Envelope Tool suggestion

Rednroll wrote on 10/11/2002, 3:40 PM
I've been thinking of this feature for awhile now, but couldn't figure out how anyone would implement it. I saw it on the Protools 6.0 demo at AES. They use their pencil tool, where it let's you draw common waveforms, like sinewaves, Saw waves and square waves and depending on where you positioned the pencil on the event it altered the amplitude and duration of the cycles and showed a preview sinewave. Then when you released the mouse key, it drew a sinewave and automatically entered envelope points. I always thought it would be great to have this ability for "autopan" situations. This ups autopan one more, because you can control where the signal starts the panning from and how wide and how fast you want it to pan. Then if you want to really do crazy things with it, you can go drag the envelope points that it automatically creates for you. Vegas could really use this in it's envelope tool. Currently it's pretty difficult to create a sinewave envelope by adding nodes manually, and then try doing that for an entire track. Protools 6 can do it in less than a second.

Comments

PipelineAudio wrote on 10/11/2002, 3:49 PM
the only thing I dont like about the draw tool in programs I have seen is, " How do you get back to zero when youre done drawing? "

In cubendo when you let go of it, it stays at the last level, then when you try to move it up or down back to zero, it keeps bouncing between like -.7 and +.3 or some such

I bet if sf did it, you could just add a node and right click and say " set to zero "
CDM wrote on 10/11/2002, 4:12 PM
Brian -

I've been asking for this since before 3.0 was released. There was a chance it was going to make it in Vegas 3 but then it didn't.

I REALLY hope it makes it in 4. I believe it was going to be called, "Envelope Painting".
ibliss wrote on 10/11/2002, 9:26 PM
I like the sound of Envelope painting! You could also have something like a trimmer window where you could design, or access a tracks' envelope and then drag it onto the time line. You could have a button to toggle the envelopes on or off in the trimmer. That would be cool.

I think I may just head over to the product suggestions page!

In the mean time, making a sine wave shape for a track and repeating it isn't too hard. I've written a little tutorial on how you can do it. Here's the link:

Envelope Tutorial

Hope this is of use.

Mike K
Arnar wrote on 10/12/2002, 11:17 AM
Shift+q isnt highlighting the envelope points for me??
ibliss wrote on 10/12/2002, 11:52 AM
Okay, it could be two things.

First off - Shift+Q is the keyboard shortcut to select the loop region you've created (though not sure how I know this - I couldn't find it in the Shortcuts list or any of the menus). You can also double-click on the dark grey bar of the loop region.

For the points to be highlighted you must have the Envelope Tool selected, and you must have the focus on the track with the envelope you are copying. (click once on the track name to select it - it will turn a darker grey to indicate this.

If you are not using the Envelope Tool, when you Ctrl+C you will actually be copying the Audio Event within the loop region.

Mike K

PS I've just found a quicker way to select the loop region, and have updated the page. (you may have to refresh the web page in your browser - hit F5)
Weevil wrote on 10/13/2002, 9:38 AM
While on the topic of editing envelopes...Something that I would like to see happen:

Currently you can select multiple envelope points within a track by dragging across the timeline with the envelope tool.

The limitation is you can only select envelope points that are on the same track.

Typically though, I need to edit a group of points that are spread over multiple tracks.

I think it would be very logical if the application allowed me to: select multiple tracks and select a time range...and then, drag all the points (that lie within both the ‘x’ and ‘y’ ranges) simultaneously.

...Such a simple concept...always comes out looking like spaghetti when you try putting it in writing...[sigh]
stakeoutstudios wrote on 10/13/2002, 4:19 PM
It sounds like a beautiful editing idea - I need to edit fades on a number of tracks (i.e. eight drums tracks) at the same time an awful lot.

This would dave a lot of time.

However, automation tracks for busses (as in ACID 4) would help with this a great deal.

Jason
Weevil wrote on 10/14/2002, 8:53 AM
Oh god yes, absolutely, ACID style bus tracks go without saying...I’m talking in addition to them.

Ideally I’d love to see that sort of functionality (simultaneous multiple track editing) extended to things like fade handles, event edges and the like.

‘Twould make editing (particularly all those drum tracks) a dream.