v6.30rc7 - June 26 2021

[nofish]

v6.30rc7 - June 26 2021
* Includes feature branch: render normalization
* Includes feature branch: EEL2 x86_64/SSE
* Includes feature branch: VST3 bridging
+ Super8: fix cell alignment [t=254982]
# JSFX: more loudness meter layout improvements
# JSFX: separate controls for LUFS-S and LRA in loudness meter

Full changelog / Latest pre-releases

[Zeno]

Originally Posted by nofish

# JSFX: more loudness meter layout improvements
# JSFX: separate controls for LUFS-S and LRA in loudness meter

Thank you, Devs! Looks very good! I'm mega hyped for the official release.

[RovingEye]

Originally Posted by nofish

+ Super8: fix cell alignment

Thanks, working perfectly now.

[chmaha]

Brilliant stuff! Thanks again for all your hard work...

[blumpy]

Fantastic features!!!!

[X-Raym]

Still tiny bits of overlapping in the JSFX

Meter scale on the right:




Min size:



Min height, wider width:






With panel opened, overlapping is even bigger at min height:




Y scaling small:




Also, I missed it, what is the diff between M and ? buttons ? They both seems to just open the settings. They do hasclick = 2 in the source code.
Edit: oh, M is a MONO indicator, which disappear if a stereo source is passed. I thought it was a Mute button cause it is very similar to the one in TCP, and look like a button because of the square around the M.
Not sure a press action has to be link to it as it is just an indicator.


Final touch, "?" can have mouse hover state with white background and dark character so we can feel it is a button before clicking

[zappa]

(posted in rc3 thread but lost as rc4 already out)

I'm wondering whether all these normalisation improvements address longstanding issues I'm having with Reaper's inbuilt normalise function which I've had to work around for some years? The nuts and bolts of it are in a bug report posted back in the 4.xx days, still open on the 'legacy bugtracker' now? See my sig for details.

[drew]

Very excited to see v6.30 preparing for the big-time! Thanks so much for all the LUFS love & render normalisation.

A couple of last minute thoughts..
I think it would be healthy to not have "cancel" button focused during render, as an accidental press of space bar etc near the end of a long render eg. if you think another window has focus or screen is off is such a pain!

Default focus on Info would feel safer, but I appreciate there may be some other consideration here.


Also when rendering a longer item with silences there is no graphical indication of position reached. Not an issue with songs (Cage 4'33 excepted) or continual speech blocks, but with a narration stem or occasional SFX sync (or indeed a video with no soundtrack!) there's no darkened/hatched background in the unrendered part or any vertical strip to show where it has reached.

[Phazma]

Originally Posted by drew

Also when rendering a longer item with silences there is no graphical indication of position reached. Not an issue with songs (Cage 4'33 excepted) or continual speech blocks, but with a narration stem or occasional SFX sync (or indeed a video with no soundtrack!) there's no darkened/hatched background in the unrendered part or any vertical strip to show where it has reached.

True, that is why some users have suggested a progress bar (ideally of the same length of the peaks window).

Another, maybe easier to implement, solution could be to have a vertical bar move through the peaks window, somewhat like this:

[X-Raym]

Vertical cursor as progress bar is better IMHO but progress bar can still be use in addition to handle progression of all files which need to be render. Incrementation can then just be based on the file number against total file count.

[Phazma]

Originally Posted by X-Raym

Vertical cursor as progress bar is better IMHO but progress bar can still be use in addition to handle progression of all files which need to be render. Incrementation can then just be based on the file number against total file count.

That is a GREAT idea! Vertical cursor to see progress of individual files and progress bar for the whole render process in general.

Not sure I understand your last sentence about incrementation though... do you mean something that says "2/5 renders completed?" that displays over progress bar?

[drew]

It needs to be thick enough to be clearly visible from a bit of distance as renders that take a few mins tend to mean you're not right in front of the screen throughout, ideally.

I think someone had proposed a darkened area for the unrendered part, but of course if it's the same colour as the peaks then it would just look like brickwall limited audio!

Hence thinking a darker grey or hatched/striped area for the unrendered part - but not for me to specify a design. Just hoping progress can be made nice & clear by whatever form. (I do a lot of renders in a day )

[Mercado_Negro]

Talking about the "Info" button. I don't know if it's just me but I have had that moment where I've clicked that button expecting to read a "report" of the render, a text where I can read all the measurements (including the ones that don't show in the text below the meter). Then I've thought that it would be very nice if it were a text we could save somewhere to send it to our Mastering Engineers, A&R's, artist, etc.

[Zeno]

Originally Posted by Mercado_Negro

Talking about the "Info" button. I don't know if it's just me but I have had that moment where I've clicked that button expecting to read a "report" of the render, a text where I can read all the measurements (including the ones that don't show in the text below the meter). Then I've thought that it would be very nice if it were a text we could save somewhere to send it to our Mastering Engineers, A&R's, artist, etc.

You mean something like the txt export in SWS Loudness? Good idea! There should really be an option for this in the render window!

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

It's possible to write a script to do this with Reaper's API.

[Mercado_Negro]

Originally Posted by Zeno

You mean something like the txt export in SWS Loudness? Good idea! There should really be an option for this in the render window!

Exactly!

[Zeno]

Originally Posted by Meo-Ada Mespotine

It's possible to write a script to do this with Reaper's API.

Yeah I know. TBH I don't really care, since mastering is not my main discipline. But AFAIK sending a PDF with loudness data is not uncommon as part of the proof of work cycle for mastering engineers. So why not give them the option to save a few extra steps and provide a txt export as a checkmark in the render to file window?

[schwa]

You can select and copy the peak, loudness, etc text in the render window. And as M-A M says, there's a ReaScript call that will return the raw data too.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Originally Posted by schwa

You can select and copy the peak, loudness, etc text in the render window. And as M-A M says, there's a ReaScript call that will return the raw data too.

Thinking about this, would it be feasible to have a wildcard for metadata, that allows putting this directly into the mediafiles? For instance into the comment field for MP3s or so?
Reading metadata should be easy to do for most daws out there and would make exchanging a second file for loudness-measures not needed. One would just tell "read the comment field of the metadata for loudness information".

[kytdkut]

Originally Posted by Meo-Ada Mespotine

Thinking about this, would it be feasible to have a wildcard for metadata, that allows putting this directly into the mediafiles? For instance into the comment field for MP3s or so?
Reading metadata should be easy to do for most daws out there and would make exchanging a second file for loudness-measures not needed. One would just tell "read the comment field of the metadata for loudness information".

this would be amazing...

[X-Raym]

@Meo-Ada Mespotine
BWF has Loudness, Loudness Range, True Peak Level, Max Momentary Loudness, and Max Short Term Loudness fields
MP3 has ReplayGain

Though I'm not sure how much this is used... It has to answer specific workflow need I guess.

[Phazma]

Originally Posted by Zeno

But AFAIK sending a PDF with loudness data is not uncommon as part of the proof of work cycle for mastering engineers.

Is this really a common thing? Never happened to me, not even in postproduction where loudness requirements can be rather strict.

[X-Raym]

Never happened to me, not even in postproduction where loudness requirements can be rather strict.

I suppose post production people would use their own analysis tool instead to be sure the audio file match the requirements ?

[Phazma]

Originally Posted by X-Raym

I suppose post production people would use their own analysis tool instead to be sure the audio file match the requirements ?

Exactly. If your file doesn't comply they will let you know and otherwise you're fine.

Same experience in music production. People give references, you analyze them, try to be in the same ballpark and usually it's fine and if not they just ask if it can be louder or less compressed or whatever.

So as said, for none of the works I have done so far I was ever asked to provide a spreadsheet with loudness values or similar..

[Mercado_Negro]

It's OK, t'was just an idea!

[Zeno]

Originally Posted by Phazma

Is this really a common thing? Never happened to me

It has never happened to me either. No client has ever asked me for anything like this. But I have seen it a few times on others. Maybe it's just service to cover all eventualities in advance, maybe difficult to handle A&Rs were involved. Who knows. As I said, mastering is not my business. I just read the request and thought it was a good idea. Since Schwa has pointed out that the values can be copied from the render window, the topic has settled for me.

[planetnine]

Originally Posted by X-Raym

@Meo-Ada Mespotine
BWF has Loudness, Loudness Range, True Peak Level, Max Momentary Loudness, and Max Short Term Loudness fields
MP3 has ReplayGain

Though I'm not sure how much this is used... It has to answer specific workflow need I guess.

I think the BWF loudness fields are used to mark audio so that broadcast replay systems’ automatic gain can pick it up to align it with relevant loudness policies amongst other things...

>

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Originally Posted by planetnine

I think the BWF loudness fields are used to mark audio so that broadcast replay systems’ automatic gain can pick it up to align it with relevant loudness policies amongst other things...

>

Iirc, the ReplayGain in id3 has the same purpose.