Live half-working features

[Benshik]

Hi!
I hope Live 9 is far far far away. When the Abes are done fixing Live's stability, they'll have to continue improving all the plethora of half-working features that's been piling up in Live over the years.
So just to help them make a priority list, what's your favorite half-working feature in Live?

here are mine:

- Spectrum: the most unreliable "precise" tool ever
- Video: we've got video, wow! but no session view, and we can't even switch from bar/beat to frame quandtization in arrangement. Useless!!
- Grooves: so not working
- Automation: adding automation in session view should have been dealt with way before half ableton's ressources were dispatched to have fun thinking up new funky half-features.
- ?

Sorry but im just getting a bit frustrated with all the crashes im having these days :-/
I feel all these features are there just to sell the next update. Please, do fewer things, but do them right!!

Ben

[UKRuss]

Sounding off is fine, but I'd have to disagree with points three and four anyway.

Groove is great at the moment, in what way does it not work?

The Abes have explained in detail why it isn't possible to have automation in session view.

Finally, the Abes have distinctly said that they have suspended development to focus on bug fixing i.e doing fewer things and trying to do them right.

[3phase]

Sounding off is fine, but I'd have to disagree with points three and four anyway.

Groove is great at the moment, in what way does it not work?

The Abes have explained in detail why it isn't possible to have automation in session view.

Finally, the Abes have distinctly said that they have suspended development to focus on bug fixing i.e doing fewer things and trying to do them right.

automatic groove extraction is not working at all ... the logic that looks for good warping points is not even looking slightly for rhytmical accuracy.. it dont places te transient marker on the transients..

so to use groove you have to place all transient markers by hand.. it is working than... but the amount of work necessary qualifies as half implemented...

same to grouptracks.. before 8.1 it wasnt even possible to edit them in arrange..

and the still dont have names on the grouptrack launch clips.. or better.. there are no grouptrack launch clips..

and regarding autmation in session view... its prohibitetd by ableton to work around that limitations by excluding assigned controlers from beeing used in the midi editor...

why? what is impossible here? i dont see why one should not be able to use a midi clip to remote control live devices in another track.. that is not clip internal automation..but a good work around.. besides this stupid prohibition has many other disadvantages when using knobs on hardware synthezisers to control live devices...

when for example you turn down the filter knob of your hardware syntheziser. i want the same happening in a live device..

no problem.just assign that knob to the live device..

but.. forget about recording that knobs movements from that point.. it just is not accesible for lives midi editor anymore...

that is really great and soooo practical... 8-(

[xuoham]

Groove is great at the moment, in what way does it not work?

Well, one very frustrating thing with Groove in case of midi clips is that it only affects notes and not automation related to notes. Which means for example that if i've set a controller for a few notes to have a longer attack and release on the synth i'm using, the groove, or just some minor random timing, completely changes the sound since some notes start before their applied controller triggers.
Which makes it pretty useless for me in many cases.

[UKRuss]

I do see your points.

[Khazul]

Groove is great at the moment, in what way does it not work?

Well, one very frustrating thing with Groove in case of midi clips is that it only affects notes and not automation related to notes. Which means for example that if i've set a controller for a few notes to have a longer attack and release on the synth i'm using, the groove, or just some minor random timing, completely changes the sound since some notes start before their applied controller triggers.
Which makes it pretty useless for me in many cases.

And this alone makes editing of recorded roland v-drum clips a complete nightmare as along with the notes, you have aditional per note expression CCs etc - hi hat pedal, snare and tom etc position sensing, polyphonic aftertouch for muting cymbals etc.

Even simple channel pressure and hold pedal on most keyboards becomes a complete pain (or drawn in automations), especially if those CC are being used to modulate the sound envelopes (as in this case a tiny change in relative position of envelop vs note can make a drastic change to the note sound) as is often the case with electro house for eg - this gets a right pain having to go and edit the clip envelopes again everytime I change the groove amount etc on a house bassline.

Now what I would really like to see as an extra parameter on groove is the % amount to affect clip and session automation and midi CC timing - to me that would really finish off using extracted groove.

As said above however, the hit detection algorythm really really needs some serious work as while most of the time its results are good enough for a very rough fit, tight timing still needs alot of work.

[Matthias]

hi Benshik,

can you explain what problems do you have with Spectrum?

best wishes,
matthias