Grid snap not behaving as specified

[h3h4]

FL Studio's "snap to grid" function doesn't actually appear to snap items to the grid, but only to constrain their motion to multiples of the snap spacing. This means that if your clip or whatever isn't already aligned to the grid, then the grid snap doesn't actually align it and you have to zoom right in and align it without snap enabled. This doesn't seem to conform to the documentation, or common sense notions of "snap to grid". The higher your timebase, the more you have to zoom in to get things exactly aligned.

Attached is a screen grab showing what I'm talking about.

FL_grid_snap_demo.mp4

What grid snap typically means in other programs is that as you drag the item around, once it reaches some distance from a snap point, the program moves the item directly to the snap point. The distance threshold would typically vary with grid spacing, scale, etc. The threshold could be super aggressive (equal to half the grid spacing, so that items are always snapped to the nearest), or less aggressive (allowing some free movement unless the item gets very close to a snap point).

I've also been unable to distinguish the difference between the "Line" and "Cell" snap modes, as they seem to behave exactly the same way. The documentation is a bit unclear, but seems to imply they'd behave differently, but so far I can't figure out what they actually do differently.

SUGGESTED FIX: Relative and absolute grid snap modes

What I suggest is that you keep the current snap modes, which could maybe referred to as "relative snap", and add additional "absolute snap" modes, which behave like you would normally expect snap to behave. These modes could be toggled by a shortcut. Relative snap would be useful for things like risers which are typically aligned to the grid using some random point in the middle of the sample. Absolute snap would be useful for everything else. Maybe "relative snap" could even be a mode you set for a clip? It's likely to be something that is specific to some clips and not others.

When moving entire clips and patterns that have a start and an end point, there is a question as to whether you snap the start point to the grid or the end point to the grid. This again could be a mode that you toggle, or could be determined by where you click on the clip/pattern (provided the scale is not too zoomed out), or maybe a per-clip configuration option, or maybe something else. The UI could provide a visual cue as to whether the start or end point is being used to snap, e.g., by highlighting the start or end point. If the snap point is a per-clip configuration option, then it would be cool to allow arbitrary points within the sample to be chosen as the snap point - this would also be useful for risers and other SFX. Not sure if that should be set on a per clip or per clip instance though - would want it for patterns too. Alternatively, you could use both the clip start and clip end as snap points.

OTHER SUGGESTIONS

If you wanted to make the grid snap even more sophisticated, you could have start and end points of other items as grid snap points. This is common behavior in other programs too. E.g., I might drag a clip/pattern/note towards another one until they snap together.

Also, especially if a really high fixed timebase is adopted as suggested by viewtopic.php?p=1830260, it might also be useful to enable the user to directly enter the value of the start or end point. The piano roll currently allows this, but the playlist doesn't. The context menu could provide an option to "set position/duration..." in which the user could specify exactly where they'd like the start/end points to be.

CONCLUSION

Just some random ideas for your consideration. Improving the snap with an absolute snap option would drastically improve workflow. I see people using FL Studio and they're constantly zooming in and out for this reason - because snap doesn't actually snap to the grid!

[IanD]

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