Ableton/Live/UG/08 Clip View
- Clip properties and the clip editor: the panels for audio, pitch and time, transform and generate, plus looping, cropping and replacing clips.
- The Clip View has a title bar, clip panels on the left, and an editor on the right: the Sample Editor for audio clips, the MIDI Note Editor for MIDI clips. See Ableton/Clip/View.
- Open it by double-clicking a clip, with the Clip View Selector or its toggle, or with
Cmd+Option+3 (Mac) / Ctrl+Alt+3 (Win). Opened with the toggle while the Device View is showing, it stacks above it. Drag its top border to resize; dragging it to the bottom closes it. - It always shows the selected clip. With two windows it opens in the focused one;
F12 moves it to the other window, as does Shift+Tab when "Use Tab Key to Navigate" is off. One window can stay on clip editing while the other shows Session or Arrangement. - Clicking a track's status display in Session View opens the clip playing on that track.
- Holds the Clip Activator toggle, the clip's name and color, and, for audio clips, the Save Default Clip button.
8.1.1.1 Clip Activator Toggle
- Turns a clip off so it doesn't play when launched or during Arrangement playback; also available from the clip's context menu or with
0. Applies to every selected clip.
8.1.1.2 Clip Name
- A clip takes its file's name by default. Rename it from the title bar's context menu, or with Edit → Rename; Edit Info Text adds a description (Ableton/Info Text, Ableton/Clip/Q/Can info text move with the clip).
- Renaming an audio clip doesn't rename its sample; rename the file in the browser.
- With several clips selected, the title bar shows how many, and a rename applies to all of them.
8.1.1.3 Clip Color
- New clips take their track's color. Pick another from the title bar or clip context menu.
- Assign Track Color to Clips, in a track header's context menu, resets them; on a Group Track, Assign Track Color to Grouped Tracks and Clips colors everything inside. Each affects only the view you run it in, Session or Arrangement.
- With several clips selected, the title bar shows stripes, but a chosen color still applies to all.
- Related: Ableton/How To/Produce a single sample audio clip for color coding.
8.1.1.4 Saving Default Audio Clip Settings with the Sample
- Save Default Clip stores the clip's settings, Warp Markers above all, in the sample's analysis file (Ableton/File/.asd), for every selected clip.
- Live restores them whenever the sample is dropped into a Set from then on; existing clips aren't changed. A Live Clip, unlike this, also saves devices.
- Main and Extended Clip Properties panels, shared by both clip types, hold start, end, loop, time signature, groove and scale, plus launch settings for Session clips.
- Audio clips add the Audio Utilities and Audio Transformation panels; MIDI clips add Pitch and Time Utilities and the MIDI Transformation and Generative panels.
- Panels can sit side by side or stacked. Drag the panels' right edge left to stack them, or right to go back, or choose Arrange Clip View Panels Vertically, Horizontally or Automatically in the View menu. Live remembers the choice.
- Double-click the title bar, or choose Fold, to minimize the panels.
- Audio clips switch between the Sample Editor and the Envelope Editor; MIDI clips between the MIDI Note Editor, Envelope Editor and MPE Editor. Use the tabs, the View menu, or
Option+Tab (Mac) / Alt+Tab (Win).- Sample Editor: the waveform and warping.
- Envelope Editor: clip envelopes that automate or modulate effects, mixer, clip and MIDI controls.
- MIDI Note Editor: notes and velocities.
- MPE Editor: per-note MIDI Polyphonic Expression.
- The leftmost panel: clip region and loop, time signature, groove and scale.
- The region and loop decide what plays when a clip launches. An unlooped clip plays from start to end, or until stopped.
- Type start and end values, or press Set Start and Set End during playback to set them at the playhead, quantized to global quantization. Warped audio shows bars-beats-sixteenths; unwarped audio shows minutes-seconds-milliseconds.
- The Clip Loop toggle loops the clip over Loop Position and Length, which defaults to the whole clip. Audio clips must be warped to loop.
- During playback, Set Loop Position moves the loop start to the playhead and turns looping on; Set Loop Length then ends the loop at the playhead, capturing a loop on the fly. With looping off, Set Loop Length ends the loop at the playhead keeping its length, and turns looping on.
- All of these can be MIDI mapped, for example a rotary encoder that walks the loop through a sample by the quantization step.
- Sets a clip's time signature for display only; playback isn't affected. Independent of the project's meter, it makes polymetric combinations easy to spot.
- The Clip Groove chooser picks a groove from the Groove Pool. Hot-Swap Groove picks a new one from the browser, replacing it in the clip and the Groove Pool.
- Commit writes the groove into the clip and turns the groove off. On audio clips, positive groove velocity becomes a volume clip envelope, overwriting any existing one. See Ableton/Live/UG/14 Grooves.
- The Scale button turns Scale Mode on for the clip; Root Note and Scale Name set the scale.
- In audio clips the scale doesn't change playback; it's passed to scale-aware devices. In MIDI clips, the scale's keys are highlighted in the piano ruler. See Ableton/Live/UG/10 Editing MIDI.
- Launch controls and MIDI bank and program controls. Launch controls appear only for Session clips, so an Arrangement audio clip has no panel here and an Arrangement MIDI clip shows only bank and program.
- Empty slots split a track's clips into groups; Follow Actions set how clips in a group trigger one another.
- Launch controls set how clips respond to mouse, keys and MIDI notes, launch timing, scrubbing, and how note velocity affects volume. Both are covered in Ableton/Live/UG/16 Launching Clips.
- A MIDI clip can send a bank and program change when it launches, so each clip can call up a different sound on an external synth or plug-in. Live offers 128 banks, each with 128 sub-banks of 128 programs; check how many your synth supports.
- Leave the choosers at "—" to send nothing.
- Audio clips' panel for warping, reversing and external editing, tempo, gain and transposition, plus toggles for edge fades, RAM Mode and high-quality interpolation.
- With Warp off, a sample plays at its own tempo, right for hits, atmospheres, effects and speech. With Warp on, rhythmic material follows the Set's tempo as it changes.
- Live works out tempo and length for well-prepared loops; other samples may need hints. See Ableton/Live/UG/09 Audio Clips Tempo and Warping.
- Reverse writes a reversed copy of the sample and swaps it into the clip; it's saved under the Project's Samples/Processed/Reverse, or the Temporary Folder until the Set is saved.
- Warp Markers stay fixed to the sample, so they flip (a marker on bar 2's downbeat ends up on the second-to-last bar), and loop and region settings flip too. Clip envelopes stay fixed in time.
- Long samples show progress in the Status Bar and briefly lock editing, though playback continues. Live remembers both versions until it quits, so reversing again is instant.
- Session View reverses one clip at a time; in Arrangement View, select a range and use Reverse Clip(s) or
R. Avoid reversing during a performance: reapplying settings can glitch.
- Edit opens the sample in the external editor set in File & Folder Settings. Playback must stop while you edit.
- Warp Markers survive only if the length doesn't change, and the edit affects every clip using that sample.
- The Clip Fade toggle adds a 0 to 4 ms fade, depending on the signal, at the clip's start and end to prevent clicks. Session clips only; Arrangement clips use their fade handles.
- It's on by default when Create Fades on Clip Edges is on in Record, Warp & Launch Settings.
- RAM Mode loads the clip's audio into memory instead of streaming it from disk. It helps when the disk can't keep up with many tracks, or when Legato Mode causes dropouts.
- Use it sparingly: if RAM runs out the system swaps to disk, and swapped audio arriving late causes both mutes and rhythmic hiccups, worse than a disk overload's mutes.
- High Quality uses a better sample-rate conversion algorithm at higher CPU cost, with less distortion, especially in the highs, when transposing or converting sample rates. Transposition of about 19 semitones either way stays free of audible aliasing.
- Gain, in dB, sets clip gain; split handles show the range when several clips differ.
- Pitch transposes in semitones, with a second field for cents (100 cents per semitone).
- MIDI clips' tools for selected notes or a time range, or the whole clip when nothing is selected. Each tool has its own section in Ableton/Live/UG/10 Editing MIDI.
- Transpose: by semitones, or scale degrees when the clip has a scale.
- Fit to Scale: moves notes into the clip's scale; inactive without one.
- Invert: flips the selection so the highest note becomes the lowest.
- Interval Size and Add Interval: add notes a set number of semitones or scale degrees from the selection.
- Stretch compresses or stretches note durations; ×2 and /2 double or halve notes, time selection or loop.
- Duration with Set Length gives notes a chosen length.
- Humanize Amount, up to half a grid step, with Humanize randomizes note start times.
- Reverse flips the order of the notes; Legato stretches or trims each note to reach the next one.
- For warped audio clips, the Transform panel has Quantize: the grid or a chosen meter value, with Amount setting how far Warp Markers move. Audio clips have no Generate panel.
- For MIDI clips, the panels hold MIDI Tools. Transformation tools replace the selected notes, the notes in a time selection, or all notes; generative tools create note patterns in the time selection or loop. With Scale Mode on, pitch controls use scale degrees and generated notes stay in the scale. See Ableton/Live/UG/11 MIDI Tools.
- Works like the Arrangement: drag the time ruler vertically to zoom and sideways to scroll, or use the mouse wheel.
Z, or View → Zoom to Clip Selection, zooms fully to the selection; X steps back once per Z.- The Clip View Selector shows the whole clip, with an outline for the visible part; drag inside it to scroll or zoom.
- The Follow toggle, or Options → Follow, scrolls with playback. It pauses when you edit in the editor and resumes on stop, restart, or a click in a scrub area.
- Start and end markers can be dragged in the editor or moved with the arrow keys; with a marker selected,
Option+arrows (Mac) / Alt+arrows (Win) move the whole region. - With Permanent Scrub Areas on, clicking the lower half of the waveform or the scrub area below the ruler jumps playback there, quantized to global quantization.
Cmd+6 to Cmd+0 (Mac) / Ctrl+6 to Ctrl+0 (Win) change it. - Holding the mouse button over the scrub area repeats a portion the length of the quantization; small values or None let you scrub. Chase MIDI Notes plays notes that started before the play position.
- With Permanent Scrub Areas off,
Shift-click the scrub area or beat-time ruler.
- The Clip Loop toggle loops the clip over its loop region; audio clips need Warp on.
- In the editor the region is a loop brace: drag its markers to change it, or drag the brace to move it.
- Left and right arrows nudge the brace by the grid; up and down shift it by its length. With
Cmd (Mac) / Ctrl (Win), left and right shorten or lengthen it by the grid, and up and down halve or double it. - Edit → Duplicate Loop doubles the loop and its contents; in MIDI clips, notes after the loop move to keep their distance from its end.
- Playback always starts at the start marker, so a clip can run into its loop.
- The Sample Editor header shows the sample's name, sample rate, bit depth and channel count. With several clips selected, it shows all of them, an asterisk where values differ, and the count.
- Click the name, or use Show in Browser, to find the file in the browser.
- Crop Clip Sample keeps only the part between the start and end markers of an unlooped audio clip; for looped clips, from the earlier of start and loop start to the loop end. Crop Clip Sample to Time Selection keeps a selection.
- Cropping writes a new sample to the Project's Samples/Processed/Crop, or the Temporary Folder until the Set is saved. Shortcut:
Cmd+Shift+J (Mac) / Ctrl+Shift+J (Win). - MIDI clips have the same commands under the names Crop Clip and Crop Clip to Time Selection.
- Drop a new sample from the browser into the Clip View, or double-click or press
Enter on one, to replace the clip's sample. Pitch, volume and other settings stay; Warp Markers stay only if the length is identical. - Show Similar Files in the Sample Editor's context menu searches for similar samples.
- Manage Sample File opens the File Manager with the sample selected, to replace or edit it for every clip and instrument that uses it.
- Select several clips by dragging from an empty slot, or with
Cmd/Ctrl or Shift, to edit them together. Only properties they share are shown. - When values differ, sliders and knobs show the range and move it together. Dragging to the maximum or minimum makes them all equal, to be adjusted as one.
- Clip Update Rate, in Record, Warp & Launch Settings, quantizes how quickly Clip View changes reach a playing clip. The same tab sets defaults for new clips, such as Launch Mode and Warp Mode.