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Known Participant
February 21, 2023
Open for Voting

Snapping to markers doesn't work. So... fixing that is an idea.

  • February 21, 2023
  • 19 replies
  • 3654 views
I have snapping turn on, and snapping to markers turned on. It just doesn't work. Screen grab of my multitrack session attached.

19 replies

Known Participant
February 21, 2023
Thanks, Matt. Good to know that the resizing of the selection works as desired.

Thanks for the info about Shift-clicking on the marker to extend the selection. I was referring to hotkeys, however. There's something funky about Audition's handling of the Shift-(next/prev marker) key combo, but I don't remember exactly what. I do remember that it did not consistently extend the selection per OS standards.
Participating Frequently
February 21, 2023
Haha, I know what you mean Matt. By including both the advanced "Snap to" and the more accessible Xfade option, you've found a pretty good compromise. I'm happy.
Community Manager
February 21, 2023
"consider Snap to Zero as an outdated feature. Fade/crossfade is inherently destructive and might not be desirable in every circumstance."

That is why we left ported the feature from the old code base to the new. For advanced user it is highly useful, but with great power comes great responsibility, and it can make selections harder to make if you are a novice and don't understand that a zero crossing is.
Welcome to the world of building software, where everything is compromise and you literally cannot please everyone.
Participating Frequently
February 21, 2023
Ahh, thanks Matt. I saw your reference to it in your video but I could never find the toggle in the audio editor (non-multitrack). One piece of feedback is that the layout seems inconsistent -- a lot of icons appear along the top of windows. In this case, the magnets appear to the right of the waveform overview, and thus I never even noticed it. (Much more intuitive in multitrack, but I never use that editor.)

I had previously toggled this via the drop-down menu settings "Enable" but I guess this time around I accidentally left it off as I took the video, which made me think it still was broken, lol. Trying again, it seems to be working as expected, thankfully.

Thanks again for your help!

As for Snap to Zero Crossing, auto-fades are a great addition, but I hope Adobe doesn't consider Snap to Zero as an outdated feature. Fade/crossfade is inherently destructive and might not be desirable in every circumstance. Specifically, if I wanted to cut tightly to the very beginning of a sharp transient, I want to preserve the transient and not accidentally apply a fade. Usually while working in Audition I prefer to choose when to apply fades rather than to have the software choose for me.
Community Manager
February 21, 2023
@ GS
Responding to each:
1. If I fully understand what you are asking for, it is a feature request, as I previously stated. Audition has many ways to make selections, "Easy" is subjective though.
2. When snapping is on, you can drag the selection edges and they will snap. This works.
3. Snapping works on the mouse actions only. To extend a selection and have it snap to a marker, hold shift and click on the marker. Any existing selection will be extended to the snapped location of the mouse click (the marker in this case).
Community Manager
February 21, 2023
@Jim Coursey
In the video you posted, it looks you have the global button for snapping turned off.
In the upper right corner of the Editor view, click on the magnet icon next to the ruler. When it is blue, snapping is active.

Also, Snap to Zero Crossing was added for legacy reasons from Audition 3.0 (the original code base). Current versions of Audition have a feature that automatically adds a tiny fade/cross-fade on edits in the Editor view. As long as you have it turned on (it is the top two check boxes under "Preferences>Data>Data..." you will not need to worry about zero crossings, and you can place edits at any location in the editor.
Participating Frequently
February 21, 2023
Oops, thanks GS, thought I'd marked it for sharing... should be working now.
Known Participant
February 21, 2023
Hey Jim,

Unfortunately whatever you posted has restricted access.
Participating Frequently
February 21, 2023
Thank you for the response Matt, and whether or not a feature request, +1 to David Gurney's suggestion.

However, if I read it correctly, the thing I'm trying to do (in 14.4.0.38) should be supported according to:
https://helpx.adobe.com/audition/using/selecting-audio.html

Here's a video. You can see that I have timeline selector selected, I have enabled both "snapping to markers" and "snapping to zero crossings". I make two markers in my audio file, and then attempt to select each point when zoomed out... it looks to me like I'm hitting them. However, when I zoom in and look at each point, neither is snapped to either the nearest zero-crossing OR marker.

Hope this helps and let me know if there's more I can add.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Innxs6O40V577_ngLgHvPGZ6u-yhqqpl/view?usp=sharing
Known Participant
February 21, 2023
Hi Matt,

Once again the Audition team stands out as one team at Adobe that cares to engage with customers and respond. Thanks for that.

As I noted in the original post, snapping and snapping to markers were on; I noted that because the button is not visible in the screen grab. Maybe that one bug (snapping a timeline event to a marker) has been fixed since then.

It is critical in an audio editor that we be able to:

1. Easily select the material between two markers, as depicted in David's request. The lack of this is, by far, the biggest impediment to using Audition. As noted, this is commonly available in other applications; I have an $80 audio application that's popular with voiceover artists, which lets you drop two markers and double-click between them to select the region. I now use this application instead of Audition.

2. Drag the edges of a waveform selection to resize it, with an option to have the cursor snap to markers. I can't remember if Audition lets you resize selections this way.

3. Extend a selection between the playhead and a marker (or vice versa). If I remember correctly, using a Shift-(next marker) hotkey combo does not extend a selection properly in Audition.

I got fed up with Adobe's abandonment of Illustrator and failure to fix years-old defects in everything else... but if Audition were available as a stand-alone, NON-RENTAL application I'd buy it at a reasonable price. I like Audition and respect the Audition team.