Mixer view recall including floating windows like plugins

[~ufo~]

Hi everyone,

I've bene testing Nuendo 8 today and I tried to recreate my workflow of Pro Tools.
Not everything works the same, but with the help of DTouch I managed to create one key functionality that I use:

Being able to (save current mixer view settings/open windows and) recall previously saved mixer view settings/open windows, with the push of a button.

Say what now???

Ok, let's say your default view has everything you're working on visible. Some drums, bass, keys, vocals, whatever.
You like how everything looks etc.
But now you want to start focussing on the drums a bit. Wouldn't it be cool if you could do that but then return to the full picture right the way you had it before? Well these macros allow you to do just that.

Don't worry! This doesn't recall or change your parameter settings, like level and pans etc. They only (save and) recall what you were looking at!

In order for this to work you need to set up mixer visibility configs 1 and 2, and project workspace 1 and 2.
Let's say you will use visibility config 1 and workspace 1 for "ALL".
And you'll use visibility config 2 and workspace 2 for "Drums".

You will now have macros to switch between them.

There's two sets. The difference is: "Will it save the changes to your current visibility/workspace before recalling the next one or not?".
I think mostly you will want to use the macros that do save it, called "update and recall. This means that you will always recall to the state as it was the last time you recalled the other set.

Try it! Open a session you're working on, save as, just to be safe!
Make sure you actually have created a mixer visibility config 1 and 2 and a project workspace 1 and 2.
put the "update and recall 1" and "update and recall 2" macros in your macro panels. Get out of macro assign mode.

Now hit #1. Nothing really changed? Good!
Now hit #2. Nothing really changed? Good!
Now change some things, hide everything except the drums, open some plugins or the channel editor of one of the channels.
Done?
Now hit #1....
Did that go back to your settings with everything visible? Yes? Cool!
Now hit #2
Did that go back to your settings with only the drums and whatever plugin/editor you had open? Yes? Cool!
If it didn't.... don't kill me

I didn't add a resync command at the end of each macro, because it makes it slower.
Of course, if you want these changes to be reflected in your DTouch mixers, you need that resync.
So if you need it, do it manually or add it to the end of those macros! Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

If you like this way of working, you can build it into your template and name them (and the macro buttons).
You can add more of these sets as you go along.
For example:
1. Drums
2. Bass
3. Guitars
4. Keys
5. Vocals
6. ALL

I'm not sure if this works only in Nuendo or also on some or all versions of Cubase (I expect it works on Cubase Pro at the minimum).

I hope this helps!

Make sure to try this on a non vital session first! At least save as "don't kill Yvo" before you try it!
I'm not responsible for the death of your songs

Cheers!

[Havoc911]

Nice!

I have a similar macro, but it relies on the "show connected channels on first selected" function. So if I want to work on just strings, I select the strings buss and it shows me only the channels connected to that buss (the whole chain including FX, sub mix, print and master). It's really handy. You can do a similar trick using the PLE and your folders.

The first option simply uses the show channels connected to first selection key command under the visibility agents. The option to show only tracks under certain folders utilizes the PLE.

The setup in the PLE would be:
Container type is>equal>FolderTrack and
Name>Equal>X

Where X is the name of your folder.

Then the Function at the bottom is Select

Then create a Dtouch macro to run the editor presets your create for each folder on the first line and then a Cubase key command for "show only selected channels" on the 2nd line. Do this for all of your folders or combinations of folders to suit your needs.

As an aside, the NUAGE console seems to populate it's touch menu with the folder names automatically and I've been chatting with Greg Ondo to see if that's something proprietary to the NUAGE or if Cubase is providing that information in some way that we can use.

Edited to add: This is done in Cubase Pro 9.5.10

[~ufo~]

Oh yeah that's really cool too.

What I dislike about those ways of doing things, is that you can't customise things. It perfectly does what you ask of it, but I want more.

For instance, I don't always want everything contributing to that bus visible, or in some cases I want even more visible.

For instance, when I'm working on a certain group or stem, I often want the VCA masters of several, if not all other groups or stems visible too, so I can mute parts, solo with other parts etc.

My technique allows YOU to decide what you want to see, not the computer or the developer.
It requires a little more setup, but if you use the same sets in all of your sessions, it's rewarding.

By the way, if you notice with my macros that the visibility layers change, but not the workspaces, try increasing the sleep period before the workspace recall step in the macro. It's set to 500ms now, but maybe that's not enough of a pause between the steps to execute flawlessly.
try 1000ms and see if that executes flawlessly. If so, work your way back if you wish.
I might re-upload these macros if I manage to make them more reliable.

[Havoc911]

Indeed, my version is much less tweak-able. It doesn't include any folder windows either.

One thing that I ran into with the other macro for showing the Floating Mixer+Channel Editor+2 folders is that if you have the Dtouch toolbar in the horizontal orientation at the bottom of the screen, there isn't enough room to have the floating mixer and the channel editor open on my screen (at least not in a way that I enjoy working with). I tried switching to the toolbar being on the side in a vertical orientation, but found that I was already very used to the horizontal and it affected my speed. I'm now using the toolbar+ 2 permanent folders and the other folders I open/close as needed. I may need to revisit that as I progress, but for now it does the trick and I don't have to learn another layout. I think if we can get the floating mixer to have some more functionality (inserts, sends and stuff) it might reduce some of the need for these macros.

The thing I love about Cubase and Dtouch is that there are several ways of getting the same or a similar result. I think we should all make an effort to share more of our custom macros to help each other out. I'm also guilty of writing some cool stuff and then forgetting to share.

Thanks for sharing!