Back to the “Do you want to overwrite”, “Won’t do it!!!” issue. I’ve been thinking about this more. On the one hand, Cubase is being protective not allowing you to overwrite a file in the pool - fair enough. But a global option would be nice to tell Cubase, “go ahead and do it if the file is not used in the project”. Cubase clearly knows what’s used and what isn’t because there’s a clear unused media action available.
At a minimum, fix the “Do you want to overwrite” dialog box so that “Overwrite” button is not shown (or alternately, the button is disabled) if the file is in the pool and the user’s instruction will not be carried out anyway. That doesn’t streamline anything but it does avoid a good deal of confusion and/or frustration.
I am constantly bouncing files just to rename them and this is really annoying. I absolutely hate it. It is one of the worst things I know about using Cubase.
Folks involved in this thread, in case you missed it please check out this follow-on thread:
Smarter “Remove Selected Tracks” Action
After the ideas kicked around in this thread, I came up with an alternative solution that I think makes more sense and accomplishes the problem I outlined here. Your feedback would be welcome.
Dave,
Don’t worry, I’m not going to “muck up” your new feature request thread but, I still have a few thoughts/questions about this…
I finally tried out your workflow to mixdown the file and then import into the pool and making an audio track. So, I mixdowned as an .mp3. Now, in the project, I “solo” the added audio track and listen to it. When I listen to that single audio track, to me, it sounds exactly the same as when I listen to the sum of my project tracks. So I would not be able to make any “mastering” adjustments to the project because I hear no discernible differences. I only hear differences when I listen to the .mp3 through a different audio player.
So that prompts me to ask a question to find out why your workflow is like that. Can you hear “enough” differences in your imported track(s) to make any meaningful adjustments to your mix? Again, for me (maybe because of my 60 year old ears), it would be nil so I would still have to listen through other audio players to make any meaningful mix adjustments.
Also, when I do another mixdown using the same file name I get a dialog box that asks the “overwrite” question. I pick that. Then I get a dialog box that asks if I want to create a new version of the file in the project. I pick that. The result is another audio track added to the project named the same but suffixed with a (1), (2), (3), etc. If mix revisions were made I could listen to them using the latest track. No deleting or going into the pool for anything… yet.
After doing this numerous times, as I assume you do, you would finally get to a mix that you feel is CD burn worthy. And I assume you would burn to CD and listen on your other audio devices and maybe even have to make more changes to the project mix.
At the end of your “mastering” process you would have a bunch of sequentially numbered audio files in your project. The last of which is the finished product.
It is at this point where I (if I were you) would shift/click on all the audio tracks that you don’t want and delete them. Then it is a quick visit to the pool where I would right click on the audio folder to remove all unused media then a right click on the trash folder to delete the unwanted files forever.
That seems like a pretty easy method to me. Is that what you see in your workflow?
BTW… I’ve learned a few things from participating in this thread. Cool
Seriously, if I neglected to set the locators to the whole piece for example (that has happened on at least one occasion), I would see that immediately with the import. The import is strictly to do a quick quality check. Once that’s done, I have no need for the audio to be within the project.
I absolutely expect the imported file to sound identical to the playback. When it doesn’t, then I know I’ve not exported properly. If there is a problem, then it’s a whole lot more efficient to learn of it up front while the project is still loaded.
I’m not trying to be stubborn here, and I’m getting a sense that, although I still like my approach best, there are alternatives that might possibly end up being less work. The number of times I find mistakes in the export is low. Mostly the exports are fine and mostly the quality check shows “results as expected”.
