Interesting thread. Timewarp is still one of the unbeatable features of Cubase/Nuendo.
Think about this: Imagine you have tempo events at bars 10, 20 and 30. Fine. Now, you can move the bar line at bar 20 and the tempo at bar 10 AND bar 20 will change. Bar 30 will remain unchanged in both position relative to picture, and the tempo event at bar 30 will be unchanged. You are only moving bar 20. Ok all cool so far.
If you move bar 30, the tempo at bar 20 will change, but the tempo at bar 30 will not, although it’s position WILL (because you are moving it). This is because there is no tempo event after 30.
This is how timewarp works. Now try something slightly different. Select the tempo event at bar 20, and change it’s value manually, not using timewarp. Now everything after bar 20 will move, and nothing before bar 20 will move. Because we are now NOT using the timewarp tool, we are just editing a tempo.
I agree, a locking feature would be great, to allow us to ALSO edit tempos using the last method whilst preserving the position of events afterwards. For this to work though we would need to be able to tell Cubase WHAT (or rather “when” in time) to lock, and what NOT to lock. Other wise it would be a logical impossibility.
So for Cubase to be able to magically insert the right number of bars, I think the only way this could work as a feature request, would be to have another special marker track, rather like the arranger. If this track allowed us to define the boundaries of a “CUE” or “SCENE”, which must stay fixed in time, then Cubase could add or edit bars (or even just “time events?”) BETWEEN user defined “scenes” allowing us to work as FE is suggesting and wishing.
I would propose a “SCENE DEFINITION TRACK” for this purpose. It would present a block like a part, but chunky looking like the arranger track. We could then also be allowed to move this event forwards or backwards in time to shift a whole cue in time (as is often required when scoring to picture with client feedback).
Maybe the user could even “timestretch” a whole cue this way, wioth tempo events within it scaled for us! This would be awesome.
But the main point is, the scene track events would LOCK in time any normal events that occur inside it. One could have a user definable option to allow time linear events to be magnetically locked to the scene event, so that when moving a whole bunch of stuff that combines time and music linear material they could move together. Or not, at users choice.
Perhaps, taking this a step further, this could be the basis for the ability for Nuendo to read and adjust to EDL files provided by post production facilities when an edit change of picture must be reflected in an already developed project.
If we did in fact have a “scene track” with the functions I describe, we would no longer need to worry about editing a tempo manually. It would be fantastic actaully if we could also get bar numbers to “reset” at the start of a scene event, so that our music cues all start at bar 1. There would be no real need for bars at all between the “scenes”. Just space in time. If we needed to fill that space after a creative meeting, we would simply extend an existing, or add a new scene event.
Thanks for reading…
B