How to tell which take is the active take?

Peter Jules

New member
Hi.

When working with multiple takes in one track I can see all takes besides each other and I can also select which of these takes is the active one. But when I look at them later how can I actually see which one of the takes is currently the active take? How can you tell from the image below which one of them will actually be played back? I'm even afraid to touch them because once I click any of them I will change the active take and I may lose the good one.

Reaper_Coloured_Takes.png

The only workaround that I'm using is: Highlight all takes in track, right-click, item and take colors, click on "Set all takes of selected items to default color". And then in the next step select all active items, right-click, item and take colors, click on "Select active takes to custom color". But this gets all messed up again as soon as I change something, e.g. do a split or record a new take.

I would really like to have Reaper highlight all active takes in one color and all inactive takes in a different color automatically but I haven't found a sensible ways to do it. Does anyone have a good suggestion?

Thanks,
Peter
 
The active take is the lighter colour of the bunch of takes.

The problem with Reaper is that it is so customizable you can customize useability out if it. Because I like very clear clues about what is going on, I use the default theme with no modification . . . it looks plain, but it also doesn't blur your eyes with colours and confusion
 
How many tracks is that?

Normally, it should be the lighter-colored take, but you have such a complicated arrangement of media items, that I have no idea what's supposed to be what.
 
The inactive takes are all "greyed out", and the active takes are pretty obviously different from the other inactive takes in the same lane. In this case case it's pretty easy to tell that it's the bottom (newest) take for each of those items. The very lowest blue one doesn't have anything to compare against, but since all the other takes in that stack are greyed out, that's kind of got to be the one.

Having all those takes different colors doesn't do you any favors in this sense. If they were all the same, the difference between active and inactive would be obvious.
 
Having all those takes different colors doesn't do you any favors in this sense. If they were all the same, the difference between active and inactive would be obvious.

Yes I know. That's part of the problem. How can I change this? And how can it stay this way as a preset for all new takes? I'd prefer to have all takes in one colour and the active ones in a different colour (ideally one that is similar to the track's colour).
 
Yes I know. That's part of the problem. How can I change this? And how can it stay this way as a preset for all new takes? I'd prefer to have all takes in one colour and the active ones in a different colour (ideally one that is similar to the track's colour).

The default theme should do that.
 
He doesn't talk about the colors at all in that video, and I have to say that the whole time he was doing that I was thinking how much I would hate to have my items and takes all randomly different like that! It makes some sense when you're not working with lanes, but with lanes happening, it's unnecessary and confusing.

Every time I watch this vid I remember that the idea of saving and comparing Comps is kind of cool. Then I remember that I would never really use it... ;)
 
How can I change this? And how can it stay this way as a preset for all new takes? I'd prefer to have all takes in one colour and the active ones in a different colour (ideally one that is similar to the track's colour).

Every theme in Reaper is different and every process as far as color goes, is usually different as well, to an extent. When you do multi takes, regardless of the color, the active take will always be the brightest. The theme I use, changes the color of each new take I do, and since I use a dark theme, it makes the colors stand out especially the lightest active track.

 
The default theme should do that.

It IS the default theme. I've never changed themes. Maybe I should :)
By the way as you can see in the mentioned vid, if he does not have any of the takes highlighted, he does have three different colours. Probably the light-green one is the active one, yes probably. But if you get more takes and more colours later eventually it will be very hard to tell.
 
Then just stop. You're done. Never change it again.
Well, if I need to record another take they'll all turn colorful again and I end up where I left.
Okay, I'll experiment some more, maybe I'll be more lucky with a different theme. Thank you all for your suggestions.
 
IDK what you did to end up where you're at now. It's never done that for me. I don't use colors very often. Sometimes I set a track to a color (related to the color on the snake feeding my interface), and then all items are that color no matter how many takes I record. The inactive takes are obvious because they're the same color only darker. If it did what yours does I would freak out.
 
The final solution for me was:
Go to the preferences page -> Appearance -> Peaks / Waveforms
Uncheck the following: "Automatically color any recording pass that adds new takes to existing media items."
That stopped Reaper from assigning a new color for each new take and I am now able to keep every take at the same color. By that it made the active take definitely clearer and, apart from that, make everything look nicer.
 
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