Adding a Recordable Pick-Up Measure

[Movies]

I'll try to explain this as best I can:

Starting a new forty-eight measure cue for a scene in a film, I have done the following:

1. Placed locked markers at the beginning and end of the scene
2. Set the chunk start time so the first frame (locked marker 1) corresponds to 1|1|000
3. Configured the Change Tempo dialogue box to indicate that measures 1|1|000 to 49|1|000 correspond to the frames of the locked markers
4. Enabled a click (obvs)

Everything is good to go; DP worked out a reasonable tempo and everything is fine.

THE PROBLEM Simply adding a count-off at the beginning, while helpful time-wise, sometimes cuts off the attack of some of the notes I'm hitting on the downbeat of 1|1|000. So, I tried adding a measure starting at 0|1|000, thinking that if I record starting there, it'll pick up the attack. It turns out, though, that while DP will START at 0|1|000, it doesn't begine recording until measure 1|1|000 -- it just plays from 0|1|00 like a countoff.

MY QUESTION: Is there away to keep everything set up just how I have it, but get DP to record that first measure along with measure 1|1|000 to 49|1|000 so I can keep the attack?

Thanks!

[Gravity Jim]

Why can't you just shift everything -- the cue, the markers, the conductor track, the movie start time, everything -- one measure later, and begin the scene at 2/1/000? What am I missing?

I think I actually start recording at 2/1/000 more often than I ever do at 1/1/000, for exactly the reason you describe: the defining attack of a bass guitar note, for example, is very easily lost otherwise.

[Movies]

If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, I tried that and it just changes the numbers around with the same effect.

Like, the film sequence will then go from 2|1|000 to 50|1|000 and I'll try to start recording at measure 1|1|000 in an effort to get a good attack at the beginning of measure 2|1|000, but then DP will just play measures 1|1|000 to 2|1|000 like a count-off and not recording anything.

[markarnest]

Have you tried shifting the offending instruments to 1/1/001? Unless you have Fred-Astaire-like ears, the difference will be inaudible, and it ought to fix the attack problem.

Mark Arnest
Colorado Springs, Colorado

[Movies]

Mark: I'm not sure what you mean.

I need to come in on the downbeat at the beginning of the first measure of the forty-eight measure sequence of this scene.

The problem is that, regardless of how early I set the auto-rewind, DP only starts recording at exactly the beginning of the first marker. There's nothing recorded that's offending anything because there's nothing recorded at all yet -- and I can't get things recorded correctly because the attack of the first note, which often times happens micro-temporally before a downbeat, is cut off. If I were to move everything up to 1|1|001, the same thing would happen, but at 1|1|001 instead of 1|1|000, you know?

[Shooshie]

1) Add the time/frame equivalent of 1 bar to the scene.
2) Start the recording at bar 1, but hit your attacks at bar 2, thus the real start is at bar 2.
3) Later, when the scene is done, figure out the best way to get all the attacks to happen at or after bar 2.

• • Maybe it just means moving the bass ever so slightly for the first note.
  • Maybe it means selecting all and time scaling so that the whole sequence is ever-so-slightly shorter, then shifting so that everything clears the barline.
  • Or maybe it means starting the cue at 1|4|478.

4) Once you've solved that little problem, snip-off the silent bar up to the starting point.
5) Adjust start time as necessary.


Alternatively: teach all performers to enter at or after the beat. You can move them back to the beat if their entrance is noticeably late. I learned to do this early on, and it's doable.

Even better: use the "WAIT" function to start recording the sequence when the performer's first attack is detected. I think this is the method I use the most often.

Shooshie

[Movies]

1) Add the time/frame equivalent of 1 bar to the scene.

I tried this, but maybe I did it weirdly because it knocked my locked markers off of position for some reason.

How it's set up now, measure 2|1|000 corresponds to frame 0:00:52:16 and Measure 50|1|000 is at 00:01:41:26. I set the auto-rewind to measure 1|1|00 and saw that it corresponds to frame 00:00:51:15. So, I set the Chunk start time to

Measure: 1|1|000 and
Frame: 00:00:51:15

and figured that should fix it, but when I did, it displaced where my locked markers are -- with regard to measure markings AND with regard to where they're supposed to be in the film.

[Gravity Jim]

Movies, when you simply shift everything later, then you end up with an entire measure where DP is recording before your cue actually begins. WHy would it not start recording until 2/1/000? WHen I do this, DP is reording from 1/1/000, but I don't play until 2/1/000, givingme a full measure of countoff while DP is actually recording.

Like Shooshie is describing. That's what I meant.

[labman]

We always start at bar 5. In case some wild composer keeps adding longer pickups !

[Movies]

Jim: Perhaps this is a limitation due to how I'm setting things up in the Change Tempo dialogue box. If you're talking about literally making everything a measure later, (1) the measure designations will no longer line up with the video and (2) simply including another measure at the beginning in my original measure-math will cause Change Tempo to change calculate a different tempo (and for some reason knocks my locked markers out of sync with their frame-position).

Granted: I could be totally misunderstanding what you're suggesting.

[markarnest]

Movies: I guess I don't quite understand what your problem is. Are you recording audio or MIDI? If it's MIDI, all you have to do is make sure you don't start playing before 1/1/000, and then edit the note to begin at the proper time.

The point of shifting a MIDI attack to 1/1/001 is that there's some latency involved with certain combinations of sequencer and sound module that can result in notes at the very start of a sequence not playing. The point is to shift the start of the note - NOT the start of recording! - to 1/1/001. If you shift everything, then you're right, you'd have the same problem one clock over...

--Mark

[Movies]

Right.

MIDI would be easy! In that case the 1|1|001 trick would be aces, for sure.

I'm recording acoustic guitars, which is, perhaps, the problem.

[Gravity Jim]

Just shift everything one measure later - everything, including your markers and tempo map - and change the start time of the movie to the frame corresponding to 2/1/000. I don't see how this can be a problem... everything will line up just as it did before, but with one extra measure in the sequence before it all begins.

Right?

[Movies]

It's a problem because Change Tempo is calculating a tempo based on the the forty-eight measure sequence that I told it to. For some reason, if you tell the Change Tempo dialogue box that you want a pattern to go from, say, 10|1|000 to 30|1|000 it thinks, "Okay, but I'm not going to let you record anything before measure 10|1|000 -- even if you set the Chunk Start Time to an earlier measure."

So, the problem with your solution, if I'm understanding it, is this:

I've told the Change Tempo feature to find a tempo that makes the distance between two locked markers forty-eight measures -- starting at 1|1|000 and ending at 49|1|000 -- and it did. If I were to move everything forward one measure hoping to give myself a recordable extra measure of time, the very last measure (50|1|000) would be outside of the boundary of the calculated tempo.

No?

[Gravity Jim]

Not if you shifted the Tempo information in the Conductor track, too.

Or do I not understand where DP is storing your tempo? I think when you use Change Tempo it stores that information in the Conductor track.....