Like many composers, I have a master Template. In this master template I have my instruments, from many companies, arranged into folders, often into sub folders and sub-sub folders. Example: Strings/Violins/Solo Violins. Doing this makes the template unuseable - why?
In order to avoid clutter I like to hide all my unused/disabled tracks. Let’s say I am working on a quartet. I want to select only a “EW Solo Violin”. As soon as I unhide it I see in the project window not only the violin, but also it’s nested folders and subfolders - three of them. Sure, I could pull it out of these folders and then hide them all again, but this destroys the integrity of the template.
Solution? Simple. Please make folders hideable. This would make folderised templates much more useable.
I got around the problem by deleting all the subfolders.
I only have the instrument family folders
Woodwinds Brass Strings etc…
And it’s much clearer
On the other hand, it is necessary to create lots of PLEs of visibility
I agree with your FR, it’s a bit tricky in describing it though because ‘hide’ could be interpreted as how we currently hide things which would hide the folder and everything in it. The language needs to be differentiated somehow… ie, hide folders without hiding their contents.
I still think a hyper-minimization might still be better though. where they essentially become a thin bar, because a.) that still allows you to use them as divisional organizers b.) you can see that folders do in fact exist c.) the bar could be just wide enough that you could still select them.
If one thought this “could get confusing” it would be easy to make some small marker somewhere on the track (possibly a folder icon), to indicate that a track is “in a folder” when the folder is hidden.
Z
FYI. I keep a master template with ALL my VSTs loaded in it. The way I work (because of this folder issue) Is from a virgin project for a new piece of music. I load the “Master Audition Project” as a second project and enable it. I then check out which particular viola or synth I want, then I colose the porject down, enable the virgin project, go to Imporrt Tracks from Project in the FIle menu and import what I want. It’s not too time consuming but I would rather work with one project. Disabled tracks is a godsend. I think their RAM footprint is measured in mb if not kb, which would make my idea feasible. I have 3500 tracks in my Master Template. As our libraries grow, it get’s harder and harder to know where things are and Media Bay I find confusing. It does not deal well with Kontakt instruments or synth presets
Your idea of a thin bar is a good one. I have often thought that a thin colorizable bar that does nothing but be a thin bar could be useful simply for logically dividing things up according to whim. My idea would be a red folder icon in the track list, under the track name, where all the other icons such as record are, which would highlight if a track was with a folder(s) that was hidden.
Yeah, I’m just pointing out that despite technically the FRs are different, I think we are after the same thing… ie, it’s not so much the folder visibility that is the problem, it is the track height size of the folders and them zooming in when we probably only want to zoom in MIDI or Audio Tracks. They just take up too much space.
I think if there was a toggle key-command which put folder tracks into an ultra-minimized state (without folding up their contents) where all you see is 2 or 3px bar… I’m pretty certain we would both be happy.
And then if we could set track height limits per track type as well, would also be great. I don’t need VCA tracks or Group tracks to have as wide height as audio tracks.
The Project Logical Editor is a powerful tool for search and replace functions in the Project window.
The Project Logical Editor allows you to specify filter conditions and combine them with actions. This way you can search for all open folder tracks in your project, for example, and close them.
The Project Logical Editor comes with a number of presets that show you the possibilities of this feature, and that you can use as a starting point for your own settings.
Example PLE Woodwinds
of course I use a touch screen with the 14bitMIDI Sherlock plugin but you can very well use shortcuts if you want for PLEs
This allows as said above to choose the visible and hidden tracks
and thus avoid folders with subfolders and this cascading visual that takes up a lot of space
I gave up on folders for this exact reason. I use color coding for families alternating a slightly different shade for instruments within that family. I also use a naming scheme and find instruments through search. But yes a feature where you can still keep them foldered but have to option to flatten the hierarchy for viewing would be useful.
You dont show the actual tracks in the project window, I presume you mean the line to replace the folders there. This could work. I also like my idea of putting a red folder icon under the track name listing, when the folder is hidden - perhaps one, perhaps both - anything is better that what we have -folders getting in the way, using up real estate
