Suggestion: lock envelopes to another track

apost wrote on 6/15/2001, 12:30 PM
Say I have a backing music track that needs to be periodically ducked to allow dialog from another audio track to come to the forefront. The way I do this is to insert a volume envelope on the music track, add the appropriate four points, and drop the music level during the dialog. Great. Unfortunately, if I subsequently decide to move the dialog (in time), the envelope in the music track is out of place. Resetting the envelope isn't a major deal, but it is a hassle. I know, the best technique is to do your composition first and then mix, but sometimes I end up doing the mix during composition to see (hear) how the edit works. How about giving users the ability to lock envelope points to another track?

Comments

Cheesehole wrote on 6/15/2001, 3:29 PM
maybe you already know this...

You can select all your envelope points at once and move them along the timeline using the envelope tool. Hit 'D' to cycle through the tools or choose it from the tool bar.

I'm not sure locking envelopes to another track would work well. The points would have to lock to another clip... and if your vocal track was in multiple clips, maybe they could be locked to a group?

Personally I'd rather see the ability to apply compression to the music track based on the levels of the narration track. That would make ducking automated. The envelope tool makes things easy enough as far as moving env points in time for me.

That's a cool idea too though.

Or SF could enhance Vegas with a sub-track called an 'affexor' track. You build your envelope on it and have that one envelope 'affect' as many tracks as you want. The track could have empty clips that contain the envelope points. Just group the clips with your narration clips and they'll all move together. All SF has to add is the ability to use one envelope to affect many selectable tracks. The header of the affexor track could have a button where you choose affected tracks. Oh yeah and you can put DirectX effects on it too of course which will affect all the affected tracks.

SF you can even use my 'affexor' name. :)