Navigating is HARD

[lmv]

I resumed Waveform after a long hiatus, been trying to use it again for some time and this is driving me crazy: the MIDI clip editor focus jumps all over the place!

I am editing an instrument. Instrument A. It's not good. I stop it to change it at 50 seconds. The needle jumps to the beginning of the song (or the "In" mark). I have to scroll it manually all the way back to the 50th second to edit it. Play it. The needle jumps to the beginning of the song (or the "In" mark) again. I have to scroll it manually all the way back to the 50th second again. Again. And again.

Disabling the jump to the beginning is worse. I have to click things even more. So I keep the jump enabled.

I go to another instrument. Instrument B. Same problem but at 74 seconds. Same problem.

I go back to Instrument A. The needle doesn't remember I was at the 50th second with Instrument A. More scrolling. Or maybe I prefer to click the track at the 50th second. The needle goes there, but the 50th second is so far off the right end it's almost off-screen. I wish it would give me a centralized view, or even better, the 50th second closer to the far left end of the screen.

These are just rough examples. The bottom line is, I spend a lot of time clicking and dragging because the needle never lands where it would be convenient.

Am I doing something wrong here? Am I missing some configuration?

[pough]

I'm sorry, but I don't really understand what's going on and what you want it to do. It sounds like you want to turn off "Return to start at stop" but then you seem to explicitly say that you know about that setting and like it even less?

[lmv]

The needle movement or positioning is too random and strays far away from my point of focus too often. Jumping from one spot to another and coming back to the original spot is well nigh impossible. That's what I mean.

[Peter Widdicombe]

Look into marker clips. You can create them in advance to mark sections of a composition and easily jump to them, or dynamically create them by pressing <enter> if you've already created one. As a clip marker, you can also use it as a guideline for your song. If you know the number you can just press, say, 3<enter> to jump to marker 3, whether it was visible or not. Or, open up markers on the left side browser, and you can name them if you like.

You can also create shorter ones (even overlapping) just to have "jump points". Or, you can listen carefully and just press "enter" to dynamically create them (just sequentially numbered here), for sections that you want to go back and potentially adjust later...

[elcalen]

I'm not sure what you mean by random. The cursor goes where you click, there's nothing random about it. And depending on settings, when you stop playing it either stays at its current position or goes back to where you hit play. It's pretty simple.

But if you're clicking to, for instance, select a clip, and *don't* want to move the cursor, there's a setting that helps with that. In Settings, under General, section Mouse, turn off the setting 'Clicking the background locates the cursor'.

[lmv]

I've been paying attention to the problem so I can explain it better, and have taken note of two problems:

1. I do want the needle to "Return to start at stop." But not my focus. I want my focus to remain wherever it is so I can keep staring at that point, listen carefully, follow the rhythm and be ready to "ambush" the needle when it gets to my point of focus and do the change. I always do that with a view to making some change. But the focus also "Returns to start at stop" and is whisked away from where I want it to be, and that doesn't make sense since I have autoscroll disabled. If I had autoscroll enabled, it would make sense for both the needle and the view focus to "Return to start at stop." But with autoscroll disabled, it's just very, very annoying.

2. The problem is aggravated by the fact that I always have the "Keep on Selected Note" option enabled, and Waveform violates that option more often than not. Sometimes it wants to respect the option and will, but very often it won't.

I may add more details later.

[elcalen]

I think I'm understanding better what you're getting at now, but I can't replicate that... When I have autoscroll turned off, the view seems to stay where I've manually scrolled it when I stop playback.

I'm not sure what "keep on selected note" is, I can't seem to locate that option.

[lmv]

You have to select a note (any note) to see that option in the Control Panel.

[elcalen]

Ah, I don't think that is related to scrolling. The tooltip for that option says "locks note automation to the selected note".

[lmv]

Ah, I don't think that is related to scrolling. The tooltip for that option says "locks note automation to the selected note".

OK then. So it doesn't do what I thought it did. Thank you for that.

I wish it did though. Making frequent adjustments in Waveform is very hard and tiresome with so much jumping. I find myself scrolling back to where I was all the time, all the time, all the time. I still wonder how other people deal with that. Maybe they don't edit details as often as I do? That seems very unlikely. In theory, only in theory, I could overcome the problem by zooming everything out in the MIDI editor to make a lot more content fit the screen. But then everything becomes impossibly tiny to be edited properly.

[elcalen]

Like I said, the view does not seem to jump around for me when I have autoscroll disabled. I don't know what's different in your configuration that would cause that.