Freeze 'n' mix?

[casey basichis]

Hi,
I just got tracktion, is there a way to freeze a track then change the volume and panning of it? Would seem kind of pointless to have a freeze with no level control, as when it came time to mix you would have to unfreeze your tracks when all of your plugins are on and all of your cpu eaten up, unless your were willing to freeze and unfreeze one at a time for hours... whats the deal?

[pHz]

just use the 'render track' option instead then mute the original version and play the new audio file ...

slainte rob

[pHz]

(only thing you cant do this way is freeze more than one track down into a single audio file)

slainte rob

[Lunch Money]

Whatcha mean?

Select your 5 or 6 clips, and choose "render". For my uses, I don't replace; I keep all the rendered tracks around and just shrink them down.

As for freeze with pan and volume--

That is something I'd REALLY like to have. I hope it's in v2.

Greg

[Jeremy_NSL]

freeze with pan and volume is not possible. freeze renders all frozen tracks to a single wav file. If you want to use pan & volume, just use render.

I think freeze will probably be taken out of v2. Its quite useless compared to render.

[morelia]

I think freeze will probably be taken out of v2. Its quite useless compared to render.

Not to me

[braj]

I haven't used Tracktion in a while, but couldn't you route audio from a frozen track to a new track, then automate and mix it there, and when you are happy, render it? Does that make any sense?

[AD80]

Good idea. I just tryed it but you cant re-route or add filters to frozen tracks. This all goes back to frozen tracks being rendered to the same file. Which is the most cpu/memory friendly way of doing it. If you really need more options (like most usually do) the "render and add" feature is really fast and offers the most options I think.

[braj]

Good idea. I just tryed it but you cant re-route or add filters to frozen tracks. This all goes back to frozen tracks being rendered to the same file. Which is the most cpu/memory friendly way of doing it. If you really need more options (like most usually do) the "render and add" feature is really fast and offers the most options I think.

I knew it sounded too good to be true

It's getting close to V2, isn't it? Well?

[P.T.]

A frozen track is just a rendered track with a different name. There is no real difference.

Use render instead of freeze and you can still mix and pan that track.

Don't get caught up in attachment to words/names.

[casey basichis]

I dont agree at all, the whole idea behind freeze is that it is invisible, it should handle the creation and deletion of all render files and not create more tracks to manage. Volume and pan are very low cpu intensive tasks, if tracktion were to create seperate files for each freeze, al la every other sequencer with freeze then it would be quite usefull.

[braj]

Not to mention that you can un-freeze tracks to edit them later.

[Lunch Money]

I totally agree. Freeze is a different beast, and render and add OR render and replace (if you're that foolhardy) are cumbersome workarounds.

I'm not arguing that render is more useful *right now* than freeze; but I disagree that it's a useless concept and should be gotten rid of.

The way freeze works right now, ALL frozen tracks' output to the audio device(s) is bundled together. Consuming only slightly more CPU but obviously a lot more (temporarily) space would be to freeze each track as an individual .wav or at least have the option to select between behaviours.

Right now, my process is:

-Render to .wav and add rendered track
-Mute and shrink down the old track and tuck it away at the bottom so that it's not taking up screen space. Since Tracktion's scrolling method is less than ideal, this is actually trickier than it should be.
-Rename the rendered track and clip and move it, IF I hadn't selected a convenient spot in the edit previous to clicking the render button.

Then, when I realize a track needs changing, I have to:

-Delete the old rendered track, which STILL leaves an audio file in my project folder which I have to track down and delete if I can be arsed
-Go down to my old shrunk track and expand it
-move the track to a convenient place (not always-- but sometimes I want it next to another track for waveform comparisons)

Then once I've twiddled, I need to do it all over again.

How on Earth can anyone *possibly* think that's more convenient than simply pressing "freeze"? No need to argue that the current freeze is crippled, though. What I think would work better would be:

-each track is "frozen" on an individual basis; OR, you can choose between freeze style depending on your needs
-After each track is "frozen" (ie. rendered), we are left with scalable waveforms
-A volume/pan and a level filter are automatically in place, as per a default track

I mean, it's really a no-brainer.

I have to admit, I've always found Tracktion's current feature-set to be pretty unbeatable until the current project. But now that I'm dealing with reams of files and tens of edits, I'm finding the whole rigamarole of rendering (instead of freezing in the way outlined above) to be the single most inspiration- and workflow-crippling drawback.

Greg

[glurgle]

Right now, my process is:

-Render to .wav and add rendered track
-Mute and shrink down the old track and tuck it away at the bottom so that it's not taking up screen space. Since Tracktion's scrolling method is less than ideal, this is actually trickier than it should be.
-Rename the rendered track and clip and move it, IF I hadn't selected a convenient spot in the edit previous to clicking the render button.

tbph I name less than 1% of my clips, so naming the track takes me all of 2 seconds. The problem I have is 'hiding' that old track. Folder tracks would be nice.

Then, when I realize a track needs changing, I have to:

-Delete the old rendered track, which STILL leaves an audio file in my project folder which I have to track down and delete if I can be arsed

use ctrl+m to delete the clip and it's source file. My only complaint is that it confirms if you're 'really sure' you want to do this, but I've gotten to where I hit enter before me (or anyone else) has a chance of reading that box.

-Go down to my old shrunk track and expand it

annoying, yes.

-move the track to a convenient place (not always-- but sometimes I want it next to another track for waveform comparisons)

This is a normal task whenever working with a sequencer that allows you to reorder the tracks though.

Then once I've twiddled, I need to do it all over again.

How on Earth can anyone *possibly* think that's more convenient than simply pressing "freeze"? No need to argue that the current freeze is crippled, though. What I think would work better would be:

-each track is "frozen" on an individual basis; OR, you can choose between freeze style depending on your needs
-After each track is "frozen" (ie. rendered), we are left with scalable waveforms
-A volume/pan and a level filter are automatically in place, as per a default track

I mean, it's really a no-brainer.

I'd rather the freeze function disappeared into a slicker render-to-track myself, but if wishes were fishes...

I have to admit, I've always found Tracktion's current feature-set to be pretty unbeatable until the current project. But now that I'm dealing with reams of files and tens of edits, I'm finding the whole rigamarole of rendering (instead of freezing in the way outlined above) to be the single most inspiration- and workflow-crippling drawback.

Greg

Yes it's annoying that tracktion doesn't do exactly what I want either, but not quite annoying enough to push me through even 'C++ for Dummies' apparently. Still, I hope ctrl+m alleviates some pain.

*My suggestion on what would make sense and work with minimal change or fuss*

Add a button to every tracks properties to 'hide' it. It will mute the track and make it look like a frozen track, except it says (hidden) instead of (frozen). The track itself isn't affected other than you can't resize/edit it until you unhide it. You can still mute/solo from the tracks properties, and change routing etc, but it's no longer taking up space.

This way I can determine which tracks I want to be working on at any given moment with ease, and F8 doesn't become useless after 7 tracks or so. Render to track works beautifully, and the freeze function would still do it's job as well (though I've almost never used it).

[valley]

Volume and pan are very low cpu intensive tasks

maybe they are, but turning one big frzoen file into countless small frozen files that all need to be streamed simultaneously, is not.

The freeze implmentation on Tracktion was designed for really low power (and low hard drive PCs) and at that level it works like a charm.

I'm banking on a more complete freeze solution in v2.