I have a question and I am not sure if it is an actual feature in Nuendo. I am new to Nuendo and I come from Logic Pro and a little Pro Tools background. I like how those DAWs handle fading/cross fading quickly using interactive tools depending where the mouse is hovering or key pressed and is able to reshape the fade interactive in the timeline. Is there something like this in Nuendo? The best I can find is using the hotkey “X” to make the fade and then dive into the Fade window to stretch the cross fade longer for example. To me, this seems not a very fast fading way between audio clips compared to the fade tools found in Pro Tools - very slow. I want to use Nuendo for dialogue editing, but I am not sure if there is a faster way to fade clips especially in post production. If somehow this is not a feature in Nuendo, I would love to see this so that I could speed up my audio editing process and not bounce between other DAWs as much.
It does not work like other DAWs and I agree it needs some work.
I would recommend looking into the manual for the new keyboard shortcuts (which you can re-assign easily to your needs) to allow for quicker editing of dialogue. The recent update brought some nice improvements.
Regarding fade curves I don’t like the way it is working now (with a pop up window that you have to close with a mouse click). That needs to close with the same keyboard shortcut I would expect, but it doesn’t.
A video tutorial by a Steinberg developer/user would be great on this topic!
Thanks Klfnk2020 for the tips! Not a bad idea finding or mapping out hotkeys to speedup the workflow. Yeah, the pop up window in the biggest issue I have in editing audio for fast editing.
I heard about the dialogue editing updates with the last release, but was disappointed that there was not an improvement in fixing the fade tool that most DAWs have by default. I believe DaVinci Resolve with Fairlight has better fade tools than Nuendo now (more of an NLE and not a DAW).
I will definitely look into the video tutorial from Steinberg about this topic further. Thanks for your help!
I think you are right. It’s hard finding Nuendo tutorials out there. The closest video was the overview video about Nuendo 12’s Dialogue features.
I could not find a way to reshape the fade without the pop up window… But, I did find out how to use the range selection tool and press “X” will do a crossfade with the size I want for the cross-fade. Also, I used the range selection and did an “adjust fade to range” command to create fades on start/end of a clip. It is still not as good as Pro Tools for fading clips, but I might have made a discovery today how todo some in/out/cross fade tasks with less time in the pop up window. I want to dig into this topic/conduct a few more tests. If I figure this out how use the different ways to fade in Nuendo, I will do a screen capture about it and post the link to the video here to share my discovery of my take on the fades tools in Nuendo.
Interesting idea, but I think the envelopes is not as quick as a side handle fade. My focus in my research with Nuendo is speed with as flexible editing as possible. Meaning I can change the audio fade in/out/cross slope shape quickly. This is why I have a hard time getting past Pro Tools audio editing features since it is fast and efficient.
Unfortunately the event envelopes are poorly implemented and seem like an afterthought. Really hope they update it and make it how it is in Studio One which is just perfect.
I set the D/F/G Keys to “Fade in to range start”/“Adjust fades to range”/“Fade out from range end”. So they function similar to ProTools. That works quite well for me when doing fades on a single events.
When I want to crossfade I select the range above the two events and press X.
Then X again to open the Fade editor (in case I want to edit the curve of the crossfade. If you tend to use one type of Fade most of the time, you can set that type of fade as a default).
Then Enter/return to close the Fade editor.
If I want to delete the Fades I press option/alt F.
Coming from ProTools, the way Nuendo handles overlaps can be confusing too. At least it was for me. So I tend to activate “Editing - Delete overlaps” in the Preferences when doing Dialogue Editing by pressing a key command. You can still Shift+Drag Events on top of each other and maintain the normal overlap behavior, if you want to. I like to do that when doing crossfades because you see the overlapping area, and you just have to press X while having one of the events selected.
And the last thing I want to add: If you struggle to find Nuendo tutorials/solutions to your problems, make sure you also look for Cubase content, because there are a lot more Cubase than Nuendo users out there.
The issue is that you can’t manipulate the fade shape directly on the event, like you can in Pro Tools, Reaper, and probably every other DAW. Fades and clip gain manipulation are certainly two things that Pro Tools still wins over Nuendo.
Ah, now that I look at it, you have to right click over the fade in reaper to change the actual fade shape in Reaper. It’s still easier than Nuendo’s. But does involve a click. Though, with a key modifier, I can alter the curve of the selected fade shape in Reaper. but to change from linear to S-shaped or log, you have to right click.
Yeah, I see the handles. My trouble is not being able to shape the fade shape in the main window without the need of a pop-up window. Thanks for sharing the link!
I always work with the select/range combo tool, and have an easily accessible key command for ‘adjust fades to range’ which allows you to select the fade in/out range and press it for the corresponding fade - or a selection within a region and press the same command for fade in & outs applied to the edges of the range. Press the same command again after making the fades to change curves, close with ‘escape’
For some reason I think the crossfade window doesn’t close with ‘escape’ but needs ‘cmd+w’, which always takes a second to remember
There are quite a few fade related functions in Nuendo, some of which are not mapped to keyboard shortcuts. One useful thing is going into the keyboard shortcut editor and searching on ‘Fade’ to see them all, and then decide which ones you might want to map.
It’s always hard coming from another tool and expecting certain conveniences to exist in similar ways. Sometimes it’s better to not search for the equivalent, but starting from a blank slate and figuring out a workflow that meets your needs. It avoids tunnel vision.
I do dialog editing on Nuendo and it’s certainly workable. And I came from ProTools a long time ago. One thing that will make up for fades and then some is the sample editor at the bottom. No need to constantly zoom in/out. With one mapped controller key I can see a detailed view of the waveform for precision editing and can check deep into the handles and audition parts. Huge time saver.
I have mapped the fade editor to F9 which pops up the fade editor if I want to adjust a shape, which is fine. I don’t mind one dialog vs. remembering 5 different mouse gestures, especially since I work across a lot of different apps and suffer keyboard shortcut overload regularly. One annoyance is that if both ends of the event have fades and you open the editor, you get two separate windows that sit on top of each other, so you have to pay attention to which is which, and then close both. Would be nice if that was one window where you could toggle which one you edit, or better yet, a bigger window that had both in and out fade side-by-side.
I’ve solved this by making a Keyboard Maestro macro (ctrl-f) that moves the top window 400 pixels to the right. Then I see both windows. If there is only one fade I press F). I tried using KM to control menus in Nuendo but the implementation is sooo weird in Nuendo that I gave up. I would love to select a preset but I can only navigate (with keyboard) to the length… why? I do not know.
I’m still on the lookout to fix some of these issues.
