FR - Sort Tracks by Color to follow Edit Auto-Color Rules list

[Yago Marques]

Hi, @Lukas!

Hope you're doing well and I'd like to thank you again for the Pro Navigator script, I'm having a blast with it!

I'd like to request a change in Sort Tracks by Color feature to follow the color # list/order in the "Edit Auto-Color Rules" menu instead of following the current color/hex values.

I think this behaviour can save us mixing engineers a lot of time since we usually prep mixing sessions following a very similar structure (drums first, percussions, bass, keys, guitars, vocals, fxs etc), so it would be really handy to have the Sort Tracks by Color to follow the same order we're setting in the edit menu.

All the best,

Yago =)

 

[Lukas]

Hi Yago,

This is an interesting idea.
I'm not completely convinced, though, because the order of the rules in the list effectively also determines their priority. For example, let's say you have these two rules using the "Contains" mode...

• Arp
• Harp

...and a track called "Celtic Harp". Since "Arp" is also contained in "Harp", both rules would match. In this case, the first rule in the list wins, so the track would get the color assigned to "Arp".

If you actually wanted the "Harp" rule to take precedence, you could move it above "Arp" or use a more specific matching mode such as "Words".

So the order of the Auto-Color Rules is not necessarily the same order in which you would want the tracks to appear in the song. Sometimes you may need to rearrange rules purely to resolve matching conflicts, even though that order doesn't reflect your preferred session structure.

That's why I'm not quite sure about using the rule list directly as the sorting order. It would couple two different things - rule priority and track order - which may not always match.

I do like the general idea of being able to define a custom sorting order, though. Maybe that should be a separate order rather than being tied directly to the Auto-Color Rules list. Maybe a separate list where you can paste your desired track order, or a text file where you can define those.

What do you think?

 

[Gerran]

I agree with @Lukas on this, the sorting of tracks isn't the same as the rules for coloring tracks. It gives also another option to sort, therefore more flexibility.

 

[StudioZuidervaart]

Maybe there could be an extra sorting option, called something like ‘categories’, which sorts tracks based on naming rules (much like the auto color rules). A rule could look like: if track name contains word/contains/etc kick, snare, overhead, etc > category is ‘drums’. Then the order of these rules is the sorting order. You could then also have these category names available in the auto color rules (i.e. if group = ‘drums’), so you don’t have to maintain two lists of rules.
Something like this could also potentially make it possible to automatically create a folder (with bus) for each category, or create groups etc