Execute Clips In Succession Vertically

[Syncretia]

What I want to do is very simple. I have several clips lined up from top to bottom in Session View. I just want them to play one after the other in succession. I've tried a few different setting combination under the Launch section of the clip, but generally what happens is the clip will play, and then it will just stop playback. I need it to go to the next clip.

I've got it set like this:

Launch Mode: Trigger
Quantization: Global
Follow Action:
1 0 0
Next Next
1 : 0

Is that right? What should I set here?

[Mr Man]

999 : o

[Syncretia]

Thanks. Tried that but doesn't solve my problem. To give you an example of what is happening. I press play on a give clip, it finishes, then it goes to the next clip. But I don't hear any audio from the next clip, then when that clip is finished, it goes to the next clip, but I start hearing audio again. I can't seem to get any consistent results... It seems to be completely random even though I've turned off the B side of the clips launching settings.

What is the basic setup supposed to be when you want clips to play in succession vertically without having to touch anything.

[Syncretia]

To give you another example, I set all the clips (5) to "Play Again" 999:0 and when it gets to the end of the clip, it just stops. The play icon next to the clip keeps flashing, but no audio comes out. WTF is it doing? Where is the gap in my understanding of all this?

[chapelier fou]

As long as the second number is 0, the first one has no reason to be more than 1. Anyway.
To have clips playing successively, just select 'next' for everyone except the last that you'll set to 'first'. Do this only for the left section and let the left/right probability unchanged (1:0).

Dumb question : you do know that your clips have to lie in successive scenes, don't you ?

[re:dream]

So you want a playlist type action?

I've never been able to figure out how to do that easily. Follow Action = Next triggers the next clip after x number of bars/beats/16ths but if you have different clips with different lengths it doesn't seem to work.

You could try to set the follow action time to each clip's length but that's a lot of hassle. Setting follow action time to the longest clip means that the other clips just stop playing - that's what you encounter, right?.

I know there is a M4L device that adds a lot of follow action functionality, I wonder whether that will help.

https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/follow- ... k-studios/

[chrk]

You could try to set the follow action time to each clip's length

MINUS the number of bars your global quantization is set to.

Follow action TRIGGERS at follow action time, and the next clip will play after global quantization time is up.

[crumhorn]

You could try to set the follow action time to each clip's length

MINUS the number of bars your global quantization is set to.

Follow action TRIGGERS at follow action time, and the next clip will play after global quantization time is up.

each clip can have it's own launch quantize setting that overrides the global setting. Set the clip's launch quantize to none and the clip will play as soon as it is triggered.

[chrk]

each clip can have it's own launch quantize setting that overrides the global setting. Set the clip's launch quantize to none and the clip will play as soon as it is triggered.

... a feature I overlook ever so often...

[Syncretia]

To have clips playing successively, just select 'next' for everyone except the last that you'll set to 'first'

I'll try that. But the fact that I didn't set the last one to 'first' probably wouldn't be causing my issue would it? The issue is that it just stops on the second clip of 5.

you do know that your clips have to lie in successive scenes, don't you?

Well, by that you mean that each clip appears in the sequence from top to bottom in session view right? By scene, you mean the array of cells laid out horizontally and numbered right? Is my understanding wrong here?

I've never been able to figure out how to do that easily. Follow Action = Next triggers the next clip after x number of bars/beats/16ths but if you have different clips with different lengths it doesn't seem to work.

You could try to set the follow action time to each clip's length but that's a lot of hassle. Setting follow action time to the longest clip means that the other clips just stop playing - that's what you encounter, right?.

You could be right. This could be my issue. What I did to get around this is is to set the Follow Action Time to 1000 on all clips so that it always plays through the clips. It successfully moves the cursor to the next clip and the play icon starts flashing, but it doesn't play the next clip. So, yes it seems to be exactly what I encounter.

So, it sounds like what am trying to do is a bit unusual. I don't get it. I would have assumed that this kind of thing would just be standard run of the mill stuff that you would do in session view. It makes no sense why this is so complicated.

Isn't this something that other people do? Or, do most people physically hit the APC buttons to trigger the next clip? Seems really cumbersome to have to hit the button every time and potentially screw it up.

[Syncretia]

Thanks heaps to The Finn! After reading what he said, it's all snapped in to place for me now. Here's an explanation of why I was getting confused.

When I first started looking in to this, I thought that the Follow Action was related to the length of the clip. It turns out that it isn't related at all. The Follow Action works off the Follow Action Time 100%, so the key to getting this right is to set all the Follow Action Times to the exact figures. What I've found is that if a clip finishes before the Follow Action Time completes, the playback just stops.

I've also found another issue that was screwing me up. What I was doing was playing the start of the clip and then skipping up to the end of the clip in order to test what was going on. It turns out that doing this also screws up the Follow Action. The clip has to execute all the way through the Follow Action Time.

For the record, I reckon this functionality is pretty crap. I was looking at things from the other way around completely. I would have thought that by default, Follow Actions would feed off the length of the clip, and optionally allow you to specify the Follow Action Time if you needed to. Turns out that it just plain doesn't give a shit about the clip length which leaves to to go in and manually adjust every single Follow Action Time on every clip. This seems really dumb to me. No wonder I've had so much trouble with session view. Painful.

Is my understanding correct now?

[chrk]

you do know that your clips have to lie in successive scenes, don't you?

Well, by that you mean that each clip appears in the sequence from top to bottom in session view right?

Right.

By scene, you mean the array of cells laid out horizontally and numbered right?

That's Live's terminology, yes. But since we're concentrating on one track in your example, it's only marginally relevant (see below).



You can group clips for Follow Action (see the very first section of the Follow-Action-Subsection of the manual): Each group is the number of consecutive divided by an empty slot. The actions, like Next, Other, Stop..., are executed within the group.

Next time you start a clip from another group, either directly or by starting the corresponding scene (see?) the actions from that group are executed.

When I first started looking in to this, I thought that the Follow Action was related to the length of the clip. It turns out that it isn't related at all. The Follow Action works off the Follow Action Time 100%, so the key to getting this right is to set all the Follow Action Times to the exact figures. What I've found is that if a clip finishes before the Follow Action Time completes, the playback just stops.

I've also found another issue that was screwing me up. What I was doing was playing the start of the clip and then skipping up to the end of the clip in order to test what was going on. It turns out that doing this also screws up the Follow Action. The clip has to execute all the way through the Follow Action Time.

For the record, I reckon this functionality is pretty crap. I was looking at things from the other way around completely. I would have thought that by default, Follow Actions would feed off the length of the clip, and optionally allow you to specify the Follow Action Time if you needed to. Turns out that it just plain doesn't give a shit about the clip length which leaves to to go in and manually adjust every single Follow Action Time on every clip. This seems really dumb to me. No wonder I've had so much trouble with session view. Painful.

Is my understanding correct now?

Follow Action is basically a counter bars-beats-16th from the time you start the clip. Skipping a bit by scrubbing stops the counter. Once you got that, all you need is patience to play the sequence through.

[re:dream]

Glad I could help.

For the record, I reckon this functionality is pretty crap. I was looking at things from the other way around completely. I would have thought that by default, Follow Actions would feed off the length of the clip, and optionally allow you to specify the Follow Action Time if you needed to. Turns out that it just plain doesn't give a shit about the clip length which leaves to to go in and manually adjust every single Follow Action Time on every clip. This seems really dumb to me. No wonder I've had so much trouble with session view. Painful.

I've thought for some time there is a need for a new 'Playlist' Follow Action option, which just plays the next clip regardless of follow action time.

[crumhorn]

Possibly an easier way to get the same result:

select all the clips that you want to play in sequence
drag them to arrange view
consolidate the copied clips
drag the consolidated clip back into session view.

seems a bit fiddly on paper but in practice it only takes a few seconds and is a lot quicker than messing around with follow actions.

[Syncretia]

Thanks for all the information here. It's helped me a lot.

You can group clips for Follow Action (see the very first section of the Follow-Action-Subsection of the manual): Each group is the number of consecutive divided by an empty slot. The actions, like Next, Other, Stop..., are executed within the group.

Next time you start a clip from another group, either directly or by starting the corresponding scene (see?) the actions from that group are executed.

This makes a lot more sense now. I didn't understand what was meant by "group" or what the significance of it was. After paying attention to the word "group" in the manual and reading what you said, it makes more sense now. This is what the manual says:

A group is defined by clips arranged in successive slots of the same track. Tracks can have an unlimited number of groups, separated by empty slots.

It never clicked that that was how it worked...

And the significance of "groups":

“Stop“ simply stops the clip after it has played for the chosen Follow Action Time. Note that this overrides clip loop/region settings.
“Play Again“ restarts the clip.
“Previous“ triggers the previous clip (the one above the current one).
“Next“ triggers the next clip down in the group. If a clip with this setting is last in a group, this Follow Action triggers the first clip.
?“First“ launches the first (top) clip in a group.
“Last“ launches the last (bottom) clip in a group.
“Any“ plays any clip in the group.

select all the clips that you want to play in sequence
drag them to arrange view
consolidate the copied clips
drag the consolidated clip back into session view.

Well, normally, I wouldn't even split up the audio in the way that I have done this time. The only reason I have split the audio in to clips is because I'm going to be working with someone doing spoke word so I've split the track up in to parts so I can signal to him where to come in.

I've thought for some time there is a need for a new 'Playlist' Follow Action option

Absolutely. It seems crazy to me that that option isn't the default option. Before delving deep in to this, my assumption was that clips would just execute in succession based on their length. It just seems logical to me that that is what they would do. Otherwise you have to set the length on every single clip which is what I am about to do now which will be very TIME CONSUMING and ERROR PRONE. Why?

PS: I know there are probably M4L tools which allow this to work, but then I'd need to learn a whole new system, and it would probably be flaky because M4L always crashes. There's no way I'm gonna play live with an M4L patch.