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Zoom Tracks Out Further


Nogan

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Hi! I assume (maybe I shouldn't) that the current maximum zoomed out arrangement view in logic is to preserve the text's visibility on each region, so that there is legibility still even when quite small. However, I most often do not find myself needing to see this text, and would prefer to be able to zoom out further as even my 4k display does not show all tracks at once.

 

It is helpful often in mixing and arranging to be able to take a step back and look at the picture as a whole and aside from grouping there is no easy way to zoom all the way out to see every component of a project.

 

And track stacks do not solve this issue, since as of writing you may only have 1 layer of stacks at the most, meaning you cannot have a folder or summing stack with folder or summing stacks nested inside. One could not alleviate this with sending either, since they do not visually indicate what is happening in the region-based display realm, which makes summing stacks so useful as you can view each intended layer of processing as an aggregate of objects.

 

Producing in multiple project files does not help either, as there is an obscene loading time during switching between windows just to check or reference one small part, and then there is also extra effort necessary for export / bouncing the projects and merging them together.

 

Although produced somewhat satirically, one should be able to compress all these tracks to a single window like in this image below, but at a normal aspect ratio. This is not the largest project I would have to compile a composite screenshot for, and I'm sure other people like Jacob Collier would appreciate it.

project_file.thumb.jpg.ff3aad30489a7dd632ce56b069c2d0ce.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...
Folders are nest-able...

Hmm, after trying I've managed to be able to get 1 layer nested down of a few summing stacks inside of a folder, but otherwise cannot nest folders inside each other. Perhaps I am doing something incorrect?

 

Thank you for the suggestion, this is definitely closer, but still not quite ideal for me. It was my fault for the wording in the original post, but the reason stacks are less useful of a solution in this regard is that when you visually abstract with this method some of the intuition is lost as far as the timing and role of small specific events at a glance. Once you clamp down the view of each track in a stack to a single lane in the arrange view, things like individual region and track colors are not preserved and the composite "region" does not represent the start and stop of the individual regions within, but rather all of them.

 

The reason why nesting tracks is closer to ideal (but still not) than using stacks in folders all at the same level (Which is currently all I can seem to achieve, let me know if I am foolish) is that the headspace during writing is more focused on the processing that happens in each "stem" or "group". With folders its sort of just volume control, but at least with something like a summing stack I can recover some of the lost visual information with association by "effect" or plugin processing.

 

And again, while nesting track stacks within each other would be awesome, especially as it is a feature within many other DAWs on the market, in this case Zooming out more is closer to ideal.

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  • 11 months later...
hey Man, so i saw your rant here, I just have one question: How did you take that screenshot, I was struggling to take a screenshot like that of my projects which has tons of tracks in it. If you could help me out, That would be awesome! Thanks again man!!!

See this: How to attach files to your post

 

 

Thanks David! But that’s not quite what I was looking for lol, I’m aware of how to take a screenshot. I was looking for ways to take a ‘scrolling screenshot’ if that makes any sense. Typically, if you take a screenshot using any of the screenshot options that Mac has, it would either do a part of your screen or the whole screen. But I was specifically looking for a way to capture the tracks in the main window in high resolution like in this thread where all those 300 tracks (which technically would not fit in one screen) are visible in one capture.

 

I did find some apps that let you take a scrolling screenshot of your logic window. However, they only allow ‘vertical scroll’ and not ‘horizontal scroll’ which would be really useful when I’m scrolling through my mixer on my other screen.

 

If you have any tricks up your sleeve for that, so let me know! I appreciate your help though!

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Typically, if you take a screenshot using any of the screenshot options that Mac has, it would either do a part of your screen or the whole screen.

Actually Command-Shift-4 takes a screenshot of the whole window even if part of it is offscreen. But the issue is as you're trying to make a window taller than your screen, MacOS will automatically resize it to fit the screen.

 

I did find some apps that let you take a scrolling screenshot of your logic window. However, they only allow ‘vertical scroll’ and not ‘horizontal scroll’ which would be really useful when I’m scrolling through my mixer on my other screen.

Snagit ( https://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.html ) will let you do both horizontal and vertical scrolls.

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Typically, if you take a screenshot using any of the screenshot options that Mac has, it would either do a part of your screen or the whole screen.

Actually Command-Shift-4 takes a screenshot of the whole window even if part of it is offscreen. But the issue is as you're trying to make a window taller than your screen, MacOS will automatically resize it to fit the screen.

 

I did try Command -Shift - 4 but it only captured what was showing on my screen, I also tried to drag it downwards in hopes that it would capture the rest of the tracks, but no luck for that method unfortunately!

 

I did find some apps that let you take a scrolling screenshot of your logic window. However, they only allow ‘vertical scroll’ and not ‘horizontal scroll’ which would be really useful when I’m scrolling through my mixer on my other screen.

Snagit ( https://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.html ) will let you do both horizontal and vertical scrolls.

 

I noticed this app. Only thing that’s kind of annoying about it is that I have to pay for it. I was looking for more specific ways that I can do it by myself for free but thanks again for your suggestion :) I appreciate it

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Also David , for command + shift +4 doesn’t let you capture contents off screen because it’s related to ‘scrolling’. I do understand what you mean though, someone could have the window enlarged to a point that though contents are not visible and they have to click the window and drag it up or down to see the contents and if they a screenshot using the same way, the contents ‘offscreen’ would be visible.

 

But my case includes having to scroll to see the tracks so my guess is because it includes scroll, that command doesn’t seem to work :(

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I believe they have a 30 day free trial.

 

Otherwise, if you can find a utility that lets you make windows bigger than your screen in MacOS, then you can Command-Shift-4 to capture them.

 

I have no idea where I can find a ‘utility’ that lets me make my windows bigger than my screen lol, but that just might solve it, I’ll try to find something along those lines though. Thanks for your help :))

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Also David , for command + shift +4 doesn’t let you capture contents off screen because it’s related to ‘scrolling’. I do understand what you mean though, someone could have the window enlarged to a point that though contents are not visible and they have to click the window and drag it up or down to see the contents and if they a screenshot using the same way, the contents ‘offscreen’ would be visible.

 

But my case includes having to scroll to see the tracks so my guess is because it includes scroll, that command doesn’t seem to work :(

If you could make the window tall enough that the window contains all your tracks, even if parts of the window are offscreen, Command-Shift-4 would capture the whole window, therefore there would be no need to scroll.

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Ooooh vertically. Yes, you're right, MacOS doesn't seem to like it when you make windows taller than the screen. It's not limited to Logic Pro.

 

I know T_T it sucks though right?! I’m trying to get a screenshot of my main window with like some 200 tracks in it and it just won’t even let me take it. I did figure out a way through an app called Clean Shot X: it does scrolling screenshot “ vertically “ but it’s a paid app which sucks T_T they do have a free trail though!

 

Here’s the link if anyone would ever look for it

 

https://cleanshot.com/

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I wonder if (temporarely) selecting a different display resolution could circumvent the limitation...

To a certain extent yeah it could depending on if your display is scaled. But once you start hitting that 400 track range even a change of resolution doesn’t help. I really wonder how Jacob takes those screenshots of his sessions with like 600 tracks in it and you can see literally everything.

 

Either he compiled them later or there’s some trickery to this stuff lol

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  • 4 months later...

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