I think I may have complained about this in the past, but it was probably years ago, and I think it’s worth to have another conversation about this. Because the way handles work in the project window, either for track volume or FX automation, is just terrible. Editing automation is a pleasure in the CC lanes, but it’s a frustrating and exhausting task in the project window.
In the CC lanes, if you have something like this…
… and you want to move the two handles inside, you click and drag to select them, and then with the handle that appears at the top, you click it and drag it to move them up or down as you please:
Super easy, intuitive, and most programs in the audio and video editing world have a similar workflow. You select two points, and you can move them together.
However, in the project window, editing automation is so different and downright terrible that you would think it’s two totally separate programs from different companies.
Let’s say you have something similar, but for the track volume:
You click and drag to select the two inner points:
Then you hover the mouse close to the top of the lane, to show the ‘Move Vertically’ glyph. You click on it and move it up or down as you wish. But what happens? Two additional points are created, and we are left with an automation shape that almost nobody ever needs, because in audio editing, sudden changes from one sample to the next, are a big no-no. Not sudden as in over the course of one second. But sudden as in, from one milisecond to the next. Nobody ever needs that, except in some crazy situation, or maybe if you have pure, absolute silence between two parts with audio that don’t need a gradual change from silence to the optimal volume, because it’s already in the file.
But let’s say in the course of mixing a song. You would never have a drastic change like that in volume, FX automation or hardly anything. So this is absolutely ridiculous:
So the only way to make this behave kind of like it should when clicking and dragging the move glyph, is to click and drag (or mouse wheel) the Value number in the info bar, far away from the actual points.
This should be the default behavior if I create four points, then select the two points closer together, and click and drag on the glyph. But instead of that, I get this completely idiotic and backwards behavior that creates two extra points nobody asked for and makes the volume jump from one value to the next in a sample, milisecond, I don’t know. It’s just immediate.
Even worse, if I moved those two points by clicking and dragging on the value number in the info bar, and now I click and move the glyph, there’s even more nonsense:
Or the other way around:
To me it’s just impossible to understand why a DAW that excels on so many other things is so poorly designed when it comes to something so basic. And why is it not consistent, having the same type of automation editing in the project window that it has on the CC lanes, where editing is the way it’s supposed to be?
In what audio editing or mixing scenario you have any use for the type of automation point editing that we have in the project window?
This has been brought up many times before. Why doesn’t Steinberg at least put an option? And if they did, feel free to make me look like an idiot, I have no self esteem to feed. I just want to edit and mix in a way that is straightforward, at least when it comes to editing automation points.
This also goes for the pencil editing in audio tracks, which I like to use because it gives me the visual feedback that the volume lane doesn’t; it shows me the waveform as I move the editing points. But the pencil editing has the same backwards editing workflow as the automation lanes, and even worse, you can’t copy all the pencil automation you did on an audio track and paste it on another, something that would be very useful when doing a render in place of an instrument track.
Please don’t just label this as a rant and push it away. I’m not ranting. I simply want Cubase to be better, and no, not my way. This way of editing automation is just not standard in the industry, whether it’s music production, videography, film, you name it. You select two points, and you can do different things with them, but they never create two additional points. That just doesn’t make any sense.
To my knowledge, it’s the only way to automate binary effect parameters within an audio track’s automation lanes. I don’t think it’s a rare practice in the world of music production.