Epic Views
Epic Views are a powerful engine in the OOM feature set, and form a significant component in OOM's excellent workflow.
This page contains the following sections:
- Epic View Manager
- Views
- Custom Views
- Working View
- Epic View
Epic Views is an OOM custom designed and built feature engine with one task, which is putting the user in complete control of his project.
With Epic Custom Views, the user can put Tympani next to Contrabasses, Oboes next to Choirs, and, well, the choices are unlimited. It's up to you. Custom views can be created or removed at will, and any type of track can be added to any custom view. The user might want to keep all his 1stviolin midi tracks with the 1stviolin wave tracks, and busses, and auxes, and, well, any combination.
Epic Views are simple and easy to use, requiring only a click to turn them on and off, and will mix and match to the user's requirements, with multiple custom views checked.
Epic Views live in the Orchestra Pit on the left of the window, and the tab is marked Epic Views. Simply click on the tab to open the Epic Views window.
The Views list is non-configurable system views for your project.
- Working view, which is explained in more detail further down this page,
- Inputs view, which shows all your input busses,
- Outputs view, which shows all your output busses,
- Buss view, which shows all your project busses, and
- Aux view, which shows all your Aux busses.
- Comments view, which shows all tracks that have track comments added.
You can check any combination of these to appear in your track list, but you cannot edit or change these views. Uncheck all of them to return to your complete project track list of all midi and audio tracks in view.
When adding new track types, the View will automatically change to the related View for that track type. We've done this so you have a visual overview of the particular track types you've created, and quite possibly avoid any duplication, or forget to add a input you thought you already had. (Yes, we've done this too.)
It's here where the user can build a simple or complex sets of views to suit his project, or as a part of a template. Custom Views are, erm, customizable by the user, and you can create any combination of view you want. With possibly hundreds of midi tracks to manage in large projects, the Custom View feature reduces the musical downtime in project creation, and gives you a quick and efficient method of managing all those tracks, in small view sections of the overall project. We've had a great deal of success creating views to limit the number of midi tracks to a single window in nearly every case, so almost no scrolling needed, and one click changes to another view means you can switch back and forth between views at speed.
User Tip. If you're not sure which tracks you've got in which view, rightclick the view and a dialog will appear showing all the tracks in the selected view.
At the bottom of the Custom Views panel are a set of icons. These are:
- Arrow Up. This icon moves a selected Custom View entry up in the list order.
- Arrow Down. This icon moves a selected Custom View entry down in the list order.
- Add This icon opens the Custom Track View dialog, where you add, remove, and edit Custom Track Views.
- Cross This icon removes a selected custom Track View.
To create a Custom View, go to the bottom of the Custom View panel, and press the Add icon to open the Custom Views dialog.
The Custom View dialog has the following functions:
- Copy This button copies the currently selected view, which you can add to your list, and rename.
- New This button creates a new Custom View Track View, which you can then rename as you want
- Delete Thus button deletes the currently selected Custom view.
- Views This dropdown menu lists all the Custom views you have created. You can select one and edit it at anytime.
- Comments This panel is text editable, and you can include any comments for your view. Just click in the panel.
- Record (checkbox)
Under the Record checkbox:
Track type This dropdown menu will allow you to show either all tracks in your project, including audio, input, buss, output, and aux, or you can narrow the list to one particular type which you choose from the list.
Under the track type menu is the track list panel, from which you choose your tracks to add to the new or existing view selected.
- Add track This button will add a selected track in the left panel to the Custom View panel on the right.
- Remove Track This button will remove a selected track in the Custom View panel from the list.
The panel on the right is the Custom View panel, and lists all the tracks you have selected and added from the tracklist on the left.
- Ok This button closes the dialog. Be sure if you've just built a view, that you press Apply or Cancel before pressing Ok.
- Cancel This button closes the dialog without saving any changes.
- Apply Once you've built a new Custom View, or edited an existing one, and you're happy with the changes, press Apply to apply those changes.
The Working View is a special kind of view, and particularly useful for those users with a lot of tracks in their project.
Please note this gif is condensed to fit in the wiki. It shows the Orchestral Pit appearing and disappearing from view. In a reasonably sized monitor this would not be necessary.
Not all tracks will fit in the window, and not all of the tracks will be used, as this is a quick template for getting an idea written quickly. The project is half completed, and the user wants to do some editing before continuing further. We can clearly see that not all tracks have parts in them. When the Working View item is checked, any track without parts disappears from view, and leaves only those tracks containing parts.
Now the example working view image shows only those tracks, and the user has all the tracks he's recorded so far in 1 window, making the task of editing, and tweaking considerably easier.
Epic Views are a powerful supplement to track recording, created as an engine in OOM to further increase the efficiency of your workflow, and although it's uses are infinite, we've done this with an initial intent to speed up the process of creating modern film scores, where strings are often recorded as an octave unison block, brass are playing the same chords across sections, and so on. Epic Views are Custom Views, so you can create any type of Epic view you want.
Epic Views are similar to Custom Views to build, with some important additions.
Go to the bottom of the Custom Views panel and press the cross icon to open the Custom Views engine management dialog.
This gif walks through the sequence, and attempts to simplify what would be a lengthy explanation.
Epic views can be any combination of tracks, and follow the same sequence of build. The Epic view is just as effective for chords across brass and choirs, strings and choirs, brass staccato responses to legato string passages and so on.