Introduction to the Collections Browser
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.
by Darwin Grosse on January 12, 2016
