Realign clips on Destination track

[ljudatervinning]

I have a bit of a problem.
Somewhere along editing, clips on 3 tracks got "out of sync". Se screen capture. All clips are grouped across tracks.
Is there a simple way to realign all these clips?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fap5yhpdy2fe1 ... s.jpg?dl=0

[fl]

You can unGroup the Clips, but it's not really necessary, and it's handier if you don't. We're going to Cut and Paste the out-of-position Clips to their proper position, but in order to maintain synchronization with the other tracks, the process needs to be a little more painstaking.

Click on the Clip Group to select all nine tracks-worth of Clips, and then call the Crossfade Editor. Make a note of the crossfade duration and shape for the leading edit, and then make sure that the "Link" and "Mirror" buttons at the bottom of the Editor (under the Length sliders) are enabled. The editor's cursor should be positioned right at the middle of the crossfade by default. Drag the Length In and Out sliders at the bottom the editor down to zero, so that your crossfade is now a butt splice, positioned right in the middle of the former crossfade.

Use the Crossfade Editor's navigation arrow heads in the top left corner to move to the next edit. Again, note the crossfade particulars and then make the edits zero duration. You should now have nine tracks with butt splices at their beginnings and endings. Move the editor's focus back to the first edit and then close the Crossfade Editor to return you to the main Timeline window. You should have all nine tracks' worth of Clips selected, including the three out-of-position ones.

Use the Nudge tool to position the Timeline's cursor at the beginning of the six correctly positioned Clips. Now, Shift-Click on each of those six Clips to deselect them. When you're done you should have just the three out of position Clips selected.

Type Control-X to Cut them, and then Control-V to Paste them - they should be pasted with their leading edge right where the Timeline Cursor is located, which should be properly synchronized with the other six Clips, but there will be a gap of silence at the end of the three. Click on the following Clip Group of nine clips (the Group with follows this messed up Group, which I'm assuming is correctly in sync with itself across all nine tracks, despite its staggered entry), and then Shift-Click on the first six so that only the last three are selected. Zoom in and carefully drag the selected Clips' "[" handles to the left, carefully zooming in and dragging until they just touch the trailing edge of the three Clips we just re-positioned. Zoom in a lot so that you're certain that you've dragged it to the same position as the six other Clips end. You'll probably find that you have now lost the Clip Grouping for ones we've worked on, so just Click and Shift-Click to once again select all nine and then "Group" them.

Call the Crossfade Editor to re-enter the crossfade length and shape that you wanted originally, for both the leading and trailing edges.

Like a lot of things, this process takes more time to describe, especially in writing, than it does to execute, so with a little care and luck, you should have your Clips properly aligned within a minute or less.

[ljudatervinning]

Thank you for your description Frank!

Unfortunately, all clips on track 14 to 32 to the end of the project is out of sync.
And there are 100+ edits plus automation. Automation is out of sync too, on these tracks.
I don't know exactly how this happened. All individual clip-edits were grouped together.
Usually I go back and correct, but I have done to much work since the error appeared.

I did try this and it seem to work:
1. Select all clips and ungroup (Ctrl+U).
2. Set cursor to Head of correct clips.*
3. Turn on "snap Head to..."
4. Select all clips out of sync.
5. Drag clips so they snap to the cursor.
6. Turn on "Selection" in the Track Group option.
7. Drag/select to select (part of) clips, Shift+click in empty space, to select entire clips.
8. Group clips (Ctrl+G)
9. Repeat step 7-8 many many times....

*I also found that using "Tab" command to move cursor to the beginning of the next clip, does not always place the cursor at the exact start position. I had to make sure the clip is selected, then it worked as expected.
Is that a feature or a bug?

[fl]

I'm glad you got things working. It's still a mystery to me how you found yourself in this situation in the first place - how Grouped Clips could become misaligned during the Source-Destination editing process - unless there was something somewhere on the Timeline which was being interpreted as a Clip end on some Tracks and not on others. Sometimes during S-D editing, you can re-position a Clip after you've done the initial placement, say, sliding it to the left or the right slightly during the cross-fade refinement process. Meanwhile, the Gates remain where they were placed initially, and can indeed be positioned slightly before or after the end of the properly positioned Clip. Make your next edit, and you can sometimes encounter Gaps or other issues because of this. To help with that, I've made a Macro that will automatically position the Destination's In Gate at the very end of the entire assembly, which I always use before proceeding to the following edit, just to make sure things are in truth as I think they are.

I had no idea that you were dealing with so many tracks. Using the "Snap" feature to align your clips is a good idea I hadn't thought of, but I'd still be concerned about the effects of fades on both Clip selection and movement, which is why I suggested reducing all the crossfades' durations to zero. I suspect that your difficulties with the "Tab" command stem from the situation where the cursor moves to the beginning of the next cross-fade beginning, then if you hit it again, to the cross-fade's end, and so on - from any Clip on any Track, unless you make a specific Selection to narrow its focus. That's built into the program.

I've found it useful to have the buttons on my toolbar for "Nudge Cursor to next Edit" (and "Previous"), "Nudge Cursor to next/previous Fade" and "Nudge Cursor to next/previous Clip". These all work slightly differently depending on the situation, but it's handy to have them just a click away, as opposed to having to hunt through a menu or remember yet another keyboard command combination.

A difficulty I've encountered in the past comes from when you make a selection which you think comprises a complete Clip but, due to slight offsets with fades/crossfades, I've inadvertently selected everything except a very small section, hard to see on the Timeline when it's zoomed out. I'll move things around but then find that Nudging and Snapping, or moving anything in the Cross-fade Editor, doesn't work properly because these little "slivers" of Clips had been left behind previously, and were acting as barriers to freely moving other Clips past them. This is something to watch out for, especially if you're dealing with a large number of Tracks and Clips. The selection process is sometimes hard to predict, and you can wind up with lots of little bits left behind, which can become sources of clicks and other intrusions, without the operator being fully aware of the source of the problem.

[ljudatervinning]

Thanks Frank. I got it sorted out.

It might be caused by me, editing groups with various numbers of clips.
I did a lot of overdubs on some of the takes. Later in the editing process, I find it can make Pyramix behave strange in the fade editor.