Bug/Nitpick: Inline MIDI editor toolbar draws ambiguously

[Robert Randolph]

In the image above, what do you think happens if I edit any of those values on the toolbar? The clip in the center is changed?

Nope.

The clip on the far right is!

Currently, where the inline MIDI editor toolbar is drawn is somewhat ambiguous as to which clip it's controlling. I've had a few times where I was trying to quantis(z)e notes or turn on the controllers lane to have nothing happen. It turned out that I was controlling a clip that was offscreen!

I don't know if this constitutes a bug, but it is a confusing design decision if anything. Currently it's possible to have a dynamic GUI element overlaying something that it does not control.

You can also get ugly things like this happening:

[dRowAudio]

I think the confusion might stem from the "selected" paradigm of Waveform.
In the first screenshot you have the right hand clip selected so you'll obviously be affecting that. The toolbar is simply positioned over the track so it has a constant place to be. Otherwise it would move around with the clip all the time and often be half off-screen.

Maybe using the windowed MIDI editor or the option to show the toolbar over the selected clip would be preferable to you?
Settings -> MIDI Devices -> MIDI Popup: Show MIDI toolbar at the left of the clip

[Robert Randolph]

Maybe using the windowed MIDI editor or the option to show the toolbar over the selected clip would be preferable to you?
Settings -> MIDI Devices -> MIDI Popup: Show MIDI toolbar at the left of the clip

Aha! I looked for a setting for this too, but it didn't occur to me that it'd be in the "MIDI Devices" area.

Unfortunately this setting is even more difficult to use. Look what happens when your MIDI clip is not perfectly centered on the screen:



It's damn near impossible to access the full toolbar, so then I have to fiddle with the current zoom, which may result in the content I want being off screen.

(And yes, I my mousing capability is limited due to a disease. It may be noticable from the gif. You may consider this an edge case, but go ahead and try it yourself... I think it's harder than necessary)

---

Also, I think you may want to consider the behaviour of the track mode. It's possible to end up with things like this:



In the image, the toolbar is associated with a clip that's totally offscreen.

I've had this happen a number of times when I zoom in to edit. Sometimes I want to zoom in on something then use the toolbar immediately, and it ends up affecting the wrong thing.

Thank you for reading and responding!

[Steve Bolivar]

I've gotten into the habit of chronically hitting the Esc key to deselect all clips before doing any editing. It is an extra and sometimes needless extra keystroke but now my left hand automatically does it so often I don't notice it.

[dRowAudio]

I'm not quite sure how we could avoid this though? Either the toolbar sticks to the clip and can float off-screen, or it stays centred and the clip you have selected can float off-screen.

We wouldn't want to automatically deselect clips as they exit the view window, nor would we want to automatically select clips as they enter the view window.
Maybe a warning in the MIDI toolbar to show the clip is out of view? But then I don't see how this would be any more informative than the clip being visibly un-selected...

It sounds to me like all these problems are solved by using the windowed MIDI editor...
Presumably this is the paradigm by which other hosts don't suffer from this confusion?

[Robert Randolph]

I'm not quite sure how we could avoid this though? Either the toolbar sticks to the clip and can float off-screen, or it stays centred and the clip you have selected can float off-screen.

We wouldn't want to automatically deselect clips as they exit the view window, nor would we want to automatically select clips as they enter the view window.
Maybe a warning in the MIDI toolbar to show the clip is out of view? But then I don't see how this would be any more informative than the clip being visibly un-selected...

It sounds to me like all these problems are solved by using the windowed MIDI editor...
Presumably this is the paradigm by which other hosts don't suffer from this confusion?

At the very least, the 'Settings -> MIDI Devices -> MIDI Popup: Show MIDI toolbar at the left of the clip' should work on clip selection instead of clip mouseover.

It seems that maybe 'track mode' would make more sense working as mouseover.

I'm curious what you think about this.

[terrynoakes]

Would it not be possible to add all the tools functions to the right click on mouse, when over the selected midi clip?

[abrickwall]

I'm not quite sure how we could avoid this though? Either the toolbar sticks to the clip and can float off-screen, or it stays centred and the clip you have selected can float off-screen.

The toolbar should stick to the clip and float off-screen. I'm not sure why you think this would be undesirable behavior. The confusion right now comes from the toolbar moving to whichever clip is moused over, rather than sticking to the selected clip.

[chico.co.uk]

I'm not quite sure how we could avoid this though? Either the toolbar sticks to the clip and can float off-screen, or it stays centred and the clip you have selected can float off-screen.

The toolbar should stick to the clip and float off-screen. I'm not sure why you think this would be undesirable behavior.

It'd be undesirable because it would be displaying a toolbar you couldn't use, because the toolbar would be off-screen.

[abrickwall]

I'm not quite sure how we could avoid this though? Either the toolbar sticks to the clip and can float off-screen, or it stays centred and the clip you have selected can float off-screen.

The toolbar should stick to the clip and float off-screen. I'm not sure why you think this would be undesirable behavior.

It'd be undesirable because it would be displaying a toolbar you couldn't use, because the toolbar would be off-screen.

This is still possible with the current behavior though. If you make your track large enough vertically and you scroll down, the toolbar goes off-screen like this:

toolbar off screen.png

Right now, I could mouse over the midi clip on the next track down, and the toolbar will display there instead. This is confusing though, because it's affecting the clip which is selected, rather than the one the toolbar is displayed over. It would be nice to at least have an option to have the toolbar anchored to the selected clip, instead of hopping around to whatever is moused over.

[chico.co.uk]

So we're agreed that the toolbar going off screen is undesirable, right?

An option to anchor it to a selected clip makes sense to me, but I rarely use the toolbar, now i think about it

[abrickwall]

I think if the toolbar were to be anchored to the clip it's editing, it would make sense for the toolbar to go off screen along with the clip. If they wanted to keep the toolbar on screen all the time, it would make more sense to put those controls in the properties panel.

However, the current behavior is actually much more erratic than I'd originally thought. Here's an example:

one goes up - another goes down.gif

This is a new project where I made two separate midi clips with a bunch of random notes. I select the first midi clip, and use the inline toolbar to transpose it up an octave. This works as expected. I then click transpose down one octave. The second midi clip, which was not selected, is moved down an octave. This makes no sense.

I don't seem to have these issues with the windowed midi editor. For now I will get in the habit of using that instead.