Comments on W7: Still too many mouse clicks

WaveLab
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Having been a WL user for many years, and after using WL7 for these months since it came out, I’ll say that there have been many good improvements, but WL 7 is not as fast and efficient to use in an ergonomic sense for me.

My main suggestions are still base around ergonomic efficiency:

For me, it still makes no sense that the only way to use a context (popup) menu to the adjust a fade in a montage is to first open it’s tool window. If the tool window is open, I don’t need a context menu. The context menu is cool because it saves screen space. For a one monitor user, the tool window takes up too much space, especially when added to the space the new master section design takes up. If, say, the focused clip window could be minimized (slid over to a thin bar on the right something like newer versions of Photoshop) that could work for me.

Another example of too many mouse clicks is saving a master section with a montage. I like the “Store Master Section preset inside Montage” function. But if you select this before you save the montage for the first time, you have to name it, then when I save the montage, I have to name THAT. If I do it the other way, I save the Montage then select “Store Master Section preset inside Montage”, then cool, it’s already named for me, but now I’ve changed the montage and have to save it again. In a busy day full of mouse clicks this adds more. One question is why do we need to name the Master Section preset at all if it is stored inside the montage? Couldn’t this just be done internally?

And finally, wondering if the various basic functions of WL (Wave edit, Montage, Batch Processing) could be separated into separate programs altogether? I use the Wave editor window and the Montage window fairly evenly. So, sometimes the last window I used was a montage and sometimes the last window I used is the wave editor. So if the last window I used was a wave editor and I just need to use the montage, I have to start with the wave editor and have two windows to close. and vice versa. I don’t often need both in the same session. Usually just one or the other. Couldn’t there be separate icons to start just the wave editor or just the montage or just the batch processor? That would be a significant time saver for me.

Thanks for listening, PG. WL is still the best!

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Saving a master section preset on its own can be very useful if one needs to use that same master section on a different file or montage. I use it that way quite regularly, and also use the ‘save inside montage’, but those are different functions and should remain separate IMO.

As for the other observations, I haven’t used much of WL7 yet, so can’t really say…

Luck, Arjan

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I agree, Arjan. We should always have the option to save a master section separately. I wouldn’t want to sacrifice that feature. But it seems that it would be useful to have it both ways.

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One question is why do we need to name the Master Section preset at all if it is stored inside the montage?

Because when you recall it, you will see this name on the Master Section preset box.
Anyway, the dialog opens not only for the naming, but also for the various options you can check.


wondering if the various basic functions of WL (Wave edit, Montage, Batch Processing)
could be separated into separate programs altogether?

No, this won’t happen. But what is planned (7.2), it to start WaveLab with a general layout preset specified on the command line. This would allow to have several start shortcuts to open WaveLab with a predefined context.

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Cool, Laddie. And thanks for your attentive response.

Peace