Hey Guys,
I know n8 has many improvements, but I’m a bit shocked that certain parts of the program have been overlooked for a long time.
I’m also puzzled by some of the design decisions, but get a sense that some of these are ‘legacy’ issues - section of the program that just have been the same for many version and that got shuffled to the bottom of the pile in terms of importance:)
So, here are a few suggestions:
-Keycommands, Macros and Generic Remote: I feel that there should be a hybrid approach here.
If you’ve used Lemur or other IOS based remote apps, you’ve probably spent a long time in generic remote; an unsizeable hunk of old skool GUI that wants you to do things the hard way; yes, even when you resize the window it insists on staying the same size, because screw you.
You can also spend a lot of time defining commands which should be easy to do; but instead it takes
- generating a command
- finding the right category
- finding the right command in the category (or subselection of the category/0
- assigning it and learning the command, then setting how it is triggered
That’s an awful lot of button pressing to define just one command; now imagine you have 100-150 of those in your lemur template…are we having fun yet?
Its cousin the Macro page also refuses to size, because when you use one of the most overlooked and (imho) valuable functions of Nuendo, why do it in a big window when instead you can do it in a small one that only shows a couple of lines at a time?
Re-ordering commands? Just delete everything and start from scratch, you whiner.
Testing commands? there’s no testing like just diving in the deep and see what happens in your session!
Assign a key command to the macro I just made in the macro page? Why do that if you can just scroll to find it in the key commands instead? Who needs consistency anyway?
So, I suggest the following:
-Combine generic remote with key commands; this will work for most things apart from faders;
let’s face it, most lemur shortcut triggering will be a note or midi cc.
-each key command can learn a midi command in addition to a keyboard command; simply press ‘learn’, trigger the command and it’s assigned to the function you selected.
-make macros a separate editor or sub editor that opens next to (left or right) of the key command editor(and is RESIZABLE!)
-allow the user do add or drag and drop commands from the key editor into the macro page, number the steps, and allow the user to re-order them.
-allow a macro debug with preview, where you can walk through the steps and see what happens (and what is selected).
Macros have the potential to be incredibly powerful, especially if some conditional math and evaluating was included (i.e do this step for so many times, or based on this condition, or until the last event etc.)
I know this gets close to scripting (a Nuendo script language would be even more powerful and really open things up), but one can dream: