[ardour-users] Fwd: [LAU] Ardour: fixing errors in a recorded track (was: DAW usability)

[Wolfgang Woehl]

Sonntag, 17. Juni 2007 13:43 Hein Zelle:

> Problem 1:  I've just recorded a single track. It's mostly OK, but
> there's a piece where I goofed up, or the microphone got touched and
> crackled, or something similar.
>
> Solution:  record another (partial) take, and copy a piece of the second
> take on top of the first one.  Using crossfades I guess, to hide the
> transitions.

Hello Hein, you're probably aware of the Options -> Crossfades settings that 
can do this for you.

> Questions:
>
> - should I do this using a new playlist, or should I just record a new
> region on top of the old recording?  Or should I use a completely new
> track?  (I'm guessing not the last option).
>
> - If I _do_ have the 2 takes in 2 different tracks (both visible below
> eachother),  I want to select a region in the second track, and copy it
> over the first one, keeping the time position the same.  How do I do
> this?  I've read about something like control-click-drag in the manual,
> but I can't get it to work.  Copy-paste works, but positions the
> selection at the beginning of the other track.

Yes, the time-constrained copy-drag seems to be gone or we have borked 
windowmanagers, whatever. You can work around this with "Snap To" settings. 
These are in the two popup menus that default to "Normal" (= Snap Mode) 
and "None" (= Snap to what). Like
1. Drag the blue edit cursor to your starting split.
2. Right-click -> Split
3. Set "Snap To" to "Edit cursor"
4. Ctrl-click to copy-drag the partial region to another track (it'll snap to 
the edit cursor)
5. Set "Snap To" to "None" and drag-adjust the end of the region to your needs 
or have a second split - same effect.

> - If I record the second take in a new playlist, how do I proceed to do
> this then?

A new playlist will be empty or carry the same regions (with playlist -> new 
copy). So this doesn't help.

> - And how to do it if I forgot to make a new playlist, and just use
> punch-in recording to re-record a small section?

Punching over is fine. I _think_ the disk cacheing in playback pulls in every 
layer so huge amounts of punches on top of each other could become a problem.

> Problem 2:
>
> after recording, I want to either play or export my recording.  Ardour
> doesn't stop at the end of the recording by itself.  At one point, I
> suddenly had an "end" marker where it would stop and return to the
> beginning.  How do I get that marker?  How do I remove it again?

Every ardour session needs and has an end marker. Zoom out or look in 
Windows -> Locations which gives you draggable clocks to move the end marker 
closer to your end. Oh, start and end markers show up in the "Location 
Markers" ruler which could be invisible. Right-click in the ruler head to get 
it.

> Problem 3:
>
> export project to audio file.  Sometimes this gives me an empty audio
> file (no signal) of the correct length.  I suspect this has to do with
> selecting tracks before exporting, but I would expect "export project"
> to not care about that.  Any ideas what I may be doing wrong there?

The export window has a check-outputs part where you need to click-check the 
(default) master outputs or set "Specific tracks ...".
"Sometimes" empty though is a tad irritating.

Wolfgang