Hey folks! This will be part 2 of SWS: Snapshots, and we will focus on the visibility & selection settings in Snapshots, but also exploring 2 alternative (and in certain ways superior) methods of doing the same thing, one being the REAPER Native Track Views & also Jon Tidey's awesome custom style. We will explore the pros & cons of these with some examples & guide you through the set-up, but here's a quick comparison. Make sure to watch the last episode if you feel lost in Snapshots:
How to Show & Hide Tracks
In big projects of 100+ tracks, we probably want to focus on small subgroups of all our tracks, and hiding what we're not actively working on is a great way to de-clutter. However, doing this manually can be time consuming, but we will need to do these manually once and then there's a bunch of ways to save them.
You can do this via the Track manager. Go to View>Track Manager or Press Cmd+Shift+M top open the window below. From here, you can see an overview of all tracks in your project, as well as see basic stats on them like number of FX, Channels, Record Arm/Mute/Solo status and so on. This, like many other REAPER features, deserves its own tutorial. By clicking on the dots in the columns titled MCP & TCP we can toggle the visibility of our tracks. You can select multiple tracks and click once, or you can click and drag through adjacent tracks to toggle them visible/hidden.
You can also right click on tracks & open the same window. Under options you can also set this window to Mirror selection with arrange view.
There are also a number of SWS actions that can help us show & hide tracks quickly:
SWS: Show selected track(s) in MCP, hide others
SWS: Show selected track(s) in TCP, hide others
SWS: Show selected track(s), hide others (Hides tracks from both TCP & MCP)
I have assigned Cmd+Opt+Ctrl+H to the latter allowing me to quickly select a few tracks, and hide every unselected track!
However you get there, you will need to manually set the tracks you want to see first. Next use one of the two methods below:
1. Track Views
Track views comes with REAPER & it's very easy to set up. First, set the visibility of your tracks in your projects how you like them. Then go to View>Screensets/Layouts & navigate to the Track views tab from the top of this window:
from here you can click to highlight any of the 10 available slots (hard limit of 10 on these unfortunately) and click Save to save your current settings. Track Views can also save your cursor position, horizontal & vertical zoom settings, as well as the collapsed state of your folders & your track heights! Snapshots is not able to do this! You can also hit Edit Shortcuts & set actions to both save & recall track views, without needing to open this window!
When you are saving a track view, you will see this menu below:
Tick the boxes for settings you want to save, give it a name, and now you can use actions or highlight and click load to recall these settings! Pros & Cons: Track views are super powerful, and it's quite sad that you can only have up to 10 of them. This is possibly why the second option (SWS Snapshots) was created to begin with. Overall, for this particular application, they tend to work better & give you more useful options, like setting the cursor position. They can also be saved inside a project template & made available for future use, but unlike snapshots, they won't be possible to (easily) export to other projects. Other than the limit of 10 & this, they are superior to the SWS Snapshots in my opinion. However Snapshots are also cool so let's get to them! 2. SWS Snapshots We covered the Snapshots in lots of detail in the last blog, so check that out for more info. Saving track selections & VIs follow the same procedure as what was previously covered. You can save visibility by choosing Current Visibility in the filter window, or using Custom and ticking the box called VIs. If we tick the box next to that called Selection it will also save our current selected tracks, which is very handy if there are a random assortment of tracks you want to control together (like all the tracks in the Bridge Section of your mix)! Pros & Cons Unlike the track views method, there's no limit to how many of these you can do, and you can easily export and re-import them across projects. If you are also saving other settings such as mute and solo state of tracks, then Snapshots give you even more options! They won't however, save your cursor position, track heights, collapse state of folders or your zoom settings! Both of the methods above are lacking in that, they allow us to compartmentalize our big projects into manageable subgroups, but neither of them allow us to use a couple of these together! For example, I can have snapshots or track views of my Drum Bus & Bass Bus, but I can't choose to see both together, unless I make a third Snapshot/track view. This is where I prefer to use the method covered by Jon Tidey of the REAPER Blog. Check out his video for how to do that here:
This method, as you can see, requires a fair bit of set up. It also relies on you to have a well-named and well-organized project. As such, it's best used in conjunction with project templates. I have made a ton of these actions, and use them both in films (Toggling Dialogue, Foley, SFX, Music & Print Tracks) and in Music (Toggling Drum Busses, Bass Busses & so on) and I have placed these on a toolbar. While it took me an hour or so to do, it was worth it and saves me hours of time now! It's a really worthwhile investment of time, AND as its biggest plus, allows you to use these in a modular manner. I can hide all my tracks and with a few clicks assemble a subgroup from my Drum bus, Bass bus, vocal bus, or whatever other combination of tracks as I want! I highly recommend it!
The only time where I would opt for the above 2 methods, is when I want to do this quickly in a project that may not have those pre-made names, or when I am saving and recalling a random assortment of tracks, for example, a few tracks out of my 110 that have items on them during the bridge section of a song!
Conclusion
Getting organized in REAPER takes some set up time, and I like to do stuff like this when I feel uninspired, which won't feel like a waste of time, but this time investment will then save me tons of time down the line when I am in the heat of a creative moment. I highly recommend you explore all these possibilities, and get use out of them.
If you commit to using templates, these will not need to be set up again!
Enjoy the video:
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