Old 12-31-2007, 10:26 AM   #1
axeman
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Default "consolidate" query ('bext'/level)

Greetings,

Just tried recording a few tracks last night, using a few punches that were located at various points on tracks (most of which contained at least a minute or more of silence before/after). When finished, I tried using the "consolidate" feature and, much to my surprise, I ended up with more WAV files than tracks--and each WAV was shorter than its corresponding original track.

Based on a little experimentation, I determined that this was due to the "Ignore silence shorter than (30) seconds" option and was able to re-consolidate everything as expected by disabling it entirely. Of course, this resulted in long WAV files--that, much to my surprise, ended up with trailing (audio) silence as well.

Did a little research today and found that it was probably best to go with the "Ignore silence shorter than (x) seconds" option and use the corresponding "Write BWF ('bext') chunk" as well, as long as the importing DAW can interpret this information correctly. In this particular case, I'm trying to test the results with Pro Tools LE (version 6 I believe), but am wondering if this approach should be workable. (The Pro Tools LE installation isn't mine, so I can't verify directly.)

Also, although it seems like a stupid question, the consolidated WAV files seemed a bit softer than the originals--although I think this may just be an illusion based on the way the waveforms appeared when I opened them up in Audacity (briefly). Just wanted to ensure that the "consolidate" function should retain the level of the source tracks--and that the master volume setting should not impact it in any way. (I had to keep the master down a little to keep the mix from clipping and just wanted to ensure that this wasn't lowering the level of the consolidated WAV files as well.)

Thanks a lot and take care,


Alan

P.S. Happy new year!
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Old 12-31-2007, 11:50 AM   #2
Lawrence
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Consolidation appears to me to be pre-fader / pre-fx so the volume level should be identical.

I'm pretty sure it is.

P.S. .... avoid consolidating to mp3. It screws up the sync. Justin suggests using *.ogg if you will be sharing your consolidated tracks.

Last edited by Lawrence; 12-31-2007 at 11:56 AM.
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Old 12-31-2007, 04:09 PM   #3
axeman
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Hi Lawrence,

Thanks a lot for the feedback. As a test, I actually tried importing all the shorter WAV files that I originally created using the "consolidate" function--and imported them all into REAPER on my laptop (running from a USB memory stick, which is also very cool). The individual track levels definitely seemed to be the same as they were originally.

Also, I did a little bit of experimentation in terms of using the "Write BWF ('bext') chunk" data and found three ways to place each WAV file in its proper place:

1. Look at the time of the start offset, move the cursor there (using a marker), and insert the media item there.

2. Insert the media item at the beginning of the track (or anywhere really), but then copy/paste the start offset time in the item's "Position" box.

3. (the best) Use the "move items to source preferred position" option in the "item processing" menu to have the item automatically moved where it belongs.

Haven't been able to get my friend to test putting these in Pro Tools LE yet, but I'm optimistic that he should be able to do the equivalent of this functionality on his end.

All the best,


Alan
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Old 04-28-2008, 06:02 AM   #4
John Lundsten
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Quote:
Originally Posted by axeman View Post
Hi Lawrence,

3. (the best) Use the "move items to source preferred position" option in the "item processing" menu to have the item automatically moved where it belongs.
Alan
Great, I'm so glad this is possible in Reaper (i'm v new to the prog BTW) I was looking for snap to timestamp or sync to BWF, but so it's "source preferred position"

This is a function I use loads, so I set up a keyboard shortcut, which was wonderfully easy to do a real joy compared to other software!
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