Can someone explain to me the differences between a Workspace and a Window Layout and how you would use each?
I seem to be getting confused between these terms and what gets saved with each.
Over a year later....bumping my own post.
Still confused on what each of these do and just try to save both after I get SF setup the way I prefer.
Recently, saved a layout from SF13 Pro and Loaded it on a newly installed SF14 Pro. It seemed to load most of Sound Forge 13 docked window layout from SF13 into SF14 but the frustrating part was that it didn't include any of the toolbars I had docked from the checked toobar Preference settings and didn't update any of the Waveform color preferences from under the "Display" tab in the preferences I had configured.
Anyone have a brief summary of what the differences are between Window layout and Workspace? Seem like similar terms to me but haven't been able to determine exactly what I'm saving and recalling when I use them.
Hi @Rednroll,
As you know Red, the toolbar items and data are not included in the "View> Windows Layout". Saving and restoring that data must be done in the registry.
Export/Import the "Application" entry in 13.0 to 14.0.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MAGIX\Sound Forge Pro\13.0\Metrics
I'm sure you already know the risks of forking with the registry, so make a back-up of the original entries and/or a restore point before changing anything.
Off-hand, I do not recall where the display customization data is. I document the "Options> Preferences> Display" parameters and enter them manually, which is an annoyance, but does not need to be done very often.
Hi rraud,
Honestly I haven't played around with these features so much to really get to understand them. Just when I install a new version of SF I get reminded they exist. I thought it would be a nice feature to use, instead of spending an hour setting everything up like I've done in the past to be able to load a previous preference layout.
Do you have any idea what the save/recall Workspace feature does? My thought is that maybe if you have SF windows spread across multiple screens, it saves those window/screen positions? I'm just guessing I haven't tried that out, since most of the time I have SF setup on a single screen since Vegas and it's multitude of windows are on my other screens.
At least I was able to see something happen when I used the layouts feature, although very disappointing since I had to re setup all my toolbars, and color preference settings and it didn't reconfigure the VU meters to the settings I had those setup to as well. So instead of spending the typical hour during setup, it cut me down to 30 minutes. LOL!
The 'Workspace' feature is new and I have not played around with it yet. Hopefully it will save the toolbar layout and other customizations that previously could only be saved/restored through the registry and/or the (normally hidden) system files in Appdata.
The 'Workspace' feature is new and I have not played around with it yet. Hopefully it will save the toolbar layout and other customizations that previously could only be saved/restored through the registry and/or the (normally hidden) system files in Appdata.
Well, I can tell you it doesn't do that.
I recently installed SF14. I saved Workspace and Layouts from SF13. I started by opening up the saved from SF13 Workspace file starting with a fresh setup in SF14, and nothing changed on my screen. I typically use SF on a single screen, so that's the reason I'm speculating maybe that feature saves window layout across multiple screen use but haven't tried that out for certain. I search through the help menu to see if I could find out more about what these feature actually do, but came up empty. So after loading a workspace file and seeing nothing change in SF14, I then proceeded to load the saved SF13 layout file in SF14, and that's when I saw something actually change on my screen in regards to the look of SF 14. But then I quickly noticed I was missing the docked toolbars and my VU meters which I typically have docked at the top center and configured with the Peak/VU interleave, extended VU preferences were still at their default settings, although the meter window was placed in the location as SF13. So yeah, it put the meter window where I had them, but didn't include any of the settings configured for the actual meters.
What makes these 2 separate features more confusing are the actual terms used. It seems like "Work Space" and "Windows Layout" are 2 terms which could easily be interchanged to have the same meaning.
As a generalized comment, I'm happy Magix have developers on all the acquired SF/Sony programs, but it's pretty obvious the consistency of similar feature added to Sound Forge, Acid and Vegas have been lost in the shuffle. In SF you now have these features of Save/open "Workspace" and save/open "Windows Layout" but in Vegas you now have Save/open "preferences, and "Window Layout". The Vegas ones have made more sense to me in regards to what they actually do but seems frustrating when you're using 2 apps from the same company that you now have to learn different terms for similar features. Speaking with the SF/Sony developers in the past, consistency between similar features was always an important. 6 of 1, 1/2 dozen the other I guess.
Ok, I played around with these 2 features in SF15 to try and figure out what they do and don't do.
1st I found there's now some info under the help, unlike when I originally created this post....here it is...good luck figuring out the differences between them.
WORKSPACE
Workspace files (.sfw) allow you to create a snapshot of your SOUND FORGE Pro desktop so you can return to it at any time. A workspace saves the following information: Open files with their magnification, selection, cursor position, data window size, and screen location. Plug-In Chain settings. Any views you have created for each data window.
WINDOW LAYOUTS
A window layout stores the sizes and positions of all windows and floating window docks in the SOUND FORGE Pro workspace.
You can store any number of window layouts on your computer, and up to ten window layouts are available in the View menu (and via keyboard shortcuts) so you can quickly recall frequently used layouts. For example, you could have a layout dedicated to disc-at-once CD creation and another for ADR work.
I got a chuckle out of how the definition of window layouts state that it's a "workspace", just to make things even more confusing. 😆
Here's my summary of things I noticed in their differences.
Workspace:
- Saves the view of all the currently opened audio files in Forge, each files regions, as well as Selection views you may have created.
Layouts:
Saves the size, position and on which screen all floating/dockable windows are located except for the toolbars.
Now that I somewhat understand them, it seems even the developers are confused with the differences between layouts and workspace. The reason being is that if you try to save a "Layout", that option is greyed out unless you have an audio file open in Forge. It would seem to me, that the "Workspace" is the feature which saves which audio files are currently open in Forge, where it would make logical sense that Workspace should be greyed out if there were no open audio files. Layouts seem to have no correlation in regards to which audio files are open in forge and makes no sense it would be greyed out.
Personally, I find the layouts function pretty useful. The Workspace....meh! It seems to me this could have been implemented as part of a Sound Forge Project file instead but now you have saved SF projects, SF workspaces, SF layouts, and saved audio files. Each one of them contains some bits of information, but none of them contain all the information. Pretty confusing features...just ask the developers who can't seem to keep them straight as well.😂
P.S.
rraud, if you're on the beta teams may want to pass this one along since I was easily able to crash forge while playing around with workspaces. SF15 build 57. Opened a new audio file window, saved the Workspace as "default.sfw". Then closed the audio file window without saving it, thus no audio file to recall. Switched to a previously saved workspace, then back to the saved "default.sfw".....SF crash.
An annoyance as well. If you save layouts to any other location on HDD than the default path, it always defaults back to the default save location on next layout save, rather than remembering the last saved location.