Feature suggestion: Big labels for audio events

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if I could assign text labels to audio events which are clearly visible in the track / arrangment view, even when zooming far out?
Why am I imagining this? I am using Cubase partially for creating music and audiobooks, and I guess that it would be helpful for both. Easy-to-spot labels like “bird cry” or “git lick xy” (or whatever) would be a fantastic utility here.
I have various special audio events that mark prominent parts of a track, which I’d like to quickly spot and find, reuse etc.
The marker track doesn’t help here because it let’s me mark only points of the whole arrangement. And the event name in the top left corner is way too small and technical.
Any opinions on that?

Hi and welcome to the forum,

Does the Marker Track help in your scenario?

Dude…

You can place a marker track (up 9 of them iirc) on any audio/instrument/midi track. Not just the whole arrangement.

The point is that a marker, even if you have 10 marker tracks, marks a point in time, not a specific event.
I believe OP is simply asking for a larger label for the Part Name.

To be honest I can’t imagine how labels would make this easier. Maybe a quick mockup “MS-paint-style” would help me get it. Because most of the time I’m trying to hide the labels since they’re hiding the waveform! :sweat_smile:

In the case of effects and other “non-programmatic” material, I’d probably devote separate tracks for each element, resize the track width depending on importance and accessibility, then stash them in a folder, assign a visibility agent and hide/show them on demand.

The other option (and better for long term organization, in my humble opinion) would be to use mediabay. Make copies of your audio snippets, put them in a folder visible to mediabay, and then it’s just a matter of typing F5: chirp and dragging and dropping the result in the project timeline.

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Thanks to all of you for your replies!
@Greg_Purkey - You’re right, I haven’t been specific enough. In fact, I should have been aware that I can use multiple marker tracks. But in reality, this is not really elegant, and as @ggmanestraki (EDIT: It was @mlib, sorry!) points out exactly, it’s not really what I am thinking of.
What I am envisioning is a big label appearing ON the audio event, possibly as an overlay of the peak image, or at least as an alternative to it. And the same should be applicable to MIDI events likewise.
Being able to give specific events simple catchy names, visible from 3000 ft. above would help quickly navigating to prominent parts of my arrangement.
I am very curious what others think about it.

P.S. - I guess that this idea has come to my mind only since I’ve started creating audiobooks some time ago. In contrary to my (relatively short) music projects (songs of 3-6 min of length), my audiobook projects tend to get overwhelming (having multiple tracks of 20-40 min of length PER EACH CHAPTER, with multiple chapters stacked vertically). In this scenario, quick and easy recognition of events from high above (for instance for reusing them in various chapters) would be a great benefit

Maybe a quick mockup “MS-paint-style” would help me get it.

Something like THIS would definitely make me cry for joy :wink:


Concerning your other suggestions (separate tracks, “stash folder”, mediabay):
You’re right there in terms of reusability. I am already (partially) using such ideas. But it doesn’t improve overview and navigation.

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I know I’m not the OP, but this is what I picture.

image

I hide them as well. Mostly because I can’t justify the time spent naming all the parts in a project.
I still think the request has merit.

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Appreciate the mockup! I understand better now.

Well, each one works differently. Personally, I’m having a tough time Alt Dragging stuff around (especially when they’re faaar away), or Ctrl C, place cursor, Ctrl V if I have to do lots of small copying and pasting of small pieces… If I have to reuse the same stuff again and again, I prefer to have them on the right zone and just flick them over as I go.

@mlib Appreciate your mockup too!

Of course it has merit. I have also posted a feature request on labels, of a different nature, but it goes to show that labels could be improved upon a bit. Their size IS an important aspect.

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Yes, that’s it! You’re sketching exactly what I am thinking of - maybe with the only “variation” that I don’t have any issues with original event names overlaying the waveforms. For me it would be sufficient to add (big!) extra labels to some hand-picked events.
But in general, our ideas seem to go the same way.

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That would be a really good feature, but then I’d also like to have bigger icons for when Events have been edited with AudioWarp, Grouped, etc, and also that they get displayed at the start of the Event next to the name, in addition to the right side.

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Or even better, have these icons floating on the event so that they are always in view even if the start or end of the event is not.

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Awesome idea ! All of this could be options in Preferences for maximum customization.

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Exactly. I like to think of this as “dynamic labels”. That can always keep the information on screen, regardless of event boundaries. I was also thinking about shy labels:

Those would temporarily get out of the way of the mouse to reveal the events underneath. Now I don’t know how distracting the movement would be, or if it would be easier to dynamically control label transparency instead, but that’s beside the point. Any way that would allow me to see events through the label would do for me.

It seems that most of us want adjustable size on labels (preferably bigger than they are right now), utility icons like group, warp, shared to be also governed by those settings, an ability for the labels to be able to remain on the viewable area of the screen regardless of events’ lengths, aaand maybe just the two of us @mlib want to have an easy way to see beneath the label besides turning them off altogether.

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excellent summary!