The problems with Cursor too Small have been discussed before, so I won’t pursue that again, however it gives rise to an issue with the Time Shift tool.
Here’s what happens: Suppose I have three tracks in my window, and I want to Time Shift a passage in the middle track. I select this passage, then I move the mouse up to click on the Time Shift tool. I now move the cursor down to my selected passage, and start moving it to the right - it doesn’t move, what is going on?
I try moving it again, then I notice that the unselected top track is moving instead, WTF? The problem is, because I can’t see the cursor in the track pane, I think it’s on the middle track, but it isn’t, it’s on the top one. so i shift the wrong track, which hasn’t been selected.
This seems to imply that you can only Time Shift a selected region, but is this the intent? Is it valid to shift a track you haven’t selected?
Given that this is what actually happens, does anybody have any tips for minimising the damage it causes?
It only looks that way because you took part of a sentence out of context.
Let’s see it in context:
Time Shifting selected tracks to left or right To shift multiple tracks to left or right> , there must be a selection region in all the tracks you want to time shift, and you must drag from inside the selection region in one of those tracks.
However, that wasn’t really the point of my post - what I wanted was some advice on how to prevent the Time-Shift tool moving a track unintentionally. But no worries, I’ve solved it! How to Lock (most of) a track against the Time-shift tool
Select the track from 0.5 sec from the beginning, to 0.5 sec from the end
Hit Ctrl + I (Edit>Clip Boundaries>Split)
There are now two thick black lines at each end of the track: these are Boundaries, and the Time-Shift tool cannot move the track either left or right between these lines. Job done.
Technical Note:
This trick assumes there is 0.5 sec of silence at each end of the track, and the track also has to be continuous, not lots of bits.
If the track does consist of lots of bits, it can be made continuous by generating a second or two of silence at the beginning, then mixing & rendering with a blank track. This results in one continous track.
