Add an action for "Next Project"

[17hex]

Ok so I'm sure this has been asked for in like 20 different ways by now, but I have a rather "simple" idea to solve the age old problem of using a DAW for live music. Now, I know that most people just sort of "append" their projects to each other to create one file they can run their show from. While that may be fine if you're just running, say, drums and samples or a click track or something from the DAW, ALL of my sound, sequencing and audio processing (for guitar and vocals too!) is happening through Reaper, and my project files are commonly VERY large, so I'm not sure concatenating them together would really be super feasible without having to go through and remove duplicate plugins and put in program changes,etc.

Anyway, on to the FR: What if there was a Browse button/text box in the Project Settings that let you assign a Next Project (and maybe a Previous project?)?? Then you could add an action for Open Next Project. When the action was triggered (by a button on your controller, for example) the current project would close and the Next Project would open. Thats it.

In this way, you could (by doing a SMALL amount of work ahead of time, instead of having to re-work whole projects into one) run a whole live show for as long as you wanted without having to TOUCH your computer.. you could have the computer totally off-stage if you wanted, and just focus on your controller keyboard/control surface and the music! You could even utilize this for CHEAP by just using a wireless PC keyboard that you have sitting off to the side on top of a rack case or stage monitor or something.

While it has been said elsewhere on this forum that Reaper "isn't ready for Prime Time", I personally completely disagree. The ability to extend the functionality and control of the DAW with the actions as they are in Reaper puts it FAR above any other DAW I've used in terms of power and utility. Adding an action like this (SO many uses i can think of for this) would extend it even further.

Thanks for your time.

[17hex]

40+ views and no replies :-/ It seems like this is something a lot of live musicians would want? Anyway I've been thinking about this more and refined the idea a bit.

Initially what made sense in my head was to have a "Next Project" setting in the project settings of a Project file. That way you could "chain" projects together and switch from one to another with a "next project" action. After thinking about it more, however, I was hit with the (in retrospect, rather obvious) idea of having a "Project Playlist" file instead. In Reaper's File menu there could be a "Manage Playlists" option that would bring up a window where you can open/close/save/edit the playlist and mark a song (project) as Current. When you hit "apply" reaper would then close whatever project file was open and open the one you marked as Current. There could then be "Next/Previous" actions in Reaper, and maybe even other useful things like "Randomize Playlist"! This just seems like it would be SO powerful..

Alternatively, is there a way to have Reaper open a specific file from the command line? (like "reaper.exe -file MySong.RPP") It would be somewhat trivial to automate a show from a script file then... This isn't nearly as elegant, but wouldn't take as much dev time either..

[Ollie]

Originally Posted by 17hex

Alternatively, is there a way to have Reaper open a specific file from the command line? (like "reaper.exe -file MySong.RPP") It would be somewhat trivial to automate a show from a script file then... This isn't nearly as elegant, but wouldn't take as much dev time either..

'Reaper filename.rpp'. 'Reaper -?' lists all command line options as usual:

[17hex]

Yes thank you i figured that out after the fact. Note that this thread has also been discussed in http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=34063

If you DID want to automate your show from a script (rather than put all of your songs together into one file and use regions/markers as discussed in the other thread), you could write a batch file that contained a section for each song (in the order you want them to play in) like the following:

echo - Playing SONG A
start reaper.exe SongName.RPP
pause
taskkill /F /IM reaper.exe

Then basically you'd end up with a DOS window open that said "Press any key to continue". When you hit any key (like Space) it would close reaper and the current song and then open reaper and the next song. In this way there'd be VERY little interaction with your computer between songs (assuming that reaper and the script window are the only things open, you could just do "ALT-TAB" and then "Space" and it would load the next song for you).

Pros to this approach:
-very minimal interaction with the computer during live shows
-the ability to use project files with TONS of plugins in them (way more than you'd wanna combine into one file)
-since reaper is closed between projects, it frees up memory, etc between songs

Cons:
-This isn't very "nice" (it's force-killing reaper after every song). Really there is NO reason why this should be a problem, but it's not exactly an elegant approach
-There IS a delay between songs.. On the Dell latitude d820 I'm using, this is about 4 seconds for a rather large project file where the ENTIRE song is done in plugins on the laptop. IMHO it's purely philosophical whether 8-10 seconds total between songs (figuring in walking over and pressing "Alt-tab + Space") is acceptable.
-There is a certain amount of chance that something won't open properly or whatever. Honestly I've NEVER had this happen in Reaper..

YMMV, and I'm definitely going to at least try the suggestions in the other thread, but I've tried this batch file method already and it seems to work quite well.

[BenK-msx]

know am cross threading a bit but just commented on the other thread somethng you could consider hex
http://forum.cockos.com/showpost.php...05&postcount=8

using v3s project tabs and associated actions...