One thing i find lacking in Renoise is the ability to group tracks and hide/expand them.
A very basic feature that i cannot believe renoise doesn’t have yet.
Having a simple Group Tracks feature would clean up the pattern editor and only make the expanded group/non group tracks visible so you can concentrate on those and not bother with other tracks that you are not working on atm.
When working with over 50 Tracks i find myself scrolling alot, grouping would improve workflow and just make the pattern editor look more fresh and productive.
If i could somehow Group those 5 kicks, 3 snares, hihats and toms into 1 Group (Drums)…
If i could somehow Group all 10 Special effects tracks into 1 Group (SFX)… I often think to myself.
How to do it?
To Group you would only need to right-click on 1 track (or drag select several tracks if they are close to eachother) and click (Add to Group).
Enter a name for the group (or select previously created groups) and click.
To remove a track from a group, just right-click on one track already assigned to a group and click Remove from group.
And maybe a Re-Assign to Group or Delete Group would be usefull too.
And maybe like Send Device, the groups could be assigned a single channel where you can add VST and other automation to all tracks.
The main point of grouping would be: to be able to hide/expand those tracks!
That’s what I was thinking. I’m hoping that when the new arranger is introduced you can select which tracks are present (or shown) in each pattern. If that isn’t for a while this would be a good interim measure though.
YeaH, we need it! Sure it will improve the workfow… I guess it would be awesome for people working on those EEE PC’s… When the feature is out, I’ll surely buy one
I bet a group could be collapsed/expanded using a [+] / [-] button above track headers. (We could have a group header block on top of the current track header block)
It could look like this:
Group header block could be right-clicked to create a new group
We could drag n drop a track header into a group header, to add the track to a group
We could have a (unassigned) or (default) (whatever) group for unassigned tracks, so to remove track from a group, we would drag it on this (unassigned) group
IMO the arranger is here to solve another problem : reusability of sequences… Nothing to deal with the pattern view display being too large for your screen… It might be confusing/time consuming to get in the arranger to configure which tracks are shown or not in pattern view! BTW, once the arranger is ready, I’ll buy my Renoise licence !
I think this is a good idea, but I’m having a hard time imagining what the group-track should contain.
We should do some sort of GUI mockup for this discussion…
Yea, would also love this.
I have lot of tracks because of hardware routing and stuff.
Would love to group/hide them.
Even single tracks with lot’s of note columns can benefit from collapse/expand.
Perhaps to do the same in the track scopes could be useful as well (option in track scopes to either always see all tracks, or to collapse/expand when you change this state in the pattern editor).
Very true but the two do kinda go hand-in-hand to some extent as when working with different patterns for a more complex arranger you are still going want to be able to see parts which aren’t actually active in the pattern you are editing. Kinda links in again with the show/hide : expand/collapse as mentioned here. But would be good no matter what, even within the arranger as I’m sure some people work with far more complex arrangements (as in number of tracks, sends etc) than I do personally.
And I will buy a new licence as soon as my current one runs out. That may just be me though…
It’s a good idea to be able to group and hide tracks, but should it be done? After all, we currently have 3 ways of viewing tracks: the pattern editor, the mixer and the scopes.
IMO, the best way to create groups would be to have an option in the track context-menu: “create a group from this track”. This would insert an extra label above the track name (the group name). Then, adding additional tracks could simply be a matter of dragging tracks “onto” the group track, and they would automatically become assigned to that group.
By implementing such a a drag’n’drop mechanism, grouped tracks are always placed next to each other like they should. Also, this approach doesn’t require multi-track selections, but could work “out of the box”.
For the scopes, it’s very easy to imagine that group tracks would work really well. A group scope could look like any other track scope (well, apart from the extra label above the track name), while in fact it displays the combined output of all it’s tracks. Now, how cool would that be?. Also, normal mouse interaction (mute behaviour) with the scope still applies, by clicking it you simply forward the mute action to contained tracks. I think even “solo” is valid too (now, I think I can hear somebody shout “hey, you can’t solo multiple tracks”. Well, from a certain point of view that’s true, but I’ve noticed how Renoise doesn’t really “solo” tracks, it simply mutes other tracks. Check out how the solo button works in the mixer ).
With the pattern editor and mixer, things get more complicated. How to balance a compact/clean look with being able to access the content? Pysj suggests that we can collapse tracks, and I think this is the right solution. Being able to TAB through a pattern with 50+ tracks would become so much easier if grouped tracks were treated as one, and this is how a collapsed group could work. If it was done this way, interacting with grouped tracks in the mixer/pattern-editor wouldn’t really be any different from now until something has been collapsed. Grouping tracks, but not being able to collapse them would be useless IMO.
power tracking!!