Digital Performer Notes

The Undo History window, which allows you to choose which Undo options you'd like to retain.

Last month I took a look at the new enhanced Undo feature in DP3.1. Having unlimited Undo certainly makes for flexibility, but can lead to potentially massive project folder sizes because of it (especially in audio-heavy projects). However, DP provides you with tools to manage Undo history size that can be configured to suit the needs of a wide variety of users.

To begin with, DP can be made to automatically trim down, or 'prune' the Undo history according to a range of criteria — these so-called Pruning Preferences are accessible via a button near the top of the Undo History window (see below). There are options to delete entries in the history that take up certain amounts of disk space or memory, or that are on branches that have not been 'visited' for a certain time. There's also an option to prune Undo entries in order to keep a certain amount of free space left on your hard disk. Whilst these are welcome, I can't help thinking that the majority of users will find it hard to know how best to configure these preferences, except, perhaps, for the 'Prune Entries On Branches' option, which seems genuinely useful.

DP attempts to keep the lid on an ever-growing Undo history by 'pruning' it according to these preferences.

Before losing any sleep over Undo settings, though, it's just as well to take the long view. Before DP3.1, there was only ever one level of Undo, which, though not ideal, was still serviceable. So just how unlimited do you want the Undo function to be? Personally speaking, I've rarely felt the need to Undo more than, say, the last 10 actions, especially if I've been keeping track of the development of my project with some of the more 'traditional' DP techniques I've developed over time. Here are some of them.

First off is 'Save A Copy As' from the File menu. This saves your project in its current state (with audio duplicated if necessary) but not to your main project folder. As the name suggests, this function creates a copy of the project file (or an entire Project folder if you're duplicating audio) akin to the incremental saves sometimes automatically created by word-processing applications. It's good for saving 'experimental' developments of your project, or for saving the state of the project at important points in its evolution.

A similar end can be achieved by creating multiple sequences within one project. I'm a fan of this technique, because to some extent it allows alternative project histories to coexist — something that unlimited Undo can't really pull off. The idea is that every so often, or before adding a significant new part, say, you hold down the Apple key and hit the 'A' key to select everything, choose 'Copy Selection to New Sequence' from the pop-up menu on the left of the Tracks window, click through the dialogue box that appears (after naming the new sequence) then carry on working. Development of your previous sequence is frozen, but it remains no more than a pop-up menu selection away should you need to refer to it again, or copy something from it. And if you find yourself up a blind alley with your most current development of the sequence, you can easily jump back to a former state and carry on working from there.

Finally, don't forget how effective Clippings can be. Pretty much any data in a DP project can be stored as a clipping, so rather than just delete a MIDI part, or an extensively tweaked plug-in, consider sticking it in a Clippings window instead — then it'll still be available if you change your mind further down the line. See August 2001's Performer Notes (available at www.soundonsound.com/sos/Aug01/articles/motunotes0801.asp) for more on this.

DP creates a Project folder for every new project you start, and uses the folder as the repository for everything related to the project — its audio files, fades, Undo history, clippings and so on. This self-contained approach has obvious advantages, not least of which is the ease with which it allows projects to be archived, which is as difficult as dragging the folder to an external hard disk, DVD-R, or whatever. And if you're working on multiple projects simultaneously, this approach certainly beats trying to keep tabs on all their audio files stored in just one location.

The first and best is an option in the 'Save As' dialogue box which can easily be overlooked. Ticking the 'Duplicate Audio Data' box before hitting Save forces any externally referenced audio (or sound files in multiple Audio Files folders) to be gathered together into one Audio Files folder. This is an essential technique for periodically 'consolidating' your project, making it ready for archiving or backup, or before transporting the whole lot to a DP setup on another Mac.

However, you may simply need to know the location of one soundbite, and the place to do this is the Soundbites window. Extensive information about any selected soundbite(s) is shown under the Info tab, including its precise location. This information remains up-to-date even if you alter or change the location of the soundbite.

Next month, I'll give you the lowdown on the new Compact Project command, and more tips for dealing with heavyweight projects.

DP News     PSP84, the wonderful new delay plug-in from PSP Audioware, complete with a beautiful, subtly rendered pseudo-3D control surface. The Canadian company Applied Acoustics is offering DP users a chance to download a 30-day trial version of their fabulous Lounge Lizard modelled electric piano. It integrates with DP via FreeMIDI and MAS drivers, and if you like it, you get to buy it at a knock-down price. Can't be bad. More info at www.applied-acoustics.com/mas_download.htm. DP-friendly software developers PSP Audioware have released the big brother to PSP42, PSP84. This is a really good delay with all sorts of possibilities ranging from the classy and subtle to the weird and wonderful. Rather less welcome from PSP as far as DP users are concerned is the news that they are no longer producing MAS versions of their plug-ins, pending confirmation by MOTU about the future of plug-in support in DP for OS X. If rumours are to be believed then it'll support Audio Units, but we all know what rumours are like... However, by the time you read this, at least the proper release versions of OS X drivers for the 828 and 896 interfaces should be available. Go to www.motu.com to download them.

Current Version     Digital Performer: v3.11 (with MAS 2.4 & FreeMIDI 1.48).