The good, the bad, and the fuggly...

Digital Perfomer in the context of television/film scoring and post-production.

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MIDI Life Crisis
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The good, the bad, and the fuggly...

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

First, the good. Great piece of freeware for post that will be very helpful to those with time code to keep track of and files that they want to time stamp with different time, and other processing. It works and you can print out reports on hundreds of files at once.

WAVE AGENT LINK HERE

Features from their page include (some features are Windows only):
Playback of polyphonic / monophonic BWF and standard WAV files from any source, up to 12-tracks
Windows (7, Vista, XP) and Mac OS (10.4+) compatible
Supports up to twelve-track WAV files
View and edit metadata
Realtime monitoring of 788T meters and time code display with a connected 788T.
Correction of timecode stamps and frame rates
BWF split and combine via matrix
Batch editing, file-renaming and mono/poly file conversion
Create customized PDF sound reports
Multi-channel metering and monitor mixer
User-configurable graphic user interface (GUI) with drag and drop operation
788T Control Mode interfaces with the 788T via USB. Provides the ability to monitor 12 track meters in real-time, view time code in real-time, start and stop recording, and access the take list (With metadata editing).
The bad... had a long session today at a post house in LA and my some of my DP files (all Bwave and time stamped) did not import into PT accurately. Time stamps were all wrong and a few were also reported incorrect by the above program, so it's not just a PT issue, but some aspects of it may be. Still have to suss that out.

The fuggly... Apparently a big part of the problem is that DP is apparently adding some kind of flag or code or indicator that shows up on import to PT as "Elastic Audio" and we think this may be the root of the problem.
2013 Mac Pro 32GB RAM

OSX 10.14.6; DP 10; Track 16; Finale 26, iPad Pro, et al

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FMiguelez
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Re: The good, the bad, and the fuggly...

Post by FMiguelez »

Wow.
Sorry to hear about that, MLC.

Did you have to waste time and fix everything manually there? What did you do?

If your suspicions turn out to be legit, this is something MOTU must reeeeeeally know about!

Thank you for mentioning that app, BTW. It seems to be quite useful.
What exactly do they mean by "meta-data editing" ? What kind of metadata is this?
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MIDI Life Crisis
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Re: The good, the bad, and the fuggly...

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

In the app it allows you to refer to files by instrument (and I think sfx) type), or VO, etc.

I was pretty organized and had file lists (but not does). There were 175 files and about 60 or 70 didm't import correctly. I know the music and picture well enough that we could move them manually, and as the all started on the same time it wasn't hard. We just checker boarded them. Of course, an OMF would have also solved the problem, but I had so many rewrites on the project that there was no way to output an OMF in time for the session. BWAVs should have popped into the right place and I was planning on doing it that way, but the universe had other plans... We finish tomorrow and hopefully you can see some of this stuff online and on TV later this year.
2013 Mac Pro 32GB RAM

OSX 10.14.6; DP 10; Track 16; Finale 26, iPad Pro, et al

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MIDI Life Crisis
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Re: The good, the bad, and the fuggly...

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

And yes, reported to MOTU via a tech link.
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Re: The good, the bad, and the fuggly...

Post by NazRat »

PT has an option in preferences to import all files as tick based elastic audio - wonder if it had anything to do with that? Automatic spotting of files to time stamps has always been problematic in PT (it doesn't happen, consolidation is easiest). But, the elastic audio thing being flagged in the header by DP, ???
DP8.06 PT11.2.0 VEP 5.3.x
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MIDI Life Crisis
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Re: The good, the bad, and the fuggly...

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

NazRat wrote:PT has an option in preferences to import all files as tick based elastic audio - wonder if it had anything to do with that? Automatic spotting of files to time stamps has always been problematic in PT (it doesn't happen, consolidation is easiest). But, the elastic audio thing being flagged in the header by DP, ???
Thanks, man. After your post I search a bit for more and found this:
Sample based has to do with audio files since they are waves, and Tick has to do with MIDI information because it is data.
So it would make sense NOT to want a timestamp on those files if you wanted to use them to manipulate or loop audio (which again, is what the elastic stuff is about if I am understanding it correctly).

I'll report back if I can get the editor to try a couple of the files, but pretty much everything was coming in at 0:00:00:00. Once imported to PT he could sometimes get the codes to read, but not always. This will be an interesting test to do today. It may not be a DP issue at all!
2013 Mac Pro 32GB RAM

OSX 10.14.6; DP 10; Track 16; Finale 26, iPad Pro, et al

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Re: The good, the bad, and the fuggly...

Post by NazRat »

Your files should have the right time stamps, it's just that PT ignores them. You can see the time stamps on the files in the Workspace browser or by right-clicking the clip in the Clips bin (right side of edit window) and selecting Time Stamp. When you drag/drop/import files to TRACKS, one of three things will happen: they come in at 0:0:0, they'll come in at the insertion point (where you have the cursor in the Edit Window), or you'll be presented with the Spot Dialog. This is dependent on options settings and/or what modifier keys you are holding while dropping. There is no option to automatically spot to the time stamp. Once you have the files imported to tracks, you should be able to put PT in Spot Mode, right-click the clip in the Edit Window, select Spot and then promote (up triangle) the original time stamp. Or you can do that if you drag/drop the files individually in Spot Mode with Auto Spot turned off.

You can also build tracks from the Clips bin in Spot mode, but that involves a couple more steps. Hope all that makes sense.

I don't think the thing about tick and sample based tracks is your focus here. The short version is they determine how the audio or MIDI is anchored in relation to tempo/time changes.
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