Updating linked clips

Is there an easy way of updating the contents of a linked clip without manually copying and pasting notes?

I am doing composition of MIDI elsewhere but I am using NS2 to layout my tracks. Clips are repeated at different points and if I make a change to a clip in my composition phase then I want to easily update the NS2 view of that clip. Here are my current approaches:

  1. Simplest is to reimport the changed clip as new MIDI clip(s) and then open it, copy the notes, open one of the linked clips, delete the notes that are there and paste the updated notes. All of the linked clips now contain the updated MIDI.
  2. A more complicated method is to store a master copy of each linked clip on a separate muted/external MIDI track and import the MIDI into a track which uses MIDI Route to redirect the notes to the linked track. Hitting record then records the notes from the modified clip to the linked clip. This would work efficiently if there are a large number of clips to update at the same time but is messy and prone to mistakes.

I also tried a basic MIDI send to the track containing one of the linked clips but this did not have the desired effect.

Does anyone have any other ideas for a good workflow here? I’m open to using other AUs if that would help. What I really want is a way of just dropping a new MIDI part into NS2 and being able to replace the contents of existing linked clips without manually copying/pasting.

Thanks.

Comments

  • I can't think of a better/faster/easier way than your current "Approach 1".

    fwiw, you should be able to store a "master copy" of the original as a separate track lane (instead of a new track), muting the clips you want to keep as a back up, but that won't speed anything up as far as importing/replacing. It might make things a little tidier though.

  • Thanks for the reply @Will. It is not a great burden in the grand scheme of things to do the copy and paste manually, I just wondered if there was some option that I may have overlooked as NS2 is so flexible in the ways it lets you do things. In an ideal world there would be an option for a clip to sync to an external MIDI file but I admit this is somewhat of a niche requirement!

    Using lanes instead of tracks sounds a good idea so I’ll take that snippet of advice.

  • @MisplacedDevelopment said:
    Using lanes instead of tracks sounds a good idea so I’ll take that snippet of advice.

    The one minor drawback of using lanes for this is that you can't mute individual track lanes via the track header like you can with normal tracks. Instead, you have to mute the clips on that lane. Maybe you already know but just in case... when you have one or more clips selected, double tapping 'Properties' in the lower right will toggle the mute status of those clips. Makes it almost as quick as muting via the track header. Almost. :)

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