Deselect All Doesn't Ever Deselect All

[ski]

"Deselect All Doesn't Ever Deselect All", or "da de da" for short...

 

There are two deselect key command functions:

• deselect all

• deselect all regions except recording track

 

Two problems:

 

a) If regions are selected within a folder or folders, those regions are not deselected using either command. Bug?

 

b) It's possible to assign the exact same key command to both of them (i.e., if "deselect all" is programmed first, you can program the other "deselect" command with the same exact key combination).

[David Nahmani]

Deselect all is already a hard wired OS X key command, Command-Shift-A, so I never found the need to assign it to something else.

 

The behavior is that the selection is what is currently visible in the current window. If a folder is selected, then it is part of the selection. But whether or not regions are selected inside that folder don't have anything to do with the current window.

 

If you select a Region inside a folder, then go back up one level and shift select another region, then move that region, the one inside the folder isn't going to get moved.

 

This behavior makes sense to me, I wouldn't call that a bug.

[ski]

Deselect all is already a hard wired OS X key command, Command-Shift-A, so I never found the need to assign it to something else.

 

The behavior is that the selection is what is currently visible in the current window. If a folder is selected, then it is part of the selection. But whether or not regions are selected inside that folder don't have anything to do with the current window.

 

If you select a Region inside a folder, then go back up one level and shift select another region, then move that region, the one inside the folder isn't going to get moved.

 

This behavior makes sense to me, I wouldn't call that a bug.

 

Thanks for the reply David. My deselect key command is a vestige of my OS9 Logic key command set, where cntrl+opt+CMD+D was used for this purpose. I got used to it and so re-programmed my current key command set to be the same. I didn't know about the OSX hardwired deselect command before -- thanks for that.

 

So per your explanation, I would also agree that it's not a bug, the key factor being, from your reply, "...the selection is what is currently visible in the current window..."

 

Unfortunately, tho, this behavior can be problematic at times. For example, say you have a bunch of folders and that the last item you happened to select within one of those folders was an audio file, and a mono one at that. You exit that folder and continue working in the main arrange page. Now, in the main arrange page, you want to glue/merge two stereo audio regions. Being that a mono audio region (selected within the folder but hidden from view) plus the two stereo audio regions are now selected, a dialog comes up asking if you want the resultant file to be stereo or mono. At this point I have to cancel the operation and then have to search through each folder to see what if anything is selected. A real pain.

 

I just went through this with a very complicated orchestral score where there were 7 folders (and a total of 135 tracks in all, between the folders and the main arrange page). I tried glueing two stereo audio regions together (a harp part), and got that mono/stereo/cancel dialog. A search through the folders revealed that a mono cymbal crash was selected in my "orch percussion" folder. And the last time I selected that region (let alone looked at it) was DAYS before...

 

Also... if the region that happens to have been selected within a folder is a MIDI region, and you attempt to glue/merge together some audio regions, the merge function will appear to be broken! I use "J" for merge, and hitting "J" on the selected audio regions results in no operation, other than to deselect the audio regions I just selected!

 

IMO, "deselect all" would be more useful and more intuitive if it deselected anything that's selected, whether it's inside a folder or not.

[David Nahmani]

You are right, that's an unexcepted behavior. Following the reasoning I layed out, you would expect Logic to only merge the selected Regions in the currently active Window, which is what happens with MIDI Regions.

 

You're saying with Audio Regions, it merges Audio Regions that are selected inside other folders?

[ski]

You're saying with Audio Regions, it merges Audio Regions that are selected inside other folders?

 

Yup.

[ski]

Hi David,

 

Here's a little pictorial step-by-step showing the "da de da" phenomena 8)

 

Figure 1: Arrange window containing a folder (which contains a mono audio file) and a stereo audio file. The latter has been cut at bar 2, but otherwise the two regions represent a contiguous audio file.

 

 

 

 

Figure 2: View of folder contents. Note that the mono audio file has also been cut and that one of its regions is selected.

 

 

 

 

Figure 3: Now out of the folder and viewing the arrange page again, the resultant dialog when the two stereo regions are selected and "merge objects" invoked. This is because the mono audio file is still selected within the folder, but of course you can't see it from this level, and you can't deselect it using any of the available key commands:

 

 

 

 

Figure 4: The mono audio file within folder has been manually de-selected and the two stereo regions selected in prep for merging:

 

 

 

 

Figure 5: View of the merged stereo track after invoking "merge objects" The two contiguous stereo audio regions were immediately rejoined without display of the mono/stereo dialog (as would be expected in this case).