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Old 07-16-2019, 11:45 AM   #1
Chris Heinen
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Default Tempo Mapping - computes 2x value ??

I can't get the action "Create measure from time selection (detect tempo)" to work properly.

I followed the video tutorial on "Tempo Mapping", making sure that the track timebase was set to "time". I set up an approximate tempo at the beginning of the song (about 50 BPM), moved the start of the audio item to the start of measure 2, and created a 1-measure selection from measure 2 to the start of what sounds to me like the beginning of measure 3.

When I invoke the "Create measure from time selection (detect tempo)" action, it creates two tempo markers (one at the beginning of the time selection and one at the end) but the value for the tempo (103 BPM) appears to be twice what I believe it should be for a 1-measure section of audio.

I then manually correct the tempo value on the newly inserted marker to be half the value and the ruler values then line up as wanted.

What am I missing?

See images here for what I'm seeing...

https://imgur.com/a/tzPNgKa

I'm using v5.979 of Reaper.

Thanks,
Chris
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Old 07-17-2019, 01:38 AM   #2
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Hi Chris. First off, how is your "project" timebase set up? I use these settings so tempo matches the beats. Otherwise the music will be warped to match tempo, which you obviously don't want. For this I use the following project settings. Timebase for items/envelopes/markers set to Time. Timebase for tempo/time signature envelope set to Beats.

Secondly I've noticed in the images something weird is going on. If you see, compared to the first measure, it looks like the second measure was squashed in. For the space, despite setting 4/4, it almost looks like 2/4, only because it is squashed.


Third, I see you have a gap before you marked the tempo, with a lead in. This is good. I recommend tempo mapping this first if you haven't so the first measure lines up exactly where it should.


From the looks of the images it looks like it may be a timebase issue. But you will need to check if that is the case. Also, check my signature. ;-)
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Old 07-17-2019, 05:30 AM   #3
Chris Heinen
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Hi Hypex,

Thanks for looking into this. I tweaked the test project per your suggestions but still no joy.

I set the Project Settings Timebase for items/envelopes/markers to Time, and tried it (same result).

I then changed the Track timebase to Project timebase (same result).

I then added an explicit tempo marker at the beginning of the project to match the BPM in the transport (same result).

This one's a head scratcher. It is as though Reaper thinks I want it to calculate a BPM for a selection for two measures instead of one. I find it suspicious (and maybe a clue) that the newly inserted tempo is off by exactly a factor of 2...

Any other settings you can think of for me to check?

Thanks,
Chris
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Old 07-18-2019, 02:07 AM   #4
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Have a look from this post down may help
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread....63#post2142463
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Old 07-18-2019, 03:28 AM   #5
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v5.979 included this update:
Quote:
+ Tempo map: improve actions to set tempo from time selection when multiple bars are selected
Instead of setting a single measure as before, REAPER now tries to guess how many measures you intended to select: v5.978+dev0604 - June 4 2019, and will prefer bpm's around 100.

Personally, I think this was a bad change, and I would support any bug report to revert to the original behavior of this action.

EDIT: I submitted the bug report myself: "Create measure from time selection (detect tempo)" creates multiple measures.

Last edited by juliansader; 07-18-2019 at 03:46 AM.
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Old 07-18-2019, 05:19 AM   #6
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Thanks, everyone for working on this for me. I didn't read the release notes close enough to see that the tempo mapping action had been re-purposed (ReaPurposed?).

Anyway, I'll keep reading through the links you've provided so I can figure out what the new technique is supposed to be for situations like mine.

I'm guessing that the video that references this action need to be pulled and redone since the action now works differently??

And, I wonder what this new behavior does to exist scripts (cf. Hypex) that relied on the old behavior??

(I may be back with more questions later!)

Thanks again...

Chris
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Old 07-20-2019, 09:28 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Heinen View Post
Any other settings you can think of for me to check?
Chris, I didn't think of any other settings you could check. But that tempo envelope can exhibit some strange behaviour. It tends to be sensitive at times. It's not unusual for it to be tripped off and see one beat off putting a stack after it out of whack. Then fix that and see the butterfly effect it creates.

It looks like Reaper warps the waveform between each tempo marker in order to fit it to the grid evenly. Compare before and after a tempo mark. Smart move.

I am wondering about this song you need to map. Is this a private recording or something that can be looked up? Trying to figure why Reaper goes way off the mark. Or double time as it were.

Well, I upgraded to the last version to do more testing, v5.980, but please note I'm using the Linux version. Or testing. But it's been fine so far.

I retested with some tracks. And here it still worked fine. However, the BPM was around 115. Shouldn't matter really. 50 is low. Don't know if that throws it off.

As to scripts; for my own beat mapper I use other tempo functions provided to scripts, so don't use the same actions. My script finds a window, that fits around the basic tempo, then adds tempo markers, provided it hits the mark. I tested it again and it still worked fine.

Last edited by Hypex; 07-22-2019 at 01:47 AM.
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Old 07-20-2019, 09:29 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MusoBob View Post
Have a look from this post down may help

Thanks for that. Always wondered if the Audacity tempo map could be put to use.
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Old 07-20-2019, 12:09 PM   #9
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The problem should be fixed in the upcoming v5.981.
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Old 07-24-2019, 09:11 PM   #10
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Hi everybody,

Sorry I've been AWOL - I am back (briefly). Thanks, everyone for all the valuable info on this issue...

Hypex - the test tune example is "Always and Forever" by the group Heatwave (circa 1977). It's in 12x8 at about 50 to 51 BPM. I see from juliansader that this issue is a known one, and will be fixed in an upcoming release, so I'll hang on to my test project, retest with the newer release, and update this thread with results. (Thanks, Julian for the heads-up...)

The kind of interesting thing is that while tinkering around and learning how the tempo markers work, and how they can be controlled directly from the ruler, I came up with a workflow that seems to work (for me...)...

1. (1-time setup) set up a toolbar button for the action "Insert tempo marker at edit cursor without opening tempo edit dialog" and set the "Grid line Z order" to "over items" or "through items" in Preferences

2. set the track (or project) timebase to "time" and insert the wav/mp3 that is providing the reference tempo(s)

3. with the edit cursor at bar 1 beat 1, tap tempo to set up an approximate tempo (note that on v5.979 you CANNOT do the nifty trick of making a selection of a measure's worth of content and hovering over the "length of time selection" info to get a BPM - it reports the wrong BPM)

4. turn off snapping and drag the start of the wav for what is to be the downbeat of the first measure to the second measure (the Heatwave tune has a pickup note just before the downbeat of the bar of the first measure)

5. turn on snapping and right click the button from step 1 (to "arm" it)

== you are now "off to the races" ==

6. start playback (using the spacebar or whatever key you have mapped) until you get to somewhere around the top of the next measure, and pause playback

7. click in the ruler on/near the top of the measure - since there is an "armed" button and since snapping is on, it should insert a tempo marker exactly on the downbeat of the measure

8. now for the nifty tricky part - hold ctl+alt (on PC) and drag the newly inserted tempo marker to wherever you see in the wav the start of the measure; it's important to get in the habit of using ctl+alt because this will make sure that any other tempo markers DO NOT MOVE in the project; depending on how far out you are zoomed, you may even visually notice that what it looks like you are doing is a kind of "stretch marker" behavior affecting the display of the ticks in the ruler grid for a span of ruler ticks between two "anchored" tempo markers

== repeat steps 6 through 8 for the remaining measures until done ==

I got the idea for this by watching the tail end of the Tempo Mapping video where this technique was briefly mentioned. My only "value add" to what was in the video is to have an armed button that has the effect of dropping in more tempo markers as you click in the ruler as you go. The nice side effect of this technique is that you can add tempo markers anywhere within the measure too (e.g. at beat 3) in case there is any intra-measure tempo drifting that you want accounted for.

Anyway that's my update for now... Thanks, all, for your help...

Chris
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Old 07-25-2019, 10:08 AM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Heinen View Post
Hi Hypex,

Thanks for looking into this. I tweaked the test project per your suggestions but still no joy.

I set the Project Settings Timebase for items/envelopes/markers to Time, and tried it (same result).

I then changed the Track timebase to Project timebase (same result).

I then added an explicit tempo marker at the beginning of the project to match the BPM in the transport (same result).

This one's a head scratcher. It is as though Reaper thinks I want it to calculate a BPM for a selection for two measures instead of one. I find it suspicious (and maybe a clue) that the newly inserted tempo is off by exactly a factor of 2...

Any other settings you can think of for me to check?

Thanks,
Chris
Are you maybe counting eighth notes instead of quarter notes?
What is the time signature set to?
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Old 07-25-2019, 11:51 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Heinen View Post
Hypex - the test tune example is "Always and Forever" by the group Heatwave (circa 1977). It's in 12x8 at about 50 to 51 BPM. I see from juliansader that this issue is a known one, and will be fixed in an upcoming release, so I'll hang on to my test project, retest with the newer release, and update this thread with results.
It's just before my time to when I started listening to music so am not familiar with that one. Certainly wasn't the more upbeat techno song I was thinking of. :-)

So I looked it up myself and also tested. I've seen one score at 12/8 in 50 BPM. And another in 4/4 at 60 BPM.

I first tried with 4/4 and selected a bars worth of four beats. I got the same result as you did with the BPM being around 100.

I then tried 12/8 and selected a bars worth of 12 beats. It got close to the mark around 75 BPM but still off.

To make it easy I ended up cutting out the lead in for a clean start. But I noticed that Reaper liked to divide the bars into six beats on the grid regardless of time signature being set to 12.

I then tried with my own beat mapper. At 4/4 time it was able to map at around 50 BPM. But it only could do so with 12 beats between. Until it went of the mark. :-)

Next I redid it as 12/8 time per measure and it too was able to mark up a map around 50 BPM. Again it did go off the mark. And Reaper counted one bar as two.

I find the tab transient function quite useful when placing cursor to the next beat.

I also downloaded a midi file of the song to extract tempo from but as expected it was out of alignment. Having a midi file mapped to the same exact recording would help. Though they can have tempo marked in strange places.

Last edited by Hypex; 07-26-2019 at 02:53 AM.
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