Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.
Scoox
Posts: 244
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2019 3:14 am

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by Scoox » Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:19 pm

sckbtz wrote:
Sat Feb 19, 2022 12:49 pm
Tarekith wrote:
Tue May 04, 2021 6:39 pm
Could you clarify a bit about what it is you don't like? Just a rant doesn't really help get your point across.
Maybe I can have a go, too, in case it is still not clear: there are 10 separate clips in a track. How do we select clips 1, 4 and 8, but not the clips 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7?

I'm in the 90-day trial version and this is one of the things that make me want to cancel the trial. I posted 4 or 5 other things that are hard to understand how live cannot have this implemented... Like a simple skip forward button. Every Walkman had this, but not the most advanced audio editing platform in 2022. Or a play cursor that stays where it was after I move a clip. Incredibly annoying to the point that it's unusable.

I can understand there are hundreds of other features that ableton thinks are more important. But this one is at a very simple high level where most users will find it annoying at some point.

Or maybe we should put it in a bug thread?
It's an artificial limitation. It can be done, but it will take Ableton to agree. At the moment, Live's "policy" is to only allow a continuous selections, i.e. an uninterrupted chunk of time. If the selection includes both midi and audio clips, the Detail View panel at bottom will be grayed out with a caption in the middle warning you that you have selected clips of different types therefore it can't display anything, since it can display either audio or midi but not both simultaneously.

If it was possible to select a non contiguous clips, all Live would have to do is show the contents of those clips in the Detail View and hide (i.e. not show) anything that had not been selected. This is technically trivial, but there's a catch specifically in Live: Live doesn't allow overlapping clips or notes. Say you have three clips A, B and C on the same track appearing in that order. If you select only clips A and C (if that was possible), and skip B, the Detail View would show the MIDI notes of A, a chunk of empty space (that's where B would be) and then the notes of C. If you add some notes with the mouse in the empty chunk of space, what would happen to B? I'm not saying a solution doesn't exist but you can see how this is a problem.

The easiest way to implement this is to allow non-contiguous selections and display a grayed-out Detail View with a warning caption, just like when we select clips of different types. Boom, done.

m_nch
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2022 12:06 am

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by m_nch » Wed Aug 24, 2022 12:06 am

yes plizzzz add this feature!

ozinga
Posts: 87
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:43 am

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by ozinga » Wed Aug 24, 2022 7:00 am

Scoox wrote:
Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:19 pm
sckbtz wrote:
Sat Feb 19, 2022 12:49 pm
Tarekith wrote:
Tue May 04, 2021 6:39 pm
Could you clarify a bit about what it is you don't like? Just a rant doesn't really help get your point across.
Maybe I can have a go, too, in case it is still not clear: there are 10 separate clips in a track. How do we select clips 1, 4 and 8, but not the clips 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7?

I'm in the 90-day trial version and this is one of the things that make me want to cancel the trial. I posted 4 or 5 other things that are hard to understand how live cannot have this implemented... Like a simple skip forward button. Every Walkman had this, but not the most advanced audio editing platform in 2022. Or a play cursor that stays where it was after I move a clip. Incredibly annoying to the point that it's unusable.

I can understand there are hundreds of other features that ableton thinks are more important. But this one is at a very simple high level where most users will find it annoying at some point.

Or maybe we should put it in a bug thread?
It's an artificial limitation. It can be done, but it will take Ableton to agree. At the moment, Live's "policy" is to only allow a continuous selections, i.e. an uninterrupted chunk of time. If the selection includes both midi and audio clips, the Detail View panel at bottom will be grayed out with a caption in the middle warning you that you have selected clips of different types therefore it can't display anything, since it can display either audio or midi but not both simultaneously.

If it was possible to select a non contiguous clips, all Live would have to do is show the contents of those clips in the Detail View and hide (i.e. not show) anything that had not been selected. This is technically trivial, but there's a catch specifically in Live: Live doesn't allow overlapping clips or notes. Say you have three clips A, B and C on the same track appearing in that order. If you select only clips A and C (if that was possible), and skip B, the Detail View would show the MIDI notes of A, a chunk of empty space (that's where B would be) and then the notes of C. If you add some notes with the mouse in the empty chunk of space, what would happen to B? I'm not saying a solution doesn't exist but you can see how this is a problem.

The easiest way to implement this is to allow non-contiguous selections and display a grayed-out Detail View with a warning caption, just like when we select clips of different types. Boom, done.
In Logic only B is greyed out and if you add any note to B area, it is added to A and A gets extended. Of Course in Live B would be deleted as it does not have overlapping midi regions option feature like Logic.

Anyway it is too optimistic for hoping this feature after 15 years. Clearly Ableton team does not consider it or not doable with the current structure of Live.

teknosmoker
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2023 4:47 pm

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by teknosmoker » Thu Jan 26, 2023 4:48 pm

.....Is this still not possible in 2023?





- T

azor2000
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2023 12:25 pm

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by azor2000 » Mon Apr 24, 2023 4:19 pm

+1

This need to be fixed. It's like a joke right now.

saoirse042
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2023 12:36 pm

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by saoirse042 » Wed Jul 12, 2023 12:37 pm

+1
Man, I just googled this and am honestly horrified to find this was an issue in 2007 but still not fixed.. :(

jmljunior
Posts: 34
Joined: Sun Oct 25, 2009 1:53 am

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by jmljunior » Sun Aug 06, 2023 7:24 pm

+1

CMD+CLICK should select only the clips you've clicked on, not all clips in between.

Boomsz
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Nov 05, 2023 10:51 pm

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by Boomsz » Sun Nov 05, 2023 10:53 pm

this is unreal. wow. what in all that is holy.

alphons
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2023 11:33 am

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by alphons » Thu Nov 23, 2023 12:02 pm

Long time FL Studio user here.
Been using Ableton on and of every now and then for a few years and been trying to get into the workflow because I love some of the design decisions made.

I really enjoy tons of parts of the workflow, but this is one of the things where I always feel like banging my head against the wall.
Now that FL Studio has fades, going back to using them in Ableton and not being able to apply them to more than one clip at once feels so fucking odd.

It feels like I'm playing world championship level excel competitions of workflow only to take a break to play with Duplo whenever I need to manually do stuff to 20 clips individually because there's no way to do these changes to multiple at once.
Selection management, being able to apply audio edits to multiple things at the same time is one of the biggest downsides I've found so far.


My specific requirements of things I've tried to do that weren't possible:
- Applying fades to multiple clips at once (ex. multiple copies of a Kick on the same track)
- Moving multiple sections of audio to a new track (so being able to select multiple parts of a sample and cut / paste them).
- Scaling the gain or pitching multiple clips that are not consecutive
- Only being able to create multi selection this way with a cursor would be fine, but ideally all of the keyboard actions that allow to resize / move selections should also work on multi-selections to allow the cursor / selected area to work as a powerful extension of single selection actions.


I know the direct comparison between FL Studio and Ableton doesn't fully make sense, because FL Studio doesn't allow you to select regions and handle them independently of the actual clips that are on them. That being said, if Ableton's selection were to be extended to allow selecting multiple things at once and to apply actions to these, this would be far more powerful compared to FL Studio's multi-selection because you could very quickly move not just clips around, but snippets of audio that can be repurposed in another part of the track.

The difference in design where everything in Ableton is unique instead of clips being linked has upsides and downsides, and I don't mind having some of the downsides for some of the speed it allows with it as it reduces some level of abstraction. But not even being able to work on more than 1 thing at a time is a huuuuge drag that just makes the system borderline unusable. This feels like something that should be possible because it's a main stay in the design language of most software, but it isn't.

While I love playing around with Ableton for fun, because the workflow inspires me to do completely different sounds, and I really love the more keyboard emphasised workflow, until this is addressed I just can't rely on it for anything more than projects that I do for fun.

jurgen.simpson
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:19 pm

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by jurgen.simpson » Sun Dec 10, 2023 2:36 pm

I've been trying to love Ableton but these kinds of design failures make it so hard. On one hand you have amazing opportunities to go deep and on the other hand there are so many basic elements missing.

Why Ableton, why? Its such a simple and universally implemented workflow concept!

jurgen.simpson
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:19 pm

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by jurgen.simpson » Sun Dec 10, 2023 8:33 pm

I don't think you quite understand the nature of what's being discussed here... Cmd+click on clips that are offset and you'll see how adjacent clips are also selected. Unusual behaviour for a DAW or indeed most video editing software.
jmljunior wrote:
Sun Aug 06, 2023 7:24 pm
+1

CMD+CLICK should select only the clips you've clicked on, not all clips in between.

jmljunior
Posts: 34
Joined: Sun Oct 25, 2009 1:53 am

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by jmljunior » Sat Jan 06, 2024 8:08 pm

jurgen.simpson wrote:
Sun Dec 10, 2023 8:33 pm
I don't think you quite understand the nature of what's being discussed here... Cmd+click on clips that are offset and you'll see how adjacent clips are also selected. Unusual behaviour for a DAW or indeed most video editing software.
jmljunior wrote:
Sun Aug 06, 2023 7:24 pm
+1

CMD+CLICK should select only the clips you've clicked on, not all clips in between.
:roll: Oh, do I "not understand"? lol. That's exactly what I said, that cmd+click should only select the clips that are selected (not clips that are in between/adjacent). Maybe you're not a native english speaker, but I was saying that, yes, I agree with the feature request and that the current implementation is incorrect since it selects adjacent clips.

jurgen.simpson
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:19 pm

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by jurgen.simpson » Mon Jan 08, 2024 7:45 pm

Apologies. I did indeed misread your meaning! (darn... must read more Chaucer and Dickens to up my game!).

But yes... its crazy how challenging this makes editing sometimes.

slow.robot
Posts: 188
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2021 2:06 am

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by slow.robot » Mon Jan 08, 2024 8:27 pm

as weird as this is (very weird), it makes a little bit of sense when you consider how Live’s fundamental design is always about live performance first. if you need to move a section around on the fly (live), it’s much easier to select a clip, and then another clip, and it automatically picks up everything in between, than it is to point your mouse/trackpad somewhere, click and drag, and hope you’re accurate enough to only select the range you need.

that said, it’s pretty obviously not desired functionality for most users—at the very least, there should be the option to use the OS default selection behavior if you don’t like Ableton’s.

Jockste
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Jan 21, 2024 1:25 pm

Re: Selecting multiple clips - huh?

Post by Jockste » Sun Jan 21, 2024 10:44 pm

Wow.. I'm a long-time Logic Pro user and have recently been interested in trying out Ableton as an alternative, mostly for electronic music. However, not being able to select and manipulate multiple clips in the arrange view is such an enormous limitation, that I now feel hesitant about the whole thing.. Is it realistic to hope this "feature" might be added in the upcoming version 12?

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