Issues with moving to CC from 1.5 - advice from veterans or devs?

Report · Feb 03, 2020

I'm working with a company that has recently moved from Audition 1.5 to CC (latest version), and am coming up with procedures and customisations to develop our workflow.

I have a list of thoughts and issues which are hard to find answers for, and would appreciate anyone with some inside knowledge answering. I'll try be as detailed, yet brief as possible.

We make Insert Silence edits to recorded voice files while also playing back - we're ahead of the playhead. The issue is that every time an edit is made, there's a small skip in the playback. I've played with Latency which seems to help, but it's never removed. This could be achieved in 1.5, wondering if CC can do the same too, or if this is part of its internal processing.
In 1.5, while recording, we could use Silence to remove mistakes from voice talent. CC seems to not allow this. Is this something that can be overcome, or is it the nature of how CC records?
Similarly, in 1.5 we often playback a waveform and save it out at the same time. It seems CC cannot playback a waveform while also having the Save As or Export popups open. Is there a way around this?
Also, while playing back in the Multitrack view, 1.5 would allow Splitting a Clip at the same time. CC seems to now allow Splitting while playing back.
The Trim Out Point to Playhead is a great new feature to CC - is there something similar that will trim out point to the faded playhead that comes up while playing back instead? Currently it will trim to the playhead - so if we're listening to the start of some music, but want to perform the edit at the end, it'll jump to the playhead at the start, not at the end.
We're now using the Fade Out Normal function to fade out music - is there a way to have this default to a specific time? ie, always set to 3s from the current end of the clip? Furthermore, is there a way to fade out a number of tracks at once, that are layed out one after the other in time?
In 1.5, when using the Import File button, you could preview audio files by just clicking on them in the pop-up. Is there a way to replciate this, without having to actually import them into Files, and without using Media Browser?
Is there a way to create space to the right of a Mulitrack? In 1.5, you could click and drag a selection to the right and the workspace would increase to the right. In CC it stops at the edge. Is there a solution to this?
Is it possible to lasso select more clips, after already selecting some clips? This comes from the Hybrid tool in 1.5, but CC will not lasso after a clip is selected, to mass select more clips.
When using "Insert into Multitrack" from the Markers panel, is there any way to add in some space between the audio that is dump on the multitrack?
Regarding Files, in 1.5 when bringing in the an audio track with the same name as one currently in the session, Audition would suffix it with (2). Is there an option for this in CC?

Apologies for the wall of text, but I've been sorting this software out for our use for several months now and collected many inconveniences.

I'm happy to go into detail on any of these - even provide video to demonstrate.

Many thanks for your time!

Report · Feb 04, 2020

Let me preface this by saying that between 1.5 and the present versions, the whole program has been rewritten twice, from the ground up. This is significant, and a lot of compromises have had to be made to enable it to be dual-platform, and also to let it integrate with Premiere. One of these compromises is that you can't edit anything during playback. So:

Insert silence whilst playing isn't actually doing that. It's stopping playing for an instant, and adding silence. So the buffer empties and refills (which is why altering its size makes a difference). The glitch is inevitable!
See opening remarks - because the audio engine is completely different, this isn't possible. But you might want to check out the punch and roll option you get by right-clicking on the Record button.
No, you can't do this any more, I'm afraid.
Ditto - no operations during playback.
There is also a Trim In To Playhead option available in Keyboard shortcuts.
I'm not aware of any facility to specify time on a fade-in, or out. There are some options on Multitrack fades (holding the mouse over the fade icon reveals them as a key tip), but the only ways to do fades in multitrack on more than one clip at a time are a) have them in a group and the ends orthogonal in the time line - then all the ends will fade at once, or b) send all the clips you want to fade together to a bus, and do the fade there.
No, you can't do this any more - the file handler is now an Adobe one, not a Windows one, which 1.5 was.
This works fine here - if you drag a clip to the RHS of the multitrack window and hold it there, the session time increases.
Holding the Ctrl key down with a lassoed selection lets you add or remove individual clips from it.
Clips are placed at the point the playhead was last in, in the multitrack selection, or on separate tracks. No other options available.
No, and I'm not sure why this is - it wouldn't be that difficult to organise. Although that said, this is surely an organisational issue on somebody's part? 😉

Bottom line is that you may have to reorganise some of your working practices, I'm afraid; there's no way that a lot of this is going to change.

Report · Feb 04, 2020

Hi Steve

Thanks for going through step-by-step on this one! Most of this I've deduced is not possible in CC, but want to make sure I'm not overlooking elements - a lot can change in software in 16 years! haha

Points 1-4) Thank you for confirming this. I figured it was how it processes now, but just wanted to ensure I wasn't missing anything, and now I have something I can show to my superiors.

5. I'm aware of Trim In but that does not help the solution. I'll reference 1.5 again for this. The playhead and what I'll call the "operation head" seem to be two different things, where playback is being heard at the playhead, but edits can be made at the "operation head" (in 1.5). Again, I figure this is just the nature of CC now, but is there a way to have the Trim In go to CC's version of the "operation head" cursor while playing back or will it always be the playhead?

6. Option A for this is something we've looked at, but because the fade out doesn't stick to the end when changing the length of the clip, it's redundant for us. Option B sounds promosing though as they are already being bussed. Could you explain how this is done for me please?

7. Thanks for clarifying for me - we'll have to look into Adobe Bridge or some sort of file manager then I think.

8. This is the solution we're using at the moment, but I'd prefer if we didn't have to touch production clips just to increase the session time. 1.5 could do this with just highlighitng a selection of nothing. Again, I imagine this is the nature of CC and we just have to suffice with dragging a clip?

9. As far as I can tell, holding CTRL down will only let us add to the selection one clip at a time - which can be difficult if its a short SFX and we're zoomed far out. Sounds like there's no option for a second lasso after the first?

10. Again, thank you for clarifying!

11. I personally don't find the need for a suffix, but others in my department have mentioned it. We have same -named files for various reasons, often client names are used for male and female voice files, or music tracks being pulled into a session (we want to tell if its already being used). If there's no option to add the suffix, then we'll look at a process change outside of CC.

Many thanks for helping me out with this Steve, I know it's a lengthy one!

One last question for now as well - how much of this can be adapted with ExtendScript or Extensions? I imagine things like the audio engine are untouchable, but could some other points be achieved with them?

Many thanks!

Report · Feb 05, 2020

5. The playhead used to be referred to as the 'CTI' (Current Time Indicator) and that's why the mark it left at the start was effectively ghosted out - it simply wasn't the current time any more after playback had started. But becaue of the changes to the engine, there's really only one operational point now, and the ghost point is no more than a return placemarker. You can alter the behaviour of the way the Playhead behaves upon hitting stop in Edit>Preferences>Playback and Recording. Incidentally ou will still find a couple of references to Current Time Indicator in the help files, but not many. There's one here, for instance.

6. I was thinking of using the automation system. This approach though is slightly limited because Audition only lets you route tracks to a bus, and unfortunately not individual clips - which would be more helpful, but probably a bit of a minefield to implement.

8. If you right-click on the small space at the end of the timeline, you get an option to insert silence, which has the effect of extending the timeline without affecting any clips at all.

9. No, only a single lasso is supported. There have been comments about this in the past, but not recently. I think that people have reluctantly accepted that it isn't going to happen, although you can't rule this out completely...

Endscript. Hmm... I looked at all of the current offerings and none of them appear to alter the fundamental operation of the audio engine - which is pretty much what you'd need to do to implement anything else in your list.

As far as I can tell, most people have accepted the limitations of the current audio engine, and made the necessary adjustments to their workflow. For myself, it does what I want it to pretty well, but I use it primarily for assembling music these days; If I was trying to bang radio packages out with any alacrity then I think I'd prefer 1.5 as well, simply because of all the things you can do on the fly that you now can't do.

Report · Feb 05, 2020

Thanks for all that Steve! There are some really nice new features to CC that we are taking advantage of, yet 1.5 does a lot of simple things more conveniently. We've accepted the limitations and are trying to adjust our workflow to suit, I wanted to ensure there's nothing I'm missing - just yesterday I found "Select Clips to End of Session" and thats very convenient! haha.

I had a look through the Extensions on Adobe Exchange and found nothing that really does what we'd like, but was thinking we might be able to work with our IT to develop some tools to assist us - I'm cuious on the boundaries it has.

I'll have a look into the automation system - if there's a way to say '3 seconds from end of every clip on this bus/track > Fade Out Normal' then that would be a massive time saver when mixing for us.

Again, thank you very much for the insight!