Tracks to lanes - anyone? [Answered]

Following situation -

You receive for a example a vocal-recording on various tracks and want to move them all onto one track with lanes (for comping).

Isn’t there a smart way to do that???

How I am doing that so far → Drag and drop.

This means to move each single take to the right position on the track you want it. :blush:
But even though you drag it for example to lane 2, the track would first jump to lane 1 and needs to be - in a second step - moved to lane 2 and only then it would stay there. All in all this doesn’t make sense and only eats a lot of time.

I can’t believe that this is a workflow which Steinberg suggests and I’d be very happy to find out how smart people are doing that.

Any advice?

I expect Steinberg suggests that you record it all in Lanes in Cubase in the first place (!)…but there is a quicker way of doing it. It helps if they all start in the same place…

Drag them from the Pool onto a single track.
When Cubase asks if you want them on one Track or different tracks, select One Track.
Then Edit/Move to/ Origin.

Then Right Click the Track and select “Clean Up Lanes”. Should all now be on Lanes on one track.

Cool, thanks a lot for your help!!! This would make sense! I’ll try it today. I wonder if Steinberg could fix some of these a bit counter-intuitive workflow issues…

Hi Rhino,

The problem is that you’re recording different takes on to different tracks in the first place.

As planarchist says record all the takes on to the same track. What I do then is to create a new track version using the ‘duplicate’ option leaving those takes intact.

I can then comp on the new track version.

Hi @Rhino - given current behaviour, what happens if you drag down the vocal takes in reverse order, so you achieve the final lane layout you desire…? Am I missing something…? :slightly_smiling_face:

From my understanding of the first post, Rhino was given the takes from someone else who had recorded (or at least supplied) them as separate tracks. It’s not uncommon to receive stems in this way, maybe not even recorded on Cubase. It does seem a bit bizarre that there isn’t an easy way to automatically put tracks onto Lanes (there is an option to go the other way after all).

Clean up lanes!
OMG.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

…doesn’t sound like it’s the command that does it, does it? :wink:

That’s absolutely clear. But as soon as you receive tracks for mixing, which were recorded in Pro Tools, Logic,(…) it starts to become an issue.

Yeap, you would end up with all tracks on lane one. The thing is - of course you can drag them down to lane xy afterwards, but it’s always an additional step. With the amount of tracks we often have to deal with today, that’s a real time-issue.

Great planarchist! This does the trick! Works even when new tracks are imported or dragged directly into the project-window.
Exactly like you suggested a) @ import dialogue: select one track b) move to origin c) clean up lanes d) hurra :smiley:

Thanks a lot everybody, for the input!

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Glad to hear, thanks for confirming…shame it can’t be a bit more intuitive, eh?

Thanks again and yeap, I’m 100% with you. Don’t think that addressing such small issues would be a big problem for Steinberg.
Same with function key for “horizontal+vertikal zoom”, like we know it from Logic. Should be easy to program and would considerably speed up the workflow.

Do you know about G and H for horizontal zoom? Additionally, there are key commands for other flavors of horizontal zoom, such as zoom to loop locators, for example.

Also, there are key commands that can be programmed for vertical zoom.

Sweet, thanks!

Thanks Alexis, I did not find the possibility to zoom in vertically&horizontally with one key-shortcut and then go back to the initial view with another key-shortcut. In Logic this works with holding/releasing one key. I think I know various zoom functions in Cubase and they are also good, but for my opinion Steinberg would be clever to look at the option key concept of Logic. I just recently worked on Logic and this was one the things where Logic simply has an advantage over Cubase. With option keys you’re simply faster switching in between zoom levels back and forth. And for my opinion each tiny little step which can be saved - especially in a tiring editing process - really and truly makes our life easier :slight_smile:

Now I made a macro for zooming in/out to specific regions in the track (mainly for editing), which seems to be quite usable…

→ File/Key Commands/Show Macros/Add Macro

Add the following functions to your new macro:

Zoom - Undo Zoom
Zoom - Zoom Tracks Full
Zoom - Preset 1 (which you saved before with the desired amount of vertical zoom)
Transport - Go to project start
Transport - Locate Selection Start

The last two (transport-commands) only have the function to place the selection after the Zoom-Out comfortably on the screen.

Then assign a Key Shortcut to the new macro.

After that you can zoom in with Shift+S (Zoom in to selection) and go back to a comfortable overview with the new shortcut which you assigned for your new macro.

wow 100% counter-intuitive long way around, but it works glad I found this thanks!