Automation Frustration

renoise 1.5 has been a great improvement. however my production method still ends up being tedious, fiddly and overall boring. the main culprit is the automation window. which i use A LOT. i don’t understand why this hugely powerful tool gets totolly bashed until it whimpers.

sorry to sound harsh but i’m just wondering why things like “delete”, “freedraw” and “values” have been left out? why does every possible channel effect need to be listed when im only automating 2?

why does the value of the point im trying to automate have to remain a secret? if i want an automation point at say 57% why can’t i be told that when placing the dot? why can’t i right click on a dot and enter in the value? i have to replay the pattern over and over again so i can fine tune my placement. you’re able to save FX changes in the pattern but not the automation window. why can’t all of these features be linked together?

freedraw would be an amazing feature to the automation window but unfortunately if i want to actually place an exponential curve at any other point besides 0%->100% i have to place each single dot on each single beat. sigh completely frustrating and a waste of time.

delete?! yes i wish to delete the automation window from this pattern. what? i have to go to another tab, find the automated effect, right-click, scroll down, then click delete. who thought that was handy?

overall i spend more time fiddling with dots in a 1-2 pixel range rather that making music. it gets very frustrating. i hope these things can be implemented in the next renoise update.

jjw.

about reading the value of the dot:

put the mouse on the dot and click LCTRL. This can also be used for fine adjustments of the values: as you can see, you can now drag the dot in a finer way.

about deleting:
use the scissors icon

these and other automation “secrets” can be found here

yep, i suck. cheers :walkman:

IT-Alien, i guess you didn’t really read his post thoroughly enough or did not understand his arguements.

every single automation suggestion JJW mentioned is a good point of improvement, imo.

that’s probably what he also found out before, but still this method does not enable you to accurately adjust an automation point to a specific value, without fiddling around with the mouse for a few seconds, which on the long run becomes tedious.
an option to enter specific values by keyboard would be a true bless.

that’s exactly the point JJW made. in order to use the scissors icon, you still have to browse to the respective automation envelope in order to delete it. rightclicking the automation-symbol, which can be found above every track with automations, for a complete automation-delete would certainly speed this process up.

the other points make sense to me as well, if i understood them right.
another helpful implementation would be a partial-automation-block copy/cut/paste function, especially when working with longer patterns and when using the automation envelope for repetitive, rhythmic effects.
however, this has been suggested quite a while ago already so i have faith in taktik for implementing this in the near future.

To “freedraw”

Press the right mousebutton and move it around.

To save a automation:

Rightclick on a preset button.
Next time just press that button.

@Keith.

I´m sure he was not aware of some of the automation envelope features.

“partial-automation-block copy/cut/paste function, especially when working with longer patterns and when using the automation envelope for repetitive, rhythmic effects.”

I agree that such a feature would be nice.

But you have to release that such a feature would not work correctly with curved envelopes. The curves are calculated based on the incoming curve, cutting such curve or pasting into one would in most cases change it.
It would only work correctly with linear envelopes and dots.

The other good point made but also mentioned in other posts:
A direct visible and manual changable value of node-point. (edit box where you can see the amount of % and change it to a precise value)

Amen to this.

The same idea should be applied to Inst curves. As I’ve brought up before the pitch envelope editor is a place where ultimate sensitivity and control is needed. The Crtl open almost gets you there, but an edit box is the answer.

JJW, welcome to the Forums ;) :)

(this is where I get all my tricks from, hehe)

Isn’t there a function to copy from your automation envolope into the pattern editor? From there it is very easy to see the exact value of all the points on that curve, and manually edit them with the keyboard.

I was looking for just this feature earlier, which I thought had remembered seeing in the manual, but couldn’t find it.

Question: is there also the ability to see only the parameters that are automated? Since now I have to scroll endlessly until I come across a “green” parameter. When listing only the automated parameters I can quickly select or delete the right one much faster.

Bigger"resolution" of automation, would be cool. For example I have 64 rows in each pattern and I can choose to use 256 points of automation (each row x4).

Sometimes I have a problem with fade in and fade outs, they sound terrible on huge pads or strings.

And why can’t you delete individual points?

Can somebody tell me if I was right with what I said above about copying data between the automation window and the pattern editor, and if it is how to do it as this would be one of the easier ways to get accurate values when wanted.

bizarrely, doubleclicking a point deletes it.

I’d like to be able to marquee-select multiple points and move them as a group, and i’d like to be able to control transitions between points in more ways, such as logarithmic and exponential curves to avoid having to put a thousand points in there.

Cheers for that pointer about deleting :)

I started a thread about having more curves the other day, but nobody replied to it, so I also really like to this this introduced, preferabley with the capability to stretch the curve to make it sharper.