Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

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alexdingley
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Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by alexdingley » Fri Aug 07, 2020 7:03 pm

Hi there!

This may end up being a fairly easy question... but I've been working in DAW's a long time, and I don't recall ever running into this need quite so much... so I don't believe I really ever tried to solve this until the last year or so.

I edit a large amount of stand-up comedy audio. Some times I'm just cleaning up a simple 2-track recording... other times (like my current project) I'm marrying a mono feed from the sound-board to a stereo Zoom recorder's files. That part is going just fine. But I do run into a challenge, commonly, that I wish I could more easily solve.

Sometimes I'm putting together a segment of the album and it requires a ton of edits. Maybe I'm removing excess 4-letter words / maybe I'm just trying to give the joke a little better intelligibility on a rough recording. Sometimes I end up having to layer some ambiences over top of the edits for coverage, and other-times I'm just assembling a long bit from many short regions. In any event... there's a common need to audition cross-fades and region-overlaps to make sure the flow is there.

When I've been doing this in Logic... I haven't found an ability to "group" several regions, so that I'm basically locking their relationship to each other (while allowing the entire collection of regions to slip & slide on the timeline,). Pic below.

Image

Does anyone else ever use a feature of any DAW in which they can snap regions together, so that they're relative positions/cross-fades are in-tact... but the whole group can be selected with a single click and moved without worry? IN logic, I have to shift-select (or zoom out and lasso) all of the regions to ensure I'm not accidentally ONLY moving the one region and screwing up its relative position against the other stuff I've already spent time tweaking. I've done some research, but clearly my search terms aren't what other people call this feature (if it exists).

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Fri Aug 07, 2020 7:44 pm

Pro Tools does this (if I’m understanding the question correctly). I’d be amazed if logic doesn’t. It’s essential for doing things like editing drums.
In pro tools it’s called “group”. Select the tracks you want, command +g, name the group edit all of those tracks as if they are one. It’ll also apply the same cross fades, volume automation, panning automation or any other control feature you set to the group.

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sat Aug 08, 2020 8:46 am

Reaper does this, select the clips you want to group, press g, done.

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by Nick Sevilla » Sat Aug 08, 2020 11:21 am

Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by alexdingley » Sat Aug 08, 2020 2:29 pm

Thanks for all jumping in to offer ideas & help. The "grouping tracks" isn't what I'm after... as that would cause ALL regions on the same track to slide together. Here's another illustration of what I'm after:


If I've overlapped a few regions (with cross-fades on the same track)... like the following: (and I'm using "x" to represent that two regions are cross-faded together, and "<", ">" as fades to/from silence.)

Track 1: - - - - - - <[RegionA]x[RegionB]>
Track 2: - - - - - - - - - - <[RegionC]x[RegionD]x[RegionE]x[RegionF]>

In the above example... I might have decided that, across the two tracks, Regions A, B, C, and D are all working as a family of edits that I'm committed to. I don't want to mess with their relative timings between one another. But I'm still toying with the timing-relationship between the Family of ABCD, and the next phrase of the audio that starts in Regions E and F.

So I'm looking for a way to "chronologically lock" regions "TO ONE ANOTHER". I want to be able to click on ANY region of the 4, (a, or b, or c, or d) and have my movements cause relative-locked movement to the other members of this family... so that I can play around with the overlap of "D" to "E" without having to remember to shift-click 3 other regions (many times I have 18-20 regions in the "already committed" family... but I don't really want to "create a new region" out of them just yet. As it's always nice to be able to go back into the group of regions and re-consider something later.

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by Nick Sevilla » Sat Aug 08, 2020 7:46 pm

Well i searched high and low, Logic Pro X does not seem to group regions. LOL.

I know Nuendo does, Cubase does, Pro Tools does.
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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:23 am

Reaper will do what you want to do.

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by The Scum » Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:50 am

Illustrator does this.

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by alexdingley » Sun Aug 09, 2020 2:25 pm

Yeah — I may end up having to do these in Pro Tools, in the future (or learn Reaper).

But in the meantime, I did start trying a work-around today. I normally use color codes for various things, but if I strip everything down to the default "region/track" color in Logic... I can just designated another specific Region-Color for all of the stuff in the "ABCD" family of regions that I want to stay grouped, and then there's a built-in key-command "select all regions of same color", and with that easy quick-key, I can stay zoomed-in / select just the region I'm seeing / hit "⇧-C" / and then freely drag them around. It feels a little clunky, but it's not the worst.

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by Magnetic Services » Fri Aug 21, 2020 7:36 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:
Sat Aug 08, 2020 8:46 am
Reaper does this, select the clips you want to group, press g, done.
This. I use it all the time!

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by alexdingley » Sat Aug 22, 2020 1:28 pm

Thanks! I tried Reaper, and didn’t find it as intuitive as I’d have hoped. A close friend uses it and offered to give me a lesson/primer. Might Take him up on it... but I already own PT2020.05, I just barely touch PT anymore. When I wrap the current comedy album, I’m gonna try some of the next album in PT.

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by Calaverasgrande » Mon Aug 24, 2020 9:31 am

Logic does this more or less. Though every now and then the functionality breaks down, such as when using 'remove silence From region' it will only affect the top clip.

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by megatallica » Tue Nov 24, 2020 8:22 pm

A lot of major DAWs will do this. Reaper does this for sure as mentioned above. Also, Cakewalk can do this and it's completely free.

Here's a list of the most popular free DAWs and what they can do for you. I currently use Ableton, but I know a few friends that are using Reaper, which is cheap & Cakewalk!


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Last edited by megatallica on Thu Dec 17, 2020 5:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by vvv » Wed Nov 25, 2020 7:21 am

Cool Edit does it, too, altho' ya might need to fire up yer steam powered WinXP macheen (at least that's what I use).
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Re: Any DAW that supports "grouping" regions for edits?

Post by roscoenyc » Mon Dec 07, 2020 5:44 am

Digital Performer does this 'between markers'

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