FL7 - questions about clips.

[Villainelle]

Hi. First off, I'm coming from Cubase SX3, which I love for the most part except for two major things - its poor drum editing capabilities (the drum map doesn't cut it for me), and the stupid fact that you can't reorder effects inserts. (And while it's a minor thing comparitively, SX3 takes ages to load, doing a full plugin scan each cold startup. ><) I'm pretty pissed about Steinberg dropping the SX3.2 update and not really motivated to upgrade to C4, so ultimately I'm looking to switch hosts. FLStudio7 is my top candidate (esp. for price/free lifetime upgrades), but what's holding me back is its non-traditional approach to linear sequencing.

Okay, so in FL7 I see that you can send patterns to the clip sequencer, great. Is there any way to collapse or hide clips of a certain type? For example, collapse/hide all automation, or collapse all automation for X plugin only? Cubase is great at this, you can drop any kind of track - MIDI, automation, audio etc. - into a folder and show/hide it, nest folders within one another, etc. With FL I think I'd be working primarily with pattern and automation clips so being able to organize them is important.

Also, how close can you get to actual linear sequencing with clips? I've tried out the Make Unique action, which creates a new pattern in the pattern sequencer pane, but keeps the clip on the same horizontal axis in the clip sequencer. So if I have a ton of clips with different contents arranged linearly on the clip sequencer, I'm going to have a zillion patterns up in the pattern sequencer? And is there some way to record MIDI directly to a new pattern clip on a linear sequence of clips, instead of needing to go through the pattern sequencer first?

TIA for any advice.

[zircon]

Yes, if you have a ton of different clips you will have a ton of different patterns. This is really not a big deal. I regularly have projects with 100+ unlabelled patterns. As it takes seconds to scan through all of them and glance at the piano roll to see what pattern I'm on (or alternatively, just hit spacebar to preview) it is easy to find what I'm looking for. You do always have to record MIDI via the pattern sequencer (which is basically just a piano roll).

You can't "collapse" clips. I don't even know what that would mean in the context of FL. If it's in the playlist, it's active. You can mute it but you can't hide it unless you delete it.

[Villainelle]

Great, thanks zircon. Good to know that you find it easy to handle, your stuff is lightyears beyond me so it shouldn't be a prob then.

By collapsing I mean minimizing the size, like the zip function in the step sequencer, making it easier to focus on other stuff etc.

[zircon]

Yeah, there is not any way to do that when you're looking at the playlist itself... though you can always organize things from the pattern/step sequencer window using those menus at the bottom (eg. you could make a folder called "Drum Auto Clips", another called "Synth Auto Clips", and so on) but that wouldn't impact the visual display.

[djcubez]

zomg when did fl7 come out?

[Yoozer]

zomg when did fl7 come out?

http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=7316

How's that rock working out for you? ;).