media explorer?

babag · 08-12-2011, 04:40 PM

just read the media explorer section in the manual for v4 and it didn't
address the issue i'm having. i have looping turned off but can't seem
to get items dragged into tracks from the media explorer to behave in,
what i'd call, a normal manner.

what i want is to be able to select a small portion of a wav in the
media explorer and drag that to a track. after that i want to be able
to pull the ends of the item to reveal more or less of the underlying
wav content.

what i get when i drag items to a track and try to 'open' or 'close'
them further is a notch at the top of the item in the spot where the
original item boundaries are. the extended area is, then, blank. if i
have looping turned on i get the same material as displayed within the
original item boundaries repeating itself.

how do i get the item to reveal additional material from the wav?

thanks,
BabaG

babag · 08-12-2011, 08:44 PM

i can't believe there's no answer for this. really?

chriscomfort · 08-12-2011, 10:28 PM

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be how it works. Reaper does not recognize any material outside of the selection that you make when dragging from the Media Explorer. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me (either).

richie43 · 08-12-2011, 10:32 PM

Is it possible that the notch is just showing you the end of the clip? Maybe these are shorter clips and don't have anything beyond that....?

chriscomfort · 08-12-2011, 10:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richie43

Is it possible that the notch is just showing you the end of the clip? Maybe these are shorter clips and don't have anything beyond that....?

Nope. Try it. I used a long sound fx sample of foot steps, isolated a single step in the Media Explorer, and dragged that selection to the Main window. The only part available is that single stop. Regardless of which edge I drag out. Same single step when "slipping" the waveform inside the audio item.

The best thing to do is to drag the entire wave into the project then edit to desired length there. Its a real bummer.

Kebo · 08-12-2011, 11:06 PM

Very annoying having to drag in a huge clip to use a small section. Then you try making a slightly larger selection to compensate, only to find you need a bit more later haha. Would like to see this as a feature request. +1

richie43 · 08-12-2011, 11:07 PM

Maybe that's where i got confused; I was a computer user before a DAW user, so I still don't even use the Reaper media explorer. Instead I have always pulled files from a Windows folder into Reaper and edited. It always seemed easier to me than the Media Explorer, but that's my (laborious) work-flow. I have messed with the media explorer but have never gelled with it.

babag · 08-13-2011, 10:28 AM

sounds more like a bug fix than feature request to me but whatever.
the footsteps example is exactly the kind of thing i'm doing. long
samples, up to 25 minutes, and just want to bring in a few seconds.
working with things like sound effects is completely free of grid
oriented rhythm, which means it's far more likely to want to bring
in material in rough form and refine its length and placement after
it's in place. the current behavior makes that a lot harder to accomplish.
the solution of bringing in entire files and trimming in the timeline
is unworkable in this context as i often have little or no room for
something like a 25 minute file to be dropped in just to grab a few
seconds. after all, i thought that's what the media explorer was for.
how do we get this fixed?

BabaG