I think you'll find this has already been addressed in a number of posts below.  You'll have to wait for cs6 or hopefully a mid year update.

Cheers

This hasn't been done under a rock.  Nor is the software officially released, so whatever you're using isn't supposed to be out yet.  I would encourage anyone with similar questions to read the recent posts at this forum, which now provide a wealth of information.  To help get you started, here are some essential links.

Durin's excellent commentary on what's in and what's out (for the time being), with mention of great duress in making those decisions, is here:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3614935

A list of AA3 features renamed or not included in AA4-CS5.5 is here:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/895/cpsid_89588.html

If you'd like to know more about the software, how it works, and what IS in it, the helpfiles are now online:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/audition/cs/using/index.html

If this whole thing has you really peeved and you can't upgrade because something critical is missing, make sure you take the survey and let Adobe know of your needs.  This will help them prioritize the features to be added to the next release.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/auditionfeedback

I'm sure there are plenty of people trying Audition 5.5 right now not realizing the full implications of what they're using, though I'm not sure how a cracked copy can't be obvious.  If you care (and you should!), and you want to be sure, then bear in mind that any official version or trial download of Adobe software will come only from the Adobe website, not from a third party site.  Give Adobe your support and feedback for a great product.  It will help ensure its future.

There's no ability to group files. I group files all the time so I can move them around.  I've just bought and downloaded the new version, but its useless to me without the ability to group.

Please fix this issue up Adobe, cos I like it apart from that!

Which survey?

Well for me, until grouping returns, I've found that colour coding the clips you need to move around repeatedly helps a lot especially for radio production.  I have client inserts and my voice over tag revisions etc that vary in length and are changed and updated sometimes daily.  Highlighting-selecting the coloured clips and shifting them as a selected sudo group, although slower, does work fine.

There are a lot of positives in the upgrade and having grouping back in at a later date keeps me chugging along just fine.

Cheers

Probably means "pseudo" groups?

Sorry, What I mean by that is hold control and select all the clips that you

will be shifting in the session... on the PC in my case.  Colouring just

makes it easier at least for me to know which ones quickly grab with the

client looking over the shoulder.  The selected clips will move like a

group... as in all together ...until unselected of course or just clicking

the mouse elsewhere.

Hope that clarifies.

Cheers

I'm a long term Cool Edit/Audition user who's just upgraded from 3 because it felt increasingly sluggish and unstable.  While I'm delighted at the performance improvements in CS 5.5 I seem to be one of a small army of users who are amazed at the features not included.

I can understand that it wasn't possible to port everything from 3 at this stage - and actually most of the omissions don't affect me.  However, I use Group Clips all the time and I can't think of a much more basic feature in an audio editing package.

Are there any plans to release minor version updates to CS 5.x which re-introduce missing features such as Group Clips or do we have to wait for 6 to come out?  And if the latter is the case, I hope that when 6 comes out those of us who took the plunge with 5.5 only to find themselves short-changed on features will be offered the upgrade at a significantly discounted rate.

Robert

P.S. I love the fact that the survey referenced in this thread as a way to get Adobe to prioritise certain features doesn't even have CS 5.5 listed as a version of the product...

phil_dobbie wrote:

 

The need to move a groups of clips around is fundamental. Having to pick them each time you need to move shows a fundamental lack of understanding in how the program is used.

 

User testing anyone?

Nobody's actually posted a link to any of the previous discussion about this, but this was simply about a lack of development time, and prioritising - this was a release set not against readiness, but a date set by Adobe Corporate. The lack of grouping was moaned about even before it got released, believe me, but to have it included would have been at the cost of things that you might have moaned even more about. And we were assured that the implementation wasn't anything like as simple as it might seem to be - largely to do with integration with other features. This has absolutely nothing to do with a fundamental lack of understanding at all. Well, not on the developers' part, anyway...

SteveG(AudioMasters) wrote:

 

to have it included would have been at the cost of things that you might have moaned even more about. And we were assured that the implementation wasn't anything like as simple as it might seem to be - largely to do with integration with other features. This has absolutely nothing to do with a fundamental lack of understanding at all. Well, not on the developers' part, anyway...

Well I won't be moaning about the other features because I am not using the program. As I said, this one feature alone means I have stuck with the earlier version. I agree with Roberts point, grouping doesn't need to intgrate with anything, we just want to move stuff.

If it's not down to poor user testing - or requirements definition (after all, it gets down to what's asked for then tested against) -  then I must use the program very differently to everyone else.

I'll just add my stone cold amazement at the loss of such a basic feature as grouping clips. More evidence that it's the quality of the updates and not the frequency that makes the most difference to the end user. But I don't run the business unit at Adobe...I just fund it. Dropping this feature is just a bad, bad, idea among bad ideas. Only a week ago I plopped down a whole lot of money for the CS5.5 upgrade because Adobe had ceased to support CS3. I wasn't happy with that forced decision and I'm even less happy now. Adobe is fast becoming equated with "buyer's remorse" for me.

Rather than concentrate on the technical definition of a feature being "dropped" I would simply ask this: can I use the features of grouping clips and burning CDs in CS5.5 that I so often used in CS3?

The answer is I cannot.

The end user shouldn't have to care about how well the Adobe Audition CS5.5 product was program managed. The net result is a loss of functionality.

accept that I donated $150 for nought

 

Can you see 'orders and returns' in the Support portal? If you purchased recently you may be able to get a refund...

we end up with a better product as a result.

rather depends who 'we' is!

phil_dobbie wrote:-

Why don't you come clean and say the reason  this feature

I don't know why you say "you" ie. me. I am just another user like you, nothing to do with Adobe at all. But I do get rather fed up with all the whingeing from people who bought this new version without trying the Trial version and, apparently, without researching on this Forum and elsewhere what Audition CS5.5 did and didn't do.

KentCCovington wrote:

 

It's like buying a car and then thinking "hey, how do I adjust the seat?"...only to find they skipped the ability to adjust the position of the driver's seat in that model. It's unthinkable. And it was unthinkable to me that they would leave out the ability to group clips. Truly absurd.

You have to bear in mind that it's only one aspect of grouping that's effectively missing - you can still highlight a number of clips simultaneously and move them - it's mainly leaving them as a funny-coloured locked group afterwards that you can't do. Yes it's a pain, and it slows down work - wouldn't deny it for a moment, and I absolutely understand why a heck of a lot of people are complaining loudly, and sticking with AA3.

But, given the timescale forced on the developers by Adobe Corporate, if fully-functional grouping was going to be in it, then several other major features wouldn't have been. And if they'd put in a 'simple' grouping facility, they'd have had a lot of reworking to do to accomodate it properly with other new MV features, and that would have cut even further into future development.

So yes, you can moan about it, and from an end-user POV you'd probably be right. And no, I don't think the situation was handled adequately at a corporate level (if at all...). But from the perspective of being between a rock and a very hard place, I think the devs did the best they possibly could considering the constraints.

I think it's fair enough to point out that there is a free trial edition of CS 5.5 and that you should always "try before you buy".  The list of what's included/not included in CS 5.5 is also freely available on the Adobe site.

However, as a general rule when upgrading software I don't think many people would think it necessary to check what's been left out as the assumption is always that functionality will be built upon, not removed.

I'm amazed that, aside from an invitation to complete a survey, no-one from Adobe has posted a message on this thread offering reassurance about if/when this and other missing functionality is going to be reinstated into the product (and whether existing users of CS 5.5 are going to have to pay (again) for the privilege of getting it back).

What I never understand about software release timescales driven by marketing (rather than the actual development effort required) is that while a product might get released "on time", it's a product which is so disappointing to the user base that it results in a huge backlash such as that being seen on this thread.  How does that help Adobe's image in any way?  Would it have been so damaging to Adobe's reputation to delay the release of CS 5.5 by 3-6 months but end up with a more complete product?  Or forget "CS 5 and a half" altogether and just release CS 6 at a later date?

Robert

I understand that you don't have the athority to tell us when missing features/functionality will be added. Can you at least tell us if grouping clips is a priority and something you're working toward?

I simply can't use anything beyond 3.0 until that's fixed.

Thanks!