Lock region length or another way to stop accidentally adjusting all the regions

[isoparmesan]

I edit an interview style podcast, and I generally go through and delete dead air, extraneous umms, as well as rearranging parts. This leaves me with many tiny regions.

 

I generally start at the beginning, and as I'm listening through, I cut out the problematic parts, use the "select all following" function, invert the selection, and then bring all the regions i've already listened to (and edited) forward in time.

 

however, I keep making a mistake by adjusting the length of a region when a bunch of regions are accidentally still selected. I never catch it until way later so it's a huge pain to go and fix. I want a way to prevent this from happening. I'm also open to suggestions on a better workflow.

[David Nahmani]

No, there's no way to prevent this from happening other than being careful not to make that mistake. I'm sure we've all been through this. Pretty classic mistake to edit something and not realize that something off screen was selected and has been edited along, unbeknownst to you. Personally, I've developed the habit of always clicking the background of the Tracks view before editing a region to make sure nothing else is selected.

[fuzzfilth]

suggestions on a better workflow.

Yes. If you keep moving stuft that's on the right after each edit, you'll essentially move Region2 once, Region3 twice.....and finally Region1000 999 times. That sums up to 500000 separate movements of 1000 final Regions. Don't do that.

 

If you edit one long voice recording, set your Drag Mode to Shuffle Right. Then select and delete the duds with the Marquee Tool and the Backspace key, like this:

 

That way you don't even have to stop for editing and you don't move anything anywhere, accidentally or not.

When you're done, locate to bar 1, click the track once so all Regions get selected then hit Move Region(s) to Playhead Position and presto all Regions lined up at bar 1.

 

If you combine this with Varispeed, you'll get through the entire piece in less than realtime.

Edited June 17, 2020 by fuzzfilth

[isoparmesan]

I should’ve clarified. Since it’s an interview, there’s two tracks of audio, and the conversation has to remain in sync. It’s done via Skype with both people recording in higher quality on both ends, so I’ll massage the back and forth when they talk over each other, etc. but shuffling would completely ruin the sync.

[fuzzfilth]

You can at least get the proper timing in place with shuffling across both tracks, then change to (No) Overlap to fine tune the loose ends.

[isoparmesan]

How could I shuffle without losing sync though? Usually what I’m removing is the audio on one persons mic while the other person is talking. Would I make a group and quantize lock them?

[fuzzfilth]

No, to get the raw timing done, or to rearrange sections, you can drag a marquee across both tracks and then Shuffle them both in sync.

 

Muting/deleting one track vs the other is the fine tune stage already, you'd need (No) Overlap for that.

[isoparmesan]

Sorry. I’m not really following here. If I marquee across a section of person A’s mic while person B is talking to remove breaths, rustles, etc, and then delete that with shuffle on, won’t it just move whatever person A said before so it’s now under person B’s talking?

 

If I marquee across both tracks and delete, I’ll remove the section I want of person A, but I’ll also remove person B’s talking.

[fuzzfilth]

That's two stages of editing here.

 

First, you bring the thing into rough shape, remove all the silly babbling about the weather and whatnot at the top, cut out the aimless middle section that actually went nowhere, remove the back end where they thought the recorder was off and began trading stories about their maitresses.That's all done with Shuffle, two tracks at once, to keep sync.

Then you switch to Overlap and remove all the burps and farts they did to pass the time while the other one was ranting on.

[isoparmesan]

haha. ok, I get what you're saying now. I didn't understand that you were talking about two passes. These episodes are all 1+ hours long after they're edited, so I try to get everything done in one pass for the sake of time.

 

I'm going to give this a try on the next episode though. Thanks for the tip.

 

In the meantime, I'm going to file a feature request for "region length lock"