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Old 07-05-2020, 09:49 AM   #1
Metrobot
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Default (SOLVED) Help. Constant problems with tempo/sync and grid alignment.

I posted this a week or so ago in the newbies section but I haven't heard anything so I thought I'd give it a shot here.
I don't know if I have a setting wrong but this is driving me crazy because it has wasted so much of my time.

The session I'm working on has a lot of tempo changes and It seems to be problematic:

1) sometimes I can't delete a section without reaper throwing everything out of whack (sometimes on either side of the cut).
Timings can be off by a measure or by a tiny fraction from the grid which requires me to quantize it again.
If I don't catch it right away I have to to go back and spend an hour or 2 trying to put items back in alignment.

2)I've also noticed on close inspection that some markers and regions are just slightly off of the grid
and when making selections (and edits) sometimes my selection snaps to the marker/region and not the grid.
So there must be loads of edits and selections that this has happened and I haven't noticed.

3) The other day most of my time signature and tempo changes and had disappeared from a couple of sections.
so I was attempting to copy and paste some of the tempo changes from a slightly older version to the current version. However,
I could not copy and paste the tempo envelope without it moving the remaining tempo changes farther down the timeline.

4) On occasion, I've also had Reaper add a tempo change marker with a value of 500-900bpm at the edit points and having to delete those as well.

I have snap to grid on. and I don't use ripple editing that often.
Ripple editing is set to 'Ripple edit all tracks' and 'Add edge points when ripple editing or inserting time"
In my project setting, I have Timebase for Items/envelopes/markers set to Beat (position, length, rate)

I've uploaded a couple of screenshots: one of midi notes, and the other of regions being slightly off by just a fraction.

-M
Attached Images
File Type: png Screen Shot midi notes.png (22.5 KB, 122 views)
File Type: png Screen Shot Regions.png (13.2 KB, 113 views)

Last edited by Metrobot; 08-11-2020 at 09:57 AM.
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Old 08-08-2020, 12:01 AM   #2
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What sort of music are you working with? Does it have variable human timing or exact techno timing? So to speak.



With exact timing it should be no problem.


I find the grid can go off the tempo map for some reason. I mostly work with inexact fractional tempos in Reaper. For this I am using these settings. Timebase for items/envelopes/markers set to Time. Timebase for tempo/time signature envelope set to Beats.
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Old 08-08-2020, 02:17 AM   #3
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Quote:
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2)I've also noticed on close inspection that some markers and regions are just slightly off of the grid
Try to disable "Forse project tempo/time signature changes to occur on whole samples" in project settings if its on.
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Old 08-10-2020, 09:31 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hypex View Post
What sort of music are you working with? Does it have variable human timing or exact techno timing? So to speak.



With exact timing it should be no problem.


I find the grid can go off the tempo map for some reason. I mostly work with inexact fractional tempos in Reaper. For this I am using these settings. Timebase for items/envelopes/markers set to Time. Timebase for tempo/time signature envelope set to Beats.
Hello Hypex,
Thank you for your reply.
It's exact timing (all MIDI) but plenty of time signatue and temo changes.
At the moment I have items/envelopes/markers set to 'Beats (position, length, rate)' and tempo/time-signature envelope to 'Beats'
Basically any Items can get screwed up if I use: remove contents of time selection (moving later items) copy and drag a region and its contents.
the items can become problematic if they are not the entire lenghth of the project. So if i'm going to insert a new section I have to glue all the items on each track together. It seems that sometimes midi notes will move inside the item as well. These problems don't happen to all the items, just some.
This has been my first project with reaper. I'm going to do one more after this one but in all seriousness I'm so pissed off and fed up with spending countless wasted hours cleaning up messes that it may be a deal breaker for me and I'll have to find another DAW. I really don't want to so I really Hope I can get this sorted. I'll try those settings.
Thanks for your help.
-M
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Old 08-10-2020, 09:37 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Embass View Post
Try to disable "Forse project tempo/time signature changes to occur on whole samples" in project settings if its on.
Thanks Embass,
I currently have "Force project tempo/time signature changes to occur on whole samples" un-checked.
-M
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Old 08-10-2020, 10:48 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Metrobot View Post
This has been my first project with reaper. I'm going to do one more after this one but in all seriousness I'm so pissed off and fed up with spending countless wasted hours cleaning up messes that it may be a deal breaker for me and I'll have to find another DAW. I really don't want to so I really Hope I can get this sorted.
Ah, you'll be fine with Reaper. This was quite an ambitious first project, just because:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Metrobot View Post
plenty of time signature and tempo changes.
I suspect that there is a small hole in your knowledge here - it's the reason for all your problems, and the reason you're having to find workarounds for Reaper's behaviour.

Basically, you will need to be reasonably well versed in the functions of Timebases as they relate to the Project, the Track and the Item. I speak from bitter experience - if your timebase is wrong, it will mess everything up, and you'll be constantly cleaning up after yourself - especially if you're working with tempo changes.

Learn the timebases - but also, for your next project, maybe try something a little simpler!



Last edited by Fex; 08-10-2020 at 10:55 AM.
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Old 08-10-2020, 11:12 AM   #7
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Ah, you'll be fine with Reaper. This was quite an ambitious first project, just because:I suspect that there is a small hole in your knowledge here - it's the reason for all your problems, and the reason you're having to find workarounds for Reaper's behaviour.

Basically, you will need to be reasonably well versed in the functions of Timebases as they relate to the Project, the Track and the Item. I speak from bitter experience - if your timebase is wrong, it will mess everything up, and you'll be constantly cleaning up after yourself - especially if you're working with tempo changes.

Learn the timebases - but also, for your next project, maybe try something a little simpler!


Thanks Fex..That gave me a smile! you are probably right and I have suspected it myself. I really like this DAW and it's potential is amazing so ya..I wan't to stick with it.
-M
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Old 08-10-2020, 12:31 PM   #8
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FWIW, I work in two entirely different ways with tempo/time signature changes, depending on what I'm doing;

If I'm recording a song written on a guitar, and I know where and what I want the changes to be, I'll program them before I play a single note, and that will make the entire recording process flow much more smoothly;

If, OTOH, I'm messing about with some samples, and something starts to tke shape, I'll often open a second project tab as a sandbox in which to experiment with time sig & tempo changes, so that if I mess things up too badly (which I frequently do, because I'm lazy and allergic to mathematics), the original structure will remain intact.

I do this sort of thing less and less as my confidence grows, but I've been doing this sort of thing for decades, and time still confuses the hell out of me.

I think I might need to get one of these, preferably implemented as a VST....

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Old 08-10-2020, 01:12 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by Fex View Post
FWIW, I work in two entirely different ways with tempo/time signature changes, depending on what I'm doing;

If I'm recording a song written on a guitar, and I know where and what I want the changes to be, I'll program them before I play a single note, and that will make the entire recording process flow much more smoothly;

If, OTOH, I'm messing about with some samples, and something starts to tke shape, I'll often open a second project tab as a sandbox in which to experiment with time sig & tempo changes, so that if I mess things up too badly (which I frequently do, because I'm lazy and allergic to mathematics), the original structure will remain intact.

I do this sort of thing less and less as my confidence grows, but I've been doing this sort of thing for decades, and time still confuses the hell out of me.

I think I might need to get one of these, preferably implemented as a VST....

Generally I approach time as I go until I get to a certain point where I'm not really paying attention to any bar lines or time signatures. When I'm finished with the composing I usually go back and figure out what time signatures are where so there can be quite a lot of them.
-M
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Old 08-11-2020, 09:16 AM   #10
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Originally Posted by Metrobot View Post
Hello Hypex,
Thank you for your reply.
It's exact timing (all MIDI) but plenty of time signatue and temo changes.
At the moment I have items/envelopes/markers set to 'Beats (position, length, rate)' and tempo/time-signature envelope to 'Beats'

Okay for midi that should be fine. The timebase video was good at explaining it. But it didn't have midi.


Quote:
Basically any Items can get screwed up if I use: remove contents of time selection (moving later items) copy and drag a region and its contents.
the items can become problematic if they are not the entire lenghth of the project. So if i'm going to insert a new section I have to glue all the items on each track together. It seems that sometimes midi notes will move inside the item as well. These problems don't happen to all the items, just some.

I'm used to seeing this with normal media items. Trying to do a simple duplicate of a whole time selection did my head in for ages. I got all weird stuff going on like Reaper would stop dead after the duplicate when playing. There's a thread here about it somewhere lol. I found using regions helped. But I also found a duplicate didn't copy the tempo map. So I ended up just writing my own macros for editing in the action list. I found I could only duplicate if I split the items at the time selection, even when using the action to duplicate the time selection!



Quote:
This has been my first project with reaper. I'm going to do one more after this one but in all seriousness I'm so pissed off and fed up with spending countless wasted hours cleaning up messes that it may be a deal breaker for me and I'll have to find another DAW. I really don't want to so I really Hope I can get this sorted. I'll try those settings.

Thanks for your help.
-M

I think Reaper does have a hard leaning curve. After reviewing it the last few years I think it's a music program for programmers. It wasn't long before I started writing some custom actions and then needed a script. :-D


It's not in the Edit menu but there is an action to copy items/tracks/envelopes which you will need to copy things like the tempo envelope and other automation.
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Old 08-11-2020, 09:56 AM   #11
Metrobot
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fex View Post
FWIW, I work in two entirely different ways with tempo/time signature changes, depending on what I'm doing;

If I'm recording a song written on a guitar, and I know where and what I want the changes to be, I'll program them before I play a single note, and that will make the entire recording process flow much more smoothly;

If, OTOH, I'm messing about with some samples, and something starts to tke shape, I'll often open a second project tab as a sandbox in which to experiment with time sig & tempo changes, so that if I mess things up too badly (which I frequently do, because I'm lazy and allergic to mathematics), the original structure will remain intact.

I do this sort of thing less and less as my confidence grows, but I've been doing this sort of thing for decades, and time still confuses the hell out of me.

I think I might need to get one of these, preferably implemented as a VST....

Got it sorted!
I found that when I delete sections that contained time signatures or deleted the time signatues themselves it would start throwing things off.
When I changed Timebase for tempo/time/signature envelope to 'Time'
and started cutting and deleting everything stayed as it should!
Damn...all that trouble for just a tiny thing.
What a relief. I had considered the time base settings some weeks ago but setting the tempo and time signatures to 'time' didn't make sense to me because if you have a tempo/time signature marker at 3:00 and you cut a section, you'd think that setting it would cause the marker to stay anchored at 3:00. So I thought If you want it to move forward the same amount of the cut then you'd set it to 'beats'.
Anyway, thanks again fellas because I thought this was a glitch and it was driving me nuts.

-M
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Old 08-11-2020, 10:25 AM   #12
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I'm glad you got it sorted.
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