Live 8: Automation Curves?

rbrown46 · Post by **rbrown46** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:54 pm

If you take a look at the crossfade feature on the "Workflow Enhancements" page it looks as if live now supports variable curves for automation segments. The screenshot on that page shows a curved segment at the beginning and end, outside of the crossfade.

So... do you think automation curves are available everywhere, or just for crossfades/volume automation? It seems like they'd advertise it as such if it was available everywhere...

beatpoet · Post by **beatpoet** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:56 pm

Not sure, it does say Many more features from the forums are implemented, haven't seen it yet though.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:05 pm

the crossfades are curved, but the other automation is not curved.

yes, it's weird but that's the way it is.

rbrown46 · Post by **rbrown46** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:14 pm

Angstrom wrote:the crossfades are curved, but the other automation is not curved.

yes, it's weird but that's the way it is.

I think you're right... have you tried this at NAMM or some such?

It looks like you can have curved fade-outs/fade-ins without a needing crossfade though, which is pretty nice.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:18 pm

yes, fade in and fade out are handled by the crossfadey thing, so they get to be curvy.

mr.adl · Post by **mr.adl** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:21 pm

Can i use the crossfades on let´s say a synthfilter as well? I often find it very difficult to get the filtering right with the lines we have in Live 7. Will this be easier in Live 8?

ilia · Post by **ilia** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:49 pm

Angstrom wrote:yes, fade in and fade out are handled by the crossfadey thing, so they get to be curvy.

I am happy they added crossfades, but why oh why can't you see both waveforms under a crossfade, like in all other software? just having one waveform is confusing and uninformative.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:54 pm

Angstrom wrote:yes, fade in and fade out are handled by the crossfadey thing, so they get to be curvy.

Beautiful.

philipc · Post by **philipc** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 10:22 pm

I thought exactly the same thing when I saw the crossfades but in a later shot you can see clearly that the automation is still all straight lines.

The lack of bezier curves remains frustrating but i'm reluctant to grumble given the impressiveness of this update.

The difficulties with improving the automation have been much discussed here recently and hopefully our mere mortal intellects combined with those of the übermenschen over at Ableton can fix it for Live 9

rbrown46 · Post by **rbrown46** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 11:34 pm

The max integration should make some interesting workarounds possible though. For example:

- select an automation region. in a max popup window (similar to the midi transformations popup in the video) you configure a curve from A to B using one of several shapes (you could even enter arbitrary mathematical functions and eval them using the javascript interpreter). LFO-type automation could also be inserted. max then inserts breakpoints to approximate the curve (they will be linearly interpolated by ableton). of course this will be limited in precision by the number of breakpoints allowed (I can't imagine a breakpoint per sample working out), and whether max actually has read/write access to automation data.

- henke confirmed that max has access to parameters directly. so you could build an alternative automation timeline interface in max (using jsui), complete with curves, and send it's automation data to parameters in real-time during playback. if max has access to the current automation selection/cursor, then you could sync and jump between the two UIs.

marsh · Post by **marsh** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 1:05 pm

So, when will the detailed list of 'workflow enhancements' be posted so we can finally stop speculating about whether this was included?!.. I'm still holding on to hope!.. Even the ability to draw straight frickin' lines in the velocity editor would be a godsend!!..

Khazul · Post by **Khazul** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 1:11 pm

While Im sure you could use MFL to manipulate the lines into curves, the overheads of doing so might outweight the benefits - for eg - I think live tends to loosely sample point along the lines to generate automation paremeters and this is nioce and easy for it.

Getting MFL to genrate a curve would in effect require that it generates lots of little lines instead - kinf of like when you record automation directly from a midi controller. Live allready smooths this I think for performance reasons at record time - so from that I would guess making MFL generate hundreds of lines might actually be counter-productive.

The + side, of them having done curves allredy for clip fades - its means that the code for dealing with sampling of a curve has allready been done and so could ppotentially be adapted for general automations in the future.