I have tracks with events basically just sitting on top of each other. If I use cleanup lanes, I get a different number of lanes for some tracks because apparently some events were trimmed/resized in the past.
How can I quickly expand all the events to their full clip size so I can do the lane cleanup and get the right number of lanes for all tracks? Manually dragging the edges of each event ain’t gonna cut it.
Hi,
Could you be more specific, please?
Do you mean Audio Events or MIDI Parts? Could you attach a screenshot before and after, please?
Audio Events.
Let’s just say the event starts at 2:00, but the clip really begins at 1:30, so if you drag left on the event, you’ll eventually get to 1:30 before you can’t drag any further. Or same kind of thing on the right side.
This is just one illustration from one project–originally these tracks had events stacked up on top of each other, and I still have a version of the project saved that way, as well as one where they were split into separate lanes (as shown in screenshots below). I used “cleanup lanes” to get that second version, but some lanes got multiple events and some didn’t, and I discovered that due to previous resizing of events trimming the start or end of various clips, the way they got broken down was not consistent over all tracks.
So would like to expand all the events to full size so that doesn’t happen, at both start/left side and end/right side. (There is only one event per clip, but some clips overlap other clips in terms of where they start and end.) But I can’t find a way to do this fast, or even to force all the events to go to separate lanes, without dragging them manually.
Events as shown in track:
Actual clip start points after resizing events to show full clip:
There is probably a more sophisticated way (macro ?) to do so, but the first thing I would try is this :
This, as a first approach…
Yeah, I tried that (that’s how I did the screenshot), but it doesn’t get all of them, just some of them, and sometimes it doesn’t seem to work at all. It’s not obvious at a glance exactly why, though. At first I thought it must be overlap with another event, but in the above example, that didn’t seem to stop it. And at the start of each lane, I tried extending all of the events together to reveal the beginning of each track, but while it seemed to extend while I was dragging, as soon as I let go, it reverted to the way it already was. So my best guess is it will only go so far as the shortest event, and if any events are longer than that, it won’t extend to their full length. Searching the help files for answers to questions like this is a pain–everything is just one paragraph at a time, hit or miss as to whether you find what you need or not.
My next best guess as to a possible approach to deal with this is to see if the project logical editor can select events by name across all tracks (e.g., everything ending in _04), and just work with one take at a time but on all tracks.
It also seems to be the case here, I admit, after further tests. 
And I didn’t find a key command that could do a full extension of a given event to the whole related audio clip. From which, I’m out of idea, I must say… Maybe the PLE could help indeed, in this case, but considering what it can do, I’m rather sceptical. But I don’t use it much, I admit, beside for events renaming purposes…
Yeah, I’ve been trying it out along with Key Commands macros, but it’s very frustrating how you can only edit one line at a time, one field at a time, and there is no way to duplicate steps to save time when you only need to change one field, etc. Reaper’s “actions” and “custom actions” are much better, I think–often easier to understand the meaning of, more comprehensive and flexible out of the box, and extensible with scripts written by other users, too.
In any case, thanks very much for all of your helpful replies and suggestions.
Since my earlier reply, I messed around some more and I managed to sort of get the Project Logical Editor to help, by selecting and moving events in selected tracks to the front in the original project before they were moved to separate lanes/tracks.
From there, I can drag the selected events across tracks by grabbing one and then visually find the outlier(s) that don’t drag as far as the others, or aren’t starting at the right time in some cases. Still too much manual hunting and adjusting to be reliable, but it’s a start.
But what’s weird is I have to run the process/whatever it’s called twice to get it to work. I tried various combinations of “pre” and “post” commands and none of the results make any sense to me, but this is the first (so far only) combination that seemed to work–if I click Apply twice. I don’t understand why so much in Cubase seems to be so cryptic and muddled.
To be honest, I don’t understand either. But your case obviously show that there is a serious lack in the way Cubase can handle several objects to make them behave as expected : a true script language would help, in such a context. This, without talking about the missing Expand event to clip command…
Overall, I still don’t think that the PLE can help, in your case. Something else must be found, and I’m out of idea, honestly. Sometimes, I dream about Reaper scripting implementation in Cubase : maybe in another life…
I’m not sure if I’ve got this right. But:
While dragging events does have a “hard stop” that we fall onto while dragging left, slip events doesn’t. So, if all events are to be played from their original starting position, that’s an option.
Select them all, Ctrl+Alt Click&Drag.
Thanks for the tip–this might come in handy for some situations. But in the project I was working with on this thread, the clips were all moved from their original positions, so it doesn’t seem like it would work here. Anyway, I finally finished cleaning up that particular project, so I’ll give that idea a shot on the next one.
They don’t have to be in their original positions. Instead of dragging left to reveal earlier content and then moving all events to the right again, we can leave the events exactly where they are and then slip the content so that what we want hear comes at THAT position. Give it a try. (I HOPE I have understood what it is you needed to do.)
I have now tried this and unfortunately it does not seem to work. The clips would not actually extend to their full length if multiple clips with different start points were selected. So as far as I can tell the regular drag, one clip at a time, is the only reliable option.
Another thing is what the Ctrl+Alt key combination does seems to vary by mouse location. I have seen a speaker icon, a dot with arrows on either side, and a pencil icon as a result of pressing it. Not exactly clear what the hot spots are but seems like maybe bottom edge of clip, left edge of clip, and inner area of clip. But just noting in case anyone looks here because they had a similar question.
Ok, on another project where the takes and events matched up better, I found this can help.
Basically, select the tracks, add them to a folder, and either hit shortcut key K or click the double-line icon on the new folder track. From there, select and drag the event/take to extend in one track, and if all goes well, the others will extend with it.
One issue I had in my first attempt using this (on a third project in between) was a situation where one input apparently wasn’t activated when the original recording was made on one take, so that take was missing, and as a result, the tracks didn’t match up perfectly. So I got a prompt saying group editing might fail, but all it said was they didn’t match exactly. I didn’t find out why until I fixed them all manually and set up the renaming schemes only to find one track’s new name didn’t match the take number.
So another potential method for anyone browsing here to solve the same kind of problem with events not sized to the full length of the underlying clip.
