Unable to make recorded favorite, act relative to playhead

[tobyricketts]

Hello Audition Experts,

I use a hot key to add 0.05 sec of 1khz tone at my playhead location (for creating the 2 sec 'pip' before commercials). I set this up years ago when audition had 'scripts' and 'favourites' as separate concepts within the program, and have imported my old favourites from each previous version.

I recently opened this favourite to show someone how to edit favourites, But now I cannot get this command to work again or even rerecord this script correctly.

The problem seems to be now that Audition will only accept an exact time from the start or end of a file or a position relative to the entire file as a %, rather than relative to playhead location. It used to offer whether you wanted the actions to process the entire file or a selection of the file, but it no longer does.

Is this a bug? or have they gotten rid of this feature and reduced the usefulness of Audition for no reason? I can explain better if you don't get what I mean!

Any help would be great.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Oh, I know exactly what you mean... it's all of that, I'm afraid. You can't do it (well not properly) and yes I'd say it's a bug even though it appears to be by design, and yes, the original scripting language (which wasn't perfect but was a damn sight better than the present one) has gone. If there is a reason for this, I can't see it. It's something that a lot of people want to do, and you simply can't do it. Another thing you can't do is add an additional effect to an existing favorite - unless it's another instance of something that's already in it. How useful is that? You have to start again from scratch.

It is possible to insert a period of silence at any given point, but only if you make a selection there first (and it has to be a selection, not just a cursor position) and the implementation  - in terms of where and how it leaves the cursor - is a bit weird, to say the least, and it's not going to help you. The only kludge that I can think of that might perhaps help if you need to a do this a number of times in a session is to create exactly what you want to insert and copy it to one of the clipboards - this would leave you doing Ctrl+n + Ctrl+V to insert it wherever the cursor was. (n = Clipboard no. between 1 and 5) - and then remembering to switch back to the clipboard you were using previously.

[tobyricketts]

Thanks Steve, Strange though isn't it, as this was working on this version of AA until the other day - so the programming does allow it, it's just unable to be entered in via the new 'record favourite' function, rather than the old 'record script' function.

I think I have an old backup of my favourites, so will try to swap it our deep within the AppData folder. There is a file Favorites.xml I think I can reimport.

I think Adobe should take note and reinstate that functionality though - shouldn't be too hard?!

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

As far as I'm aware the last version of Audition that let you generate scripts sensibly  was Audition 3, and that doesn't use the same format for saving favorites - or scripts - at all. So if you got this to work, how exactly did you do it?

[tobyricketts]

I recorded this favorite as a script a few years back, most likely before it became Adobe Audition CC. 

I only noticed that the merger of scripts and favourites had happened a few months ago...

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Wasn't exactly a 'merger' - it was the complete scrapping of the previous schemes and replacing them by a markedly inferior one. I'd say it looked more like asset stripping, myself...

[tobyricketts]

But this experiment proves that they have retained the ability to run the old scripts - the machinery is still there - but perhaps a programming oversight or a bug has led to this reduction in functionality?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

I haven't seen this experiment work at all, or any proof of anything. What exactly have you done?

[tobyricketts]

I have been using a preset I recorded 2 years ago using 'record new script'

This preset worked perfectly through every new version

I opended the edit dialog on this same script (now called favourite), didn't change anything and closed the dialoge.

The preset no longer worked or could be made to work.

I imported the favorites.xml from my last backup.

The preset worked just fine again.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

When I said 'exactly' I meant things like saying what version of the software were you using to create the script, and then to subsequently to run it - because so far you haven't told me anything useful at all.

[tobyricketts]

How did this conversation get so snarky? Aren't we trying to help each other here?

I'm not sure there is any way of knowing which exact version it was created in, as it was around 2.5 years ago, and it's worked ever since in all versions including current, until I opened it and closed it in the favourites editor last week. Then I restored from a backup (pre me opening the file last week) and it went back to normal.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

It's not intentionally snarky - but you have to bear in mind that you're trying to tell me that you can do something that isn't supposed to be possible, and as far as I'm aware, you can't do - simply because no parts of the original scripting system made it into the CS5.5 (as it was) rewrite after Audition 3, and we've been told specifically that it won't work. So if you're saying that it will, then the details are important - d'you see? CS5.5 was a total rewrite from the ground up, with a lot of features missing, and was only a 'proof of concept' idea to show that Audition would work dual-platform. The original scripting system was only ever intended to work on PCs - it would never run on a Mac in the form it was, so it was completely scrapped.

My specific problem with what you are suggesting is that the original scripts lived in a script folder within Audition 3, had the extension .scp, and that folder simply doesn't exist in any newer versions - neither does anything else with that extension. And if you copy an original scripts folder into the current Audition folder, it just ignores it - as it should. There's not even anywhere for it to turn up and run from within Audition. So until somebody absolutely proves otherwise - and in some detail - how they can be made to run, we're going nowhere.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Any attempt to get Audition to ingest a script file ends up with this:

[tobyricketts]

Well it does seem to be possible because this 'favorite' which acts at the playhead, I use every day and it works really well.

In the favourites.xml file within the personal preferances files (C:\Users\toby\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Audition\13.0), there is a line of code for this favourite as follows:

<key>SelectionLength</key>
<int type='signed' size='64'>2206</int>

2206 samples is 0.05 sec which is the setting for my 1khz tone.

I dunno. I've attached the xml file in case you want to do some detective work on it to see if you could 'hack' it to modify a favorite to work at the playhead, or on a selection, as this one does.

Failing that, if you are on PC, get an old copy or cracked version of Audtion, record your desired favourite then transplant the favourites.xml file from the old to the new version and see if it works.

[tobyricketts]

Here's the xml file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r89owk6i2qh1pxo/Favorites.xml?dl=0

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