudioClip Group", and all the group actions are listed in the 
same color gray, then the AudioClip actions are listed as normal (without the 
actions that are part of the Group (?) ), then the Track and Sheet submenus.
(or blue or purple or whatever color pleases you more :P )


The S key is available still, so I'd like to use it for erm, Selection of 
Clips. But Selection is a bad naming imo, so I'd like to refer to it as 'the 
key to create AudioClip Groups'

Let's forget how S works at the moment, as it is somewhat a mess right now :)

And up to what I've in mind to do with the S key:

S actions are NOT un/redoable (they are now, hence the mess)

< S >           : Add / Remove pointed Clip to/from the Group
<< S >>         : Add / Remove all Clips to/from the Group
[ S ]                   : Start a jog-create-group to create a Group. 
[ S ] + F               : Add next Clip right from the Group to the Group
[ S ] + A               : Add previous Clip left from the Group to the Group
[ S ] + rightarrow      : Add all Clips right from the cursor to the Group
[ S ] + leftarrow       : Add all Clips left from the cursor to the Group
[ S ] + downarrow       : Extend group with all clips from track below the 
selection 
area spanned by the selections range
[ S ] + uparrow         : Extend group with all clips from track above the 
selection 
area spanned by the selections range


Problem areas:

* Splitting an AudioClip Group: now we have 2 Groups? Do we need to be able to 
create multiple AudioClip Groups at a given time? 
* Locked Clip: currently if one Clip is locked, the whole Group is locked 
(won't move).

Currently the dispatching of actions of AudioClips to it's Group (if it is in 
any) happens implicitly and works for the actions:
Drag, Copy, Remove.



OK, this is some stuff that keeps me awake at night, hopefully you'll find 
some time to think about this too, and let me know what your opinions are, 
suggestions, praises, everything is welcome.

Greetings,

Remon