Cut and paste behavior

Can someone help ? It just doesn't behave correctly. I make a selection of items within a loop I want to paste them directly onto the original tracks from the next measure. When selecting the parts using ctrl+LMB i have everything i need selected. now.. Ctrl-C ( copy to clipboard ) ok.. Position the play cursor ok.. Ctrl-V ( paste items ) Problem here... The items get pasted onto the last selected track AND it creates new tracks below ?? Why is this happening ? Surely there must be a way to tell reaper to behave and only paste items to the tracks they originated from ? It seems to be linked to track selection where as it should be independent no ?

Yep, it's linked to track selection. The selected track will be the uppermost track to contain the pasted items. With no track selected it will create a new one to paste the content on. I guess, you have items from two tracks selected and copied to clipboard, as it won't create a redundant track here (tested with 3.07 pre4, though, maybe something has changed from 3.06). Also, here it will paste on the first selected track, not the last. I think this is correct, as you somehow have to tell Reaper on which track you want to paste your stuff. Maybe it is a FR to change the behaviour to paste on the origin track when no track at all is selected, but i'm not sure I'd want that.

It seems very tricky to do something so straight forward, simple and required. In cubase or the like if you select a number of parts and ctrl-c then paste later in the arrangement it puts the parts where you expect on the tracks you copied them from at the specified cursor position. I would prefer to have standard copy paste behavior period ! as seems to be the case in other daws, why re-invent the wheel ? it seems this one isn't even round yet. Kind of square with a spike coming out at an angle lol :)

I don't get it? How does cubase know on which track I expect to paste?

Ok, If i have 4 tracks ( parts ) kick.......... snare......... hats.......... cymbal........ they are on their own tracks so after selecting the parts i hit ctrl-c it then clipboards those parts and the reference to the tracks they came from. then i move the cursor to the next measure for example and hit ctrl-v it places copies of the selected parts on the same tracks as you would expect. kick..........kick..........kick.......... snare.........snare.........snare......... hats..........hats..........hats.......... cymbal........cymbal........cymbal........ if i want my hihats on my kick track then i want to be the one to decide essentially and i certainly don't want to create new tracks etc. I feel a bit silly bringing this up as i just assumed i was doing something wrong or had a setting wrong, but i just can't seem to get reaper to just behave in a standard manner. Heeelp ! Haha :p

I'm from nuendo and i was sure that if you copy as you have said but then choose a new track then paste will paste to these tracks and not the originals too? I'm probably wrong as i never use copy paste just drag copy. It is possible to do this with custom action key commands or just select the top track before copy. Come to think of it, the reason more have not noticed is because if you have the command called something like "select related track when selecting new item" in options then the track will already be selected so your paste should end up on the same tracks. :) but maybe it should be a toggle option.

Welcome to the club Reverbio! :) IMO if we don't touch any track during copying/pasting items should be placed in their proper tracks. If we want to paste them in other tracks we then select the top most track for the top most item after pressing Ctrl+c so they can be placed accordingly. I'm not so happy with Reaper's current copy/paste behaviour but I have found a way to survive with macros :D if you're interested just let me know and I can give them to you. As a side note, there's a FR about some things related to this; maybe you can take some minutes of your time and read it:

I just tried this out and unless it's change in 307 pre4 if you have no track selected and then control+c and then move your edit cursor using the timeline and then control+v it pastes on to the original tracks like expected. Still the main thing I would like is to be able to copy a time selection and the paste somewhere else retaining relative positions (I have already voted on the FR for this) ;) I spent ages working out a way to do it and did find one out using the item selection slots and empty midi item that worked quite well (but really need it in there as a command)

In part, this is what the area selection request is about. and vote for it if it seems to solve this particular problem for you.

I've at times been tripped up by this too, coming from Sonar. I'm not sure, but I think it's because Reaper doesn't automatically assume that you want to paste to the same track. Instead ,it pastes based on track selection (at the cursor location.) Because it is possible to copy items from, say, track 20, even though only track 21 is selected, unless you select track 20, it will paste to the selected track. IIRC, in Sonar, it's the opposite, more or less: If you want to paste it to a track OTHER than the source track, then you have to manually specify that in a dialog box. But yeah, you have to select the track you want to paste TO, unless NO tracks are selected, in which case it will paste to the the source track. With that in mind, copying items from multiple tracks, including non-adjacent tracks, works as you'd expect.