UI inconsistencies in Bitwig

[Puddi]

I'll start with these two off the top of my head. Correct me if I'm wrong on anything.

1. Ctrl+Mousewheel zooms horizontally in both the Arranger and Note Editor. Ctrl+Alt+Mousewheel zooms vertically in the Note Editor but isn't being utilized at all in the Arranger. Instead of being a dead mouse modifier in the Arranger it could be used for... I don't know... zooming vertically?



2. Automation envelopes can be copied or duplicated while Audio Event Expression envelopes can't.



Same goes for Micro-pitch Expressions on notes.



I'm curious to hear if you know any more small inconsistencies like these. Cheers!

[jonljacobi]

For goodness sakes, don't get me started... Darn. Too late.

1. The jump shortcuts scroll the timeline with a song playing, but won't when it's not--no matter what the follow setting.
2. You can scroll the timeline with position readout when a song is not playing, but not when it is.
3. You can tab through the popup browser categories but get stuck in the search box. In the browser pane, you can tab in and out.
4. The play menu uses a normal size font, while the rest use a "touch-sized" font.
5. Menus are "optimized" in size for touch, but there are still tiny hard to hit icons everywhere.
6. There are right-click context menus for some items, but others are at the top.
7. You can double-click on track headers to open the device pane, but not close it.
8. You can double-click on empty space in the device pane to open the browser, but not to close it.

Then there's redundancy.

1. With the edit pane open, you can choose the current tool in the arranger, the editor, or by right-click in both context menus, and of course by shortcut.

2. When you choose to have only one folder visible, you can switch back to the project folders with the same menu that hid the other tracks, or via a gigantic bar that appears for no apparent reason.
But you can't step back by clicking or touching anywhere in the large bar, just on a tiny icon at the top.

And just randomly, there's an onset mode in the audio editor where you can move the transient markers, and then a dedicated stretch mode, but you're still forced to manually insert warp markers--in the most tedious possible fashion using.

[Puddi]

For goodness sakes, don't get me started... Darn. Too late.

1. The jump shortcuts scroll the timeline with a song playing, but won't when it's not--no matter what the follow setting.
2. You can scroll the timeline with position readout when a song is not playing, but not when it is.
3. You can tab through the popup browser categories but get stuck in the search box. In the browser pane, you can tab in and out.
4. The play menu uses a normal size font, while the rest use a "touch-sized" font.
5. Menus are "optimized" in size for touch, but there are still tiny hard to hit icons everywhere.
6. There are right-click context menus for some items, but others are at the top.
7. You can double-click on track headers to open the device pane, but not close it.
8. You can double-click on empty space in the device pane to open the browser, but not to close it.

Then there's redundancy.

1. With the edit pane open, you can choose the current tool in the arranger, the editor, or by right-click in both context menus, and of course by shortcut.

2. When you choose to have only one folder visible, you can switch back to the project folders with the same menu that hid the other tracks, or via a gigantic bar that appears for no apparent reason.
But you can't step back by clicking or touching anywhere in the large bar, just on a tiny icon at the top.

And just randomly, there's an onset mode in the audio editor where you can move the transient markers, and then a dedicated stretch mode, but you're still forced to manually insert warp markers--in the most tedious possible fashion using.

Yeah, those are all good points. Hopefully Bitwig will focus on some kind of UI overhaul in a future update.

[kpv]

It's seemingly hit and miss where you can use alt+mouseclick to rename stuff.

[pinki]

Interesting..I've been in a love/hate relationship with Bitwig's gui since day one..this might be part of the /hate side.

[kpv]

Some FX have mix knob, some do not.

[jonljacobi]

I found the first GUI far more efficient than the second because they ditched the right-click context menus in favor of something I have to travel to the top of the display to get to. Why they redid an already popular interface rather than fixing and adding basic stuff, I have no idea. It's their baby and they can do what they want.

[loungepanda]

I found the first GUI far more efficient than the second because they ditched the right-click context menus in favor of something I have to travel to the top of the display to get to. Why they redid an already popular interface rather than fixing and adding basic stuff, I have no idea. It's their baby and they can do what they want.

I sort of want the old way (https://imgur.com/a/XccEiSA) of adding effects/instruments back. Not to replace the browser, but for when you just want to add native BWS devices. Was a much faster way of doing it, from what I remember.

[Puddi]

I found the first GUI far more efficient than the second because they ditched the right-click context menus in favor of something I have to travel to the top of the display to get to. Why they redid an already popular interface rather than fixing and adding basic stuff, I have no idea. It's their baby and they can do what they want.

Ugh, yes. I couldn't agree more.

I sort of want the old way (https://imgur.com/a/XccEiSA) of adding effects/instruments back. Not to replace the browser, but for when you just want to add native BWS devices. Was a much faster way of doing it, from what I remember.

+1

I prefer many GUI decisions in the really early versions over the current state. I kind of feel like it's getting increasingly more bloated and I don't like it.

[DejeRoenSte]

There are more weird design flaws in the UI. A really. really weird one imo, is in the mixer panel when you use the 2 displays mode.
If you don't want to use the big meters in the mixer panel to safe precious screen space wanting to see your most important tracks, you can deactivate the big meters but the space the big meters use stays as useless gray squares between the track name and the device chains of the tracks. There is no way to move that out of the way.
Even more weird is you can have everything selected in the small column to the right of the master slider and still see 1 big row of grey uselessness. Occupying the same space 7(!) small tracks would use! I talked with support about this and they insisted it is by design.

Apart from that, it's the best DAW UI I worked with till now.

[Enrize]

A lot of UI inconsistencies being made to satisfy 0.1% of touch users needs.

I told many time to utilize "Display Profiles" features for this and leave normal users alone.

[jarnold]

A lot of UI inconsistencies being made to satisfy 0.1% of touch users needs.

Yep, that seems to be the case. Trying to please everyone is just too hard and you end up pleasing no-one. Touch and Linux are the two supported forms that I never understood why they bothered.

My bugbear is the zoom functions, been using BW for 3 years and still can't get my head to work with it.

[jonljacobi]

Microsoft donated Surface Studios to them. That was the genesis of the touch Deal.

[bolba]

Actually Microsoft could easily promo Bitwig in their ads as some kind of Logic's alternative for all the Surfaces family. Including improved touch support.
But that may require some good marketing work from both sides (bitwig / microsoft), which often isn't so cool as coding stuff

And btw, touch is really cool direction which should be definitely improved. Just the way it's done now is somehow limiting.
(I'm saying that as Surface Book user which uses normal interface instead of touch one usually)

All of the wishes were reported to Bitwig in one or another way already.

[newtobitwig]

idk why bitwig takes UI unprofessionally. No vertical zoom in 2019? Clip viewing Glitches even after working on this software for >4 years?
Grid and the Modulation stuff is cool,but the awkward UI doesn't even make someone use Bitwig for big projects.
It's not like we've not reported the problems. Many have and they are still blind to it.There are people on the forums who didn't upgrade to get 3.0 because they would have preferred some basic changed mentioned above in the posts.
And don't even talk about the ugly piano roll and how it works[stretching,zooming].DAWs had a better piano roll than that in the previous decade.It is so not-snappy,sharp and lacks like a good 20 features
Sound design is good,but not at the expense of a shit piano roll.