[Ardour-Dev] rfc: proposed feature to prevent accidental overwriting of automation

[Paul Davis]

On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Giso Grimm <gg3137 at vegri.net> wrote:
> Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
>> it frequently happens to me that i forget to switch back from automation
>> write to play after editing or recording automation events.
>> this forum post (http://ardour.org/node/3817) shows that i'm not alone :)
>>
>> maybe it could be useful to add a master automation write button to
>> ardour. it would work like the big red record switch. this would change
>> the meaning of the automation buttons from "write" to "arm for writing",
>> similar to the behaviour of the track arming buttons for recording. by
>> itself, this wouldn't solve my stupidity issue, but it could be combined
>> with an option to quit automation record mode at transport stop. a
>> similar option exists for audio recording iirc.
>>
>> if anybody else thinks it's useful, i'll file a feature request for a3.
>
> Useful!

There are broader plans for a tree-like heirarchy of automation
control. Ben Loftis has described this to me, and it seems like an
obvious and *relatively* simple idea. Each thing that can be automated
has an "automation parent" that can disable or change its automation
state. So, for example, each plugin parameter has the plugin as the
automation parent. The plugin has the track/bus as its automation
parent. The track/bus might have  a track group as its parent. Each
track group and/or track/bus has the Session as its automation parent.

This allows you to enable/disable automation state for the entire
session in one place, or more finely at various different levels.

--p