Darwin Grosse

Among the icon­-buttons available from the toolbars surrounding your Max patch, there are several that won’t necessarily ring a bell ­ even for experienced Max programmers. Two powerful tools that might be overlooked are at the top and bottom of the left toolbar: the file browser and the collections browser.

But what are collections? They are ‘virtual’ folders of your favorite... anything. You can place files, plug­ins, Max for Live devices or media files in a collection, then use these items whenever you need quick access to them. Learning to work with collections is pretty simple, and is well-explained in the Collections Guide (available within the help system just type “collections” into the search box and select that option from the Guide list).

Rather than do a walk-­through of making a collection which is covered pretty well in the Guide I just mentioned, I’d like to tell you about some of the uses I’ve made of collections. I hope that some of these ideas will stimulate your imagination, and that you’ll find ways to use collections in your own work.

When I’m working on the BEAP module example videos, I’m often trying out wildly different patches using a relatively few BEAP modules. Rather than working with the full BEAP list, I create a BEAP VIDEOS collection that holds the BEAP modules I’m focused upon, then am able to efficiently fly modules in and out of my patch. 

I tend to get obsessive bursts of energy in different areas: live audio looping, video feedback systems or Max for Live development. In each of these areas, I’ve created a number of abstractions and subpatchers that I’m using over and over again. But when I’m working on video feedback, I don’t need to scroll through all the looper stuff, nor do I constantly want to dive into a deep set of folders or have to remember the 50 names of the variations I created for difference scenarios. Having a collection dedicated to each ‘obsession’ helps me feel connected to each project without having to manage a lot of overhead. 

For some reason, my mousing skills really fail me during live performance. Maybe it’s because I’m shaking like a leaf, or I’m too busy eyeing the audience to look at the screen. Maybe I’m looking at a projection at big scale and have trouble adjusting to the small scale of the laptop screen. How do collections help me? I make sure that all of my media players have draggable interfaces, then build a collection with the audio or video files for a specific performance. Presto­change­o, no more confusion. I’ve got one place to go for the stuff that I need, and mouse dexterity becomes much less important.


introduction-to-the-collections-browser

This new feature is really nice, thanks !

Quick question, is this normal that I cannot add snippets to a collection?

I always get an error in the File Browser...

I thought this could be a temporary solution for a problem I have : to make a separate menu for a collection of snippets in the same fashion that BLEAP and Vizzie.

The snippets menu itself is a nice beginning but all snippets (including ones coming with some packages) are mixed together and it's quite impossible to use to program on the fly.

This new feature is really nice, thanks !
Quick question, is this normal that I cannot add snippets to a collection?
I always get an error in the File Browser...

I thought this could be a temporary solution for a problem I have : to make a separate menu for a collection of snippets in the same fashion that BLEAP and Vizzie.
The snippets menu itself is a nice beginning but all snippets (including ones coming with some packages) are mixed together and it's quite impossible to use to program on the fly.

I had the same trouble, trying to add some of the snippet stuff to the collection folder. I guess, since the snippets are already part of the file search part, you can´t add them a second time. I tried this one with some other files folder and got the same error message when I already added them and tried to add them again; after removing them from file search path it worked fine again.

I took all the snippets I created myself into to different subfolders to get them sorted within the Snippets folder to be found in the Documents/„Max 7“ - folder. Now it would be already possible to paste from the individual subfolders with right-click or ctrl-click in the patcher window, like with the BEAP or vizzie stuff.

Done that I made aliases from every subfolder leaving them in Max 7´s Snippets folder and took out the original subfolders from the Snippets folder to another new folder which is not part of the file search path yet.

The subfolders within this new folder can now be added as „files to Search Path“ in the file browser. As long as you don´t choose the individual files but the folders with your sorted snippets step-by-step these folder will show up as a bookmark within the file browser and as a folder within the snippets tab of the patcher window.

I took all the snippets I created myself into to different subfolders to get them sorted within the Snippets folder to be found in the Documents/„Max 7“ - folder. Now it would be already possible to paste from the individual subfolders with right-click or ctrl-click in the patcher window, like with the BEAP or vizzie stuff. 

Done that I made aliases from every subfolder leaving them in Max 7´s Snippets folder and took out the original subfolders from the Snippets folder to another new folder which is not part of the file search path yet. 

It's working, thanks for the trick Tilman !

It's working, thanks for the trick Tilman !
All my best
Julien


As far as we can tell, the reported problem (can't add snippets to collections) is fixed in the latest Max release. If that's not the case, and you can provide more specific instructions for reproduction, please drop a note to support.

As far as we can tell, the reported problem (can't add snippets to collections) is fixed in the  latest Max release. If that's not the case, and you can provide more specific instructions for reproduction, please drop a note to support.


So I'm on Max 7.2.1 (on Yosemite) and it still makes an error when I drag snippets from the Finder,

in the case these snippets were already in the path.

It's working fine when I drop them from a search in the browser, so I guess this is enough for me :)

Hi Jeremy,
So I'm on Max 7.2.1 (on Yosemite) and it still makes an error when I drag snippets from the Finder,
in the case these snippets were already in the path.
It's working fine when I drop them from a search in the browser, so I guess this is enough for me :)
Thanks !
Julien


Introduction to the Collections Browser