Melodyne 5 Essentials - why did edit blobs turn to rectangles?

[Glenn Johnson]

Working on editing a voice track on Studio One Pro using Melodyne 5 Essentials, I must have done something I was not aware of. The blobs changed to red rectangles that cant be edited. Switched and switched back to the melodic algorithm but no change. Any idea how to get my blobs back?
Glenn

[Wonks]

Weird. The red blocks are normally the blobs you’ve selected to edit.

What sort of editing are you trying to do? Have you already done as much pitch correction as you can?

[Wonks]

If you zoom out too far, I’ve noticed that the blobs turn to rectangles, so maybe that’s whats happened?

I’ve only just started using Melodyne myself and whilst it sounds great, I find it a bloody awful interface that would be a lot better with some simple zooming handles, a simple ‘listen to a blob’ option and an auto-scroll function that actually worked.

[amanise]

Are you using it on a clip from inside the DAW - or do you have an audio file that you're opening just using Melodyne itself?

If you're using it as a clip editor inside the DAW in my experience you have to be careful how much you try and do in one go. Better on shorter clips rather than long ones. When I work this way with it I often find myself having to unload the clip from Melodyne and add it again to clear the odd glitch like this. Then when you've finished a section and it's all good - render it out quick and unload Melodyne as clip editor again - otherwise next time you load the file you'll be in for a long wait as Melodyne loads up unnecessarily.

You get fewer of these using it native, but you lose the convenience of being able to listen to how it's all sitting in the mix as you go - obviously. Sounds like Wonks might be right about the zooming - but it can be a bit glitchy when used from inside a DAW - but that also might just be my DAW (which nobody seems to use any more but me )

Eventually you get used to it and it's quite likable.

[Wonks]

It’s definitely better in Studio One as its integrated (well, semi-integrated) into the DAW, as opposed to say in Cubase where it’s very much an add-on. But a few extra tool choices would make it so much better. Or being able to select different zoom rates. It’s so slow to zoom.

[amanise]

...
I’ve only just started using Melodyne myself and whilst it sounds great, I find it a bloody awful interface that would be a lot better with some simple zooming handles, ...

It is a bit clunky - but it's ported from the Mac world innit

You can pick up on the edges of the little audio sections that get represented in the scroll bars by holding a left mouse click and dragging it out. Hard to explain - and there's nothing whatsoever that tells you this is possible. It took me literally years to stumble on it. It works on both horizontal and vertical scroll bars. Just grab the end of the audio you want to enlarge and drag it out to the size you want with the scroll bar.

Also - selecting things like inhalations and mouth clicks at the ends and beginnings of blobs is easiest done by drawing a box over them rather than trying to hit them with a mouse click (IME). The most annoying thing for me is when it decides to randomly park itself in hand grab mode when you're trying to fly along in a stop start editing session in select mode with the space bar and mouse pointer. Then you suddenly randomly catapult yourself out into space and have to stop.

[adrian_k]

I’ve only just started using Melodyne myself and whilst it sounds great, I find it a bloody awful interface that would be a lot better with some simple zooming handles, a simple ‘listen to a blob’ option and an auto-scroll function that actually worked.

Same here, I find it a really frustrating tool to use and have experienced several different types of weird behaviour. Possibly because I don’t have the patience to watch video tutorials (I’d rather have a searchable manual).

(I use it in native mode)

[AlasdairEaston]

Re. the zooming thing, this should help... When using the "main tool", i.e. the arrow mouse pointer, hold down CTRL+ALT (or Mac equivalent), left-click and drag the mouse about. That allows you to zoom both horizontally and vertically at the same time. It's great, I couldn't live without it.

Cheers,
Alasdair.

[adrian_k]

I’ve just come back to say thanks for that Alasdair, and also I noticed that autoscroll doesn’t happen if you have a blob selected, I don’t know if that helps with one of Wonks’ gripes.