User guide

Tracktion 4 Reference Manual
152
The Automation Lock Mode – Locking Automation To Clips
We’ve seen some methods for manually copying or moving
sections of an automation curve, but there is another handy
way of working with curves — the automation-lock mode.
When automation-lock mode is enabled, automation nodes
from lters on a track will be ‘locked’ to clips on the same track
that overlap them. Copying, moving, or deleting clips will cor-
respondingly copy, move, or delete the nodes that the clip
overlaps.
Automation-lock mode can be enabled from the transport
section (Fig. 7.3.12). When it is active, all automation curves
whether visible or not, will be locked to clips on their tracks.
You may recall that automation curves can be shown on any
track, so it may not be immediately obvious which track we are
talking about here. In short, an automation curve will only lock
to clips that are located on the same track as the lter it is au-
tomating. Even though the curve may be visible on another track than its lter, it will not lock to the clips
on that other track.
Figure 7.3.13 shows the effect of duplicating a clip when automation lock is active. Note that the au-
tomation curve has been duplicated too. It may be that what you can’t see in this image is more import
than what you can see, however. Even though they aren’t visible, all automation curves for lters on this
track are locked to the rst clip, and as such, any nodes on those curves that overlap the source clip
would have been copied as well!
Figure 7.3.13
Automation locking can even be used to copy an automation curve from one track to another. Drag-
ging a clip to which automation nodes are locked onto another track, will cause the nodes to be copied
to that track also. Automation curves can only be copied in this manner between lters of the same
type. If a clip is copied to a track containing a lter that also exists on the source track, any automation
nodes that are locked to the clip will be copied to the destination track.
In some cases you may nd automation locking to be faster to work with than manually copying and
pasting automation curves. One quick and dirty way to use automation locking as a form of copy and
paste is to create an empty MIDI clip, position and size it such that it covers the automation section you
wish to copy/move, then simply enable automation-locking, and copy/move the clip as normal. When
you’re done, you can disable automation-lock mode, and delete the clip. Obviously, if you only want to
copy or move nodes on one single curve, one of Tracktion’s other automation editing tools will be a bet-
ter choice.
Figure 7.3.12