unfold / fold a track in hightlight navigation and navigate into group
Hello
I use 2 buttons to navigate in the tracks, one button which increments to move to the right in the tracks and another button to move to the right in the tracks
The problem is that when I position myself on a track with folder groups, the track does not ungroup
I can’t navigate the group’s tracks
Is it possible that once I position myself on a track the track ungroups and that I can navigate inside from right to left?
Thank you in advance for your response
Greetings
Hello again,
Here’s the new version of the script.
It contains 2 Reactions that replace the Highlight Navigation that you had set up.
Inside the Reaction you’ll still need to do 2 things in each of them, in order for them to work:
- Change the Listener to the button you want to use on your Controller.
- In Action Block 1, change the Condition to match your button. The Condition should be “Your button’s Velocity –> is equal to –> 0”. (see picture below)
- Action Block 1 is only necessary if you use buttons that send Momentary messages (in other words, if the button send different velocity values when pressing or releasing the button).
- If you use a button that sends Toggle messages, then you may delete Action Block 1.
- Action Block 1 makes Ableton exit the Reaction if you’re releasing a Momentary button.
Further Notes
- If you run into complications using these Reactions, give a comment about it.
- These Reactions don’t use Modifiers to store data in anymore.
- The unfolding/folding of Group Tracks won’t work anymore when selecting Tracks with the mouse.
- These Reactions don’t let you navigate through Return Tracks. When at the end of the Tracks list, it loops around to the first Track again, and vice versa.
Video Example
Here’s another video to see it at work.
There are now 4 Group Tracks in the video
- Red at the beginning
- Blue and Green in the middle
- Black at the end
Purple and Brown are still individual Tracks (not part of a Group)
When navigation loops around from beginning to end or vice versa, the Reactions will still unfold the Groups located at the beginning or end.
The Code
…for moving LEFT
…for moving RIGHT
I didn’t account for Drum Racks, I’ll check it out.
I’ve been looking into this the last 2 days and it appears that tracks with a downward arrow (instead of the 3 lines symbol) to hide/show their contents with are not Group Tracks but are Rack Devices that contain Chains. They are handled differently:
The main Rack Device is being presented as a Track but all of its contents are not presented as separate Tracks, which means that navigation fails to recognize these contents as their own individual thing because the way navigation is set up at the moment is to navigate through the list of Tracks.
I’ll need to experiment with this for a bit before I’ll be able to present something useful. I’ll probably have something somewhere along the week.
An update: I haven’t found a way yet to navigate through the visible chains of the Drum Rack, while only using buttons. I can make the folded Drum Rack show its contents in the Tracks but when selecting the next Track it jumps over all the visible Chains to the next Track. If I ever stumble upon a way to select one of the chains in Session View then I’ll revisit this project, but for now I’m going to shelf it.
ok thank you ,no problem there is no emergency
I just find it a shame to be able to navigate perfectly in the track folders and not to be able to do the same thing with the drumracks
But I know it turns out to be very complicated
But I’m sure you will find a solution
A little update on the progress, here’s another video.
It’s almost ready but I have still a little kink to work out, but I’ve got to go to work in a couple of minutes so I’ll do it tomorrow.
I did have to create a new Reaction to go to the left (decrement) with because simply using the Highlight Navigation mapping always throws an error when you go left to an invisible track.
I recreated your Increment/Decrement Mappings and think I now understand the difficulties you’re having.
When navigating through the Tracks, if you encounter a Folded Group Track, then you won’t be able to navigate further (e.g. when going Left and there’s a Folded Group Track to the left, you won’t be able to select that Group Track, or any other Tracks further to the left, while using the Highlight Navigation Mapping).
Then my guess is that you’ll need another way to navigate through the Tracks because the Highlight Navigation Mapping doesn’t go well together with Grouped Tracks.
Alternatively, I could alter my Reaction so that it checks if the Track on the left of the current Highlighted Track is a folded Group Track. If it is a Folded Group Track, then it unfolds that Track.
I think I’ll try making that alternative option first, so that you don’t have to change your increment/decrement Mappings.
Video Example
As for now, here’s a video of an example set I made in Ableton to test the Reaction and Mappings with:
- The first 2 Tracks in the set (purple) are individual Tracks
- then there are 3 Group Tracks (red, Blue, green) that each have 3 Tracks inside them;
- at the rightmost end there are another 2 individual Tracks (brown).
In the first 22 seconds, I show that clicking the Grouped Tracks unfolds them, and that clicking a Track that is not part of the group folds the last unfolded group Track again.
Starting from second 23, I use Highlight Navigation to navigate through the Tracks (like you would). When going to the right (incrementing) everything works as intended, meaning that when going from the Red Group to the Blue Group, the Red Group is folded again and the Blue Group unfolds.
It’s not really visible in the video but at 30 seconds the Highlight is in the unfolded Blue Group and when trying to go left (decrementing) to the folded Red Group, nothing happens, no matter how many times I press left.
My theory about why this happens is because the Mapping decrements 1 from the Highlighted Track’s position, but because this next Track is not visible (because it’s in a folded Group), the Highlighted Track doesn’t change. Meaning that, the next time the Mapping tries to decrement from the position of the current Highlighed Track, it will just do the same thing over again.
At 46 seconds in the video, you’ll see that when I navigate left from the unfolded Red Group to the Purple individual Track, it does work as intended, meaning that the Red Group folds back up again and the Purple Track gets selected.
it is very difficult to realize what you want to do in ableton with this kind of script unless you illustrate it well
Glad to see this was able to help you
Yes indeed I navigate left or right in the tracks using the Scroll function in Remotify
By incrementing or decrementing
So I don’t know it’s possible in the same way with a Highlighted track
Is a Highlighted track interpreted by the script or by Albeton as a Selected track? that’s a good question
By incrementing or decrementing
I do not directly select a track
just commenting so I remember to come back to this. That loop you’re doing in the actions is a nice workaround for a lot of problems I’ve ran into! Thanks, @TheHumaniZer
Hi @Fabrice, I too prefer the application is improved. Delivering advertised features is in some way an improvement. I’ve been waiting 4+years for navigation to work. Thank you
Yeah absolutely right. The mistake here is the CSS community will not grow. And probably people like me will go away in few months for hardcoding in Python…
It would be preferable to provide more free Scripts (like this new commercial product) but usable in CSS and adaptable to other plugins. Or making the application free and payable Scripts…
Anyway it is like this and I will see where I can go with…
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Hello man
Nice Job Man
I was able to test these actions
This works for group tracks (midi or audio)
It’s really great because the group closes automatically when you go to the next track
or to the previous track, which prevents it from being a mess
However this does not work for drum rack kits
I note that the symbol is different
-a drum kit has a downward arrow
-a group has a symbol with 3 lines
There must be a difference in the script to differentiate a “track” and “drumkit”
and be able to manage both.