Freeze track in T3?

[rpc9943]

yeah like clicking on a lock or something on each filter you'd want frozen. nice and easy eh

what I would personally like is when things are frozen or rendered, to have the option to "unload" the vsti from the memory from the original track (maybe via a U letter or something to click on within the filter) which will not load it, but keep all the values in if you do want to go back and load, would improve load times on projects with already rendered tracks, etc. such as Kontakt 2 with huge amts of intruments loaded

[semiquaver]

You'd have to delete the rendered track, hunt down the midi track which is hidden in a folder, drag it out of the folder or unmute the folder, change the note, and render it again.
With a flexible freeze, you would just unfreeze the track, change the note, and freeze it again.

If you keep the midi and rendered tracks together (in a folder) then you have 1) delete rendered track 2) unmute Midi track 3) change note and 4) rerender as opposed to 1) unfreeze 2) change note 3) refreeze. So one step difference. Not nothing, granted but not a huge deal either.

And there are some advantages to using render: four undo's would take you back (no need to refreeze)- also you could keep alternate versions in the folder etc.

I agree it would be nice but there are other things on my list: pitch automation (for vocals), auto time-stretch on tempo change, an implementation of "takes" outside of loop record (so that I can record multiple takes using an MCU or Tranzport), cut and paste the global track, midiclips host vstis ...

[krugger77]

my top 3 list:
1) Demo version available
2) Online pricing available
3) Doesn't play with your nerves

Yeah, i think i'd be happy with the above 3 features...

[rpc9943]

Oh wah wah wah... cmon man.

RonC

[Lunch Money]

You'd have to delete the rendered track, hunt down the midi track which is hidden in a folder, drag it out of the folder or unmute the folder, change the note, and render it again.
With a flexible freeze, you would just unfreeze the track, change the note, and freeze it again.

If you keep the midi and rendered tracks together (in a folder) then you have 1) delete rendered track 2) unmute Midi track 3) change note and 4) rerender as opposed to 1) unfreeze 2) change note 3) refreeze. So one step difference. Not nothing, granted but not a huge deal either.

And there are some advantages to using render: four undo's would take you back (no need to refreeze)- also you could keep alternate versions in the folder etc.

I agree it would be nice but there are other things on my list: pitch automation (for vocals), auto time-stretch on tempo change, an implementation of "takes" outside of loop record (so that I can record multiple takes using an MCU or Tranzport), cut and paste the global track, midiclips host vstis ...

The best freeze would be a "spare no expense on HDD space" freeze that operates on a number of levels. Without getting into too much detail, most of it would work "behind the scenes". You freeze a MIDI track, you still see the notes. The second you touch a note or other MIDI value, it's unfrozen transparently and invisibly. Ditto for adjusting a VST or VSTi. During idle time (even if just a second or two at a time) it rebuilds the freeze. Once individual tracks are frozen, it begins to build a monolithic freeze (again, during idle time behind the scenes) which replaces the currently-frozen tracks. Touch one of the 'frozen' tracks, and that track goes back to editable and the OTHER frozen tracks go back to individual frozen.

It's so obvious, and in addition to the big spiel I made about this idea a couple years ago, other people have mentioned it. Doesn't Live sort of do some of this already?

I dunno. It seems like a no-brainer in terms of functionality, and it's just my best guess that it's tough to accomplish in terms of the code base. Programming the logic for when to freeze behind the scenes, etc. without interrupting the user experience or throwing exceptions.

Greg

[semiquaver]

+1 on the "tweak it and it unfreezes feature" - great one.

T3 is already caching timestretched clips so the background freeze is a possibility.

I think that adding little locks on the filters or whatever is the kind of feature bloat T set out to avoid - got to try not to introduce too many fiddly bits - same thing could be achieved by allowing frozen tracks to be routed - put the vsts you want to freeze on the source track and those you want to tweak on the target.

[valley]

same thing could be achieved by allowing frozen tracks to be routed - put the vsts you want to freeze on the source track and those you want to tweak on the target.

agreed on all points.

the above is worth special mention though, as it actually can work in both way we are used to, and as a more flexible 'section' style freeze.

Since it makes sense that a frozen track must also freeze all tracks that feed into it, and folder tracks provide a kind of 'parent track[1]' as well, two things can be easily achieved:

firstly, a group freeze could be implemented by just routing tracks to a submix, and freezing that track.

secondly, a more flexible (ie you don't need to mess with your routings) could be achieved by bundling tracks in a folder, and freezing the folder. All tracks that share track destinations could be group frozen, and the resultant freeze file(s) would then be routed as normal for further processing.

[1] clarification: folder tracks are *not* sub mixes - the contained tracks all have their own destinations as normal. But folder tracks do have a vca control that complements the vol/pans of the contained tracks. A similar paradigm could be used when imagining how a frozen folder would affect child tracks.

[archiveofeverything]

I think this feature would be really useful actually!
Id use it a lot.

[rainydays]

Could we at least agree on the fact that the current freeze function is somewhat crippled? Not even being able to adjust volume and panning on a frozen track makes it very limited.

[Lunch Money]

Sure. ONLY having the option to freeze individual tracks is crippled, too, mind you-- and it's the norm. I think the real solution is to find the "right" solution, which includes some of the suggestions mentioned here such as sub-group and folder-track freezing.

Greg

[loopdloop]

The best freeze would be a "spare no expense on HDD space" freeze that operates on a number of levels. Without getting into too much detail, most of it would work "behind the scenes". You freeze a MIDI track, you still see the notes. The second you touch a note or other MIDI value, it's unfrozen transparently and invisibly. Ditto for adjusting a VST or VSTi. During idle time (even if just a second or two at a time) it rebuilds the freeze. Once individual tracks are frozen, it begins to build a monolithic freeze (again, during idle time behind the scenes) which replaces the currently-frozen tracks. Touch one of the 'frozen' tracks, and that track goes back to editable and the OTHER frozen tracks go back to individual frozen.

This is a great description of my #2 request after folders, and adding offline processing would make it mind-blowing. Folder tracks help immensely and are necessary for many other reasons, but the few added rendering steps and GUI clutter multiply when you are mixing large projects. It's just no fun keeping track of which render is the newest, or forgetting if you moved the knobs or not since rendering.

Even if freezing can't be done offline, state of the art 500 GB SATA hard drives are already hitting $100. If you forget about being precious with HD space, we're really just talking about potentially minor GUI modification to functions that are already available. It's just an invisible, disposable rendered clip that plays instead of the "frozen" track, which could just be packed up into an another ordinary folder while frozen.

To me, the whole idea of Tracktion is keeping that crap stuffed that out of the way, and it's this character that will appeal most to droves of new "0 learning curve" users who don't care what a studio is like and don't want to screw around with routing and rendering, but want more power than Garage Band...

[Lunch Money]

Yup. Space is cheap. It'd still have to be done right, though, or we'd have people with 72-track orchestral compositions wondering why their audio is stuttering even with freeze.