Hey Matt, stephanvh, others
This is now the third or fourth time I've tried to understand how Flip works to use it for my edits. Every time I've been frustrated and given up, this will be the last time I try, after this if I don't succeed it's editing with third party software for good.
First of all, the documentation on Flip is atrocious. Let's start with the walkthrough video:
support.serato.com
This may be useful for people using MIDI controllers, but for 'normal' users it's extremely misleading. With the MIDI controller, when you press a cue point apparently the track plays (and continues to play) from that point, as seen in the video:
Watchwww.youtube.com
But on the computer obviously the track only plays until we let go of the button associated with the cue point.
So I understand that pressing 'record' arms the recording, but only pressing a cue point starts the actual recording. Nowhere do you guys explain what 'start the actual recording' means in technical terms.
Also, I have made the experience that this shows some completely random behavior. Let's say I load a track and start playing it from the beginning. I press record, and after a couple seconds I press a cue point located later in the track. Sometimes, the flip will jump from the random point at the beginning of the track to that cue point, and sometimes it will play the whole song up to that cue point like it expect it to.
Now, let's talk about the user guide. Excuse my sarcasm, but is this 'user guide' some 5 minute project a trainee did at your company?
Generally speaking, the UI and the available buttons on Flip recording don't make sense to me at all. Either this was designed more for live Flips, or then it was done in a way that is logical to a programmer but not to a user.
I've already mentioned the discrepancy between arming and the 'actual start of recording', whatever that means. This makes no sense whatsoever from a usability standpoint.
The 'on' button makes no sense to me either. Why would we need an 'on' button when we are recording, isn't it the whole point that it's on??
Loop is not really explained either, also as of consequence because where exactly the beginning and end of the Flip is isn't defined. Also, what exactly does Loop Snap do, just make Flip loop in beat? Why would we even need this, isn't that the whole point of having Quantize on?
"If you accidentally end the Flip a little too early, or too late, the Loop Snap (when turned on) will adjust the length of the entire Flip to match your tracks BPM." - This makes no sense from a technical standpoint. What would be expected is, again, that if we 'end a flip too early or too late' (again, whatever the h this means in technical terms is completely unclear) the Flip would just end on beat, which was the whole point of Quantize the way I understood it. (Yes, I understand we can have quantize turned off, but then what would the point of loop snap be??)
Speaking of quantize, this is the last issue. Obviously, we use quantize to set and trigger cue points at an exact point on the grid. However, when using Flip, say I loop 4 times thru the same 2 bars of a part of the song. When playing the flip, the song jumps on beat, yet it jumps at a slightly different point every time, I assume this is the point at which precisely I triggered the cue point, and this is visible in the waveform. How does this even make sense when the whole point of having quantize on is supposed to be to have jumps EXACTLY at the grid marker?
I'm not gonna open any help requests or make any videos, what I have just written should be clearly understandable and reproducible, and if I'm doing something wrong or have some basic misunderstandings then at least some other people with similar issues will be able to read and learn here. I'm really hoping to get some in-detail answers here Matt, being that the user guide and walk-trough video give such extremely limited information it would really be helpful to have these questions answered. Thanks in advance.
