Between takes

R

Razor

New member
Hello out there in homeland homerec. I am sittin' here in a strange studio in a strange land needing some cubase info to get me through the next two, maybe (hopefully not) four days.....I've been commissioned to mix this CD project (not as bad as I thought it was going to be, soulful, groovin Texas rock).
The whole thing was adequetly tracked by a young engineer to Cubase 3.7 at 24/48.
I am...um....not really familier with Cubase, yet. After spending four hours checking the songs and tracks out I am impressed with the program as well as the sounds. I can already get around the data management, call stuff up and set up the songs as I need to hear everything alone and in context. The problem is, the engineer is far away and the producer is an idiot (suprise). Nobody here knows anything!!
What I really want to do is separate all of these overdubbs that are clumped into some sort of inextricable "part" file and take them home as discrete wav.s to mix.
HOW DO I DO THIS??? I have until Monday to figure it out so I can ge out of here and mox this thing right at home where they have coffee machines, good converters and know what a half inch tape deck is!!!!
Any help would be, more than ever, greatly appreciated...
Peace,..........Charles
 
Do all of the individual tracks/wav's start at the same time and end at the same time? If so, you could record a 4 beat click at the start of each track. This will allow you to line the wav's up again in another program. Hopefully the data has been organized in some logical way. Is each song in it's own seperate folder? If so, all the wav's each song will be seperate.

Under tools, you will see Audio Pool. In here you can 'purge' unused segments to further narrow down the clutter. Be careful with this though - Make a backup of the whole folder and move it somewhere else on the hard drive before purging - just in case.

If the wav's start halfway through for different tracks (like most of my stuff) - It will be very difficult to line them up on another platform. If you have a access to another cubase machine and a multi-ouput card, you could send them out 8 or more at a time. But still be faced with some sync issues.
 
Thanks Emeric,

No, most of the tracks are flying, scattered around the songs. There are even some drum punches (?!). Is there no way to mix the incomplete tracks to a new track that is the length of the song as in Cool Edit? Or maybe insert silence to the begining.
More important to me right now as I head into a day of swimming around Cubase, is how do I get to the different takes in each track (part?)? Some tracks are made up of four or five punches at different time and nobody knows how to decide which one plays.
I really, really don't want to send this stuff out and bring it back eight at a time. The converts here are not going to help.
Well, maybe there is an upside, they may have to buy Cubase for me so I can do this at home......
 
As for the multiple takes etc. The lowest lane is the one currently playing, if that helps at all. I've never been able to figure that part too well. For multiple takes, I do it on another track, or if it's a take I know I won't keep, I hit CTRL>backspace, not that this is of much help to you now! Nuendo handles this aspect better. Inserting silence would be just as much of a nightmare.

Since a lot of the tracks are scattered all over... Getting them to purchase Cubase for you may be the easiest solution.

I don't quite understand the multi-take problem though. If what your hearing when you hit play is what you plan to keep. Do the purge thing, it will get rid of all the multi-takes that reside on the same track. But, make a backup before trying out the pool/purge thing. My guess is that what they hear is what they want, since none of them know how the program works!
 
Emeric,
Why can't you select all the tracks in cubase by using "select all"
then make the resolution on your song by 1 bar, then drag the selected tracks by moving the mouse to the right (this way all the tracks will move 1 bar foward). Then record on the first traxk a click in the new space you made at the start and copy it to the other tracks.

Can't this be done? . I'm only speculating
 
Hey Shailat,

The problem is that those tracks will be treated as seperate entities. They would have to merged somehow, so that they wouldn't end up as seperate wav's. Same problem as with tracks that start halfway through or wherever in the song.


In short, no it can't be done( it can be done but.. man so much work, it wouldn't be worthwhile, using a 2 track editor you could open every wave and insert a click and sync them up by using the time references in the editor. i.e look at each wave individually, insert the correct amount of space, with a click in reference to the drum track. Assuming it starts on 1).

Better to plan ahead if you intend to transfer it to another recording platform.
 
Well as you know I'm not a Cubase user.

I guess out there with those farm animals and the quiet life of a country boy
Cubase can be the source of some excitment :).


P.S. If I'm finished hopefully we will set up a chat on Tuesday night if possible.
 
How about using Export Audio?

First, set the left locator at the start of the song and set the right locator at the end of the song.

Next, decide which track(s) you want to be in a WAV file and then mute all other tracks except those. Then go into the mixer window and select Export Audio from the master mixer section. In here you can save all unmuted tracks to a WAV file. The WAV file will be the exact length of the song (i.e. the length between the locators). If a part on a track starts halfway through the song, then you've essentially inserted silence before the part.

You can repeat this process to get as many seperate WAVs as you need. Each time just unmute only the parts/tracks you want to be in the file. In the end, all the WAVs should start at the same time---at the start of the song.

The downside to this is that you're going to have a lot of big files. Although if you save them to something like a CD it shouldn't be a problem.

If you have MIDI tracks, you'll need to convert them to audio before doing this whole export thing.

Jim
 
That's It!!

Thanks Jim,

I think that's what I'm going to have to do. Storage is not a problem, yet. Boredom is though....sounds like this is going to take a while.....
Can I get all the little punch-ins that are buried in the tracks out with this method? I would like to have them as descrete wav.s and decide what to do with them later at home? Do I export audio then erase the top punch, do it again, rinse, lather then repeat?
No midi, I'm an audio kinda guy. They brought me in to make the rock here.

Thanks a bunch to everyone, keep those ideas coming, I'm almost through the maze. I want to ge home by Tues. I have this morbid curiosity to be back in Austin if (sigh) ole' W. wins. Just so I can say to my grandkids that I saw first hand people foolishly celebrating the dawn of the new dark ages.....

Cheers.......Charles
 
Damnit Jim, I think your onto something. Does it really create a wav file with the silence and track between the Left and Right markers?

You still have to get these wav's back into whatever you plan to mix on though Razor, what is that? I bet you can still expect some drift. Not to be doom and gloom or anything :)

Good one Jim!



-------

heheh.. yes indeed.. Multitracking software is the height of excitement out here in the styx. Don't use Cubase anymore though.
 
For the punch-ins, I think your idea is right. But instead of erasing, you can just mute. Open up the audio editor for a track in which there are multiple takes. Then mute all the takes except the one you want to save in the file. To mute, just right-click with the mouse and select the mute tool, which looks like an "X". Then use it to mute all the takes but the one you want. Then do the Export Audio, remembering to mute everything else in the song that you don't want to hear in that WAV file. When you're done that you have a file with just that take. You then have to repeat this for each take in the track (lather, rinse at your own discretion :)).

This isn't a foolproof method, however. It could be easier or harder depending on how tricky the punch-ins are. If you're punching in an entire guitar solo at once, no problem. But if you're punching in a couple of notes in the middle of a phrase, it will be harder. In the later case, if someone has already decided the punch-in points, you probably won't be able to reproduce these at exactly the same point. In Cubase, when multiple audio parts are assigned to the same audio channel and they overlap, you'll hear only one of them. I believe that wherever a new part begins, it steals the channel from the part that is currently playing. So the punch-in point is determined by the start of that part. But in your case, the part structure will be gone---each take will start from the beginning of the song. Anyway, it's irrelevant because your software may have a totally different way of handling overlapping audio on the same channel. So if your punch-ins are just a couple of notes in a phrase, you'll have to trim your takes once you get them back into your software. And you'll have to do more editing work to get the punches to sound OK.

With Export Audio, you should hear exactly what would come out of the output of your sound card if you hit play. Cubase will simply divert the audio data to a file instead of sending it to your sound card. It's the same data, including mixing automation and effects. In the Export Audio dialog box, you have the option to disable automation and effects. You'll want to do this if someone before you did a rough, automated mix and you want to throw it away.

Sounds like if you have a lot of tracks and takes, you could be looking at a lot of WAV files and a lot of work to keep track of what's what. If you don't want to buy a copy of Cubase, maybe you could make some use of the demo version. Take the original Cubase project files home with you. You can open it up in the demo version to use as a reference where the punch-ins happen and other things. You won't be able to save anything in the demo version, however.

Emeric: Thanks. Theoretically, you shouldn't see any drift. In the digital world, things happen exactly the same way and the same speed every time. (If not planes would be crashing. :) Well...more than they do.)

Jim
 
Howdy everybody,

Well, back home in satelite Austin with a stack of CDR's and a copy of Cubase. Pretty cool program, actually as y'all know (this is the Cbase forum). I've been trying the export audio idea and I think that I'm doing something wrong.
I solo the desired track (mute all others), set the left and right markers to the beginning and end and hit create file on the master mixer window, it asks for a detination folder and then creates a file there. So far so good.
However when I open the new file in (under breath) Cool Edit Pro, where I'd like to mix this CD, I get a blank wave. I've also tried usion the export audio file option on the file pull-down menu at the top left. What am I doing wrong? Is it a resolution issue? The tracks are all at 24/48 and CEP only has 48/16 or 48/32 float options. That has never been a problem before......
Anyway thanks again for the great ideas. If someone could guide me through this again I'll owe you one.......Charles
 
I've only just come into this but couldn't you have saved the whole audio folder to CDR and transported it that way with the ALL file.?? :)
 
Thanks for responding John, Jim, Emeric et al..

John, maybe I'm misunderstanding your reply, but I think I've already done what you suggest. I just brought home all the tracks (in .all song files) and installed Cubase in order to call them up and listen to them. I was hoping to somehow get the whole thing over to Cool Edit where I'm at home (don't need all the Steinburg plugs, I'd rather run it all through my hardware etc..).
Problem is that all their punches and alternate takes are scattered all around, locked in place by the Cbase song info. I need to mix each track down to a discrete wav and have them all start at the same relative place so I don't have to second guess the placement(s). I know how to do this in CEP but it appears to be difficult or impossible in Cubase.
I guess cross-program session jumping is not so easy unless you are prepared to and can track with that in mind (I wish I had tracked this puppy, I wouldn't be having to clean up somebody elses mess, oh well....it's a living).
I really don't want to drag this on. I'm starting to think that I'm just going to have to get comfy with Cbase and use it to mix this whole project.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, is export audio the answer, does it insert silene to fill in the gaps? What am I doing wrong?........Charles
 
what I meant was to take the file with the songs tracks in it and copy it to CD. Then open the .all file in your computer where you want to mix and tell cubase that the files are in the transported folder. Maybe I'm missing you somewhere??

Cheers
John :)
 
John,

Razor wants to get it into CEP. It would be no prob saving to CDR and reopening in Cubase. This is probably the easiest route... Use Cubase. Better yet, use Nuendo.
 
I'm not sure what's going wrong, Razor. I tried export audio before I originally posted just to make sure and it seemed to work OK. One thing you might try is, before doing the export, play the song through the section where the unmuted part is. If you can hear it playing, then I believe it should be saved to the WAV file as well. You can also try playing the WAV file in some other simple program, like Windows media player or something.

Another simple experiment might help. Start with a new Cubase project and record a quick bit of music about four bars in. The do the export audio thing. Play the WAV file and see if you get four bars of silence before the music.

But if you're getting cozy staying in Cubase, that's good too.

Jim
 
Thanks all and all apologies for the delay. I decided to move the studio into the main room here. Isn't it amazing how many miles of cable there are supporting just a simple set-up?

John - You are, as usual, quite right. I wish this had been tracked with Steinburg's latest offering. Alas I am trapped in Cubase (no offense to all). No problem, just
as the Chinese symbol for crisis (problem, challange) is the same as the one for opportunity, this challange has offered me some new insights. I like some aspects of this program, and got it for free (couldn't talk them into Nuendo), but still would prefer to mix in another environment.

Jim, you are, as usual, da man. It seems that the track to be exported must be assigned to the master out, not to a bus out as I was trying earlier. As soon as I switched all tracks back to the master out, they exported like a dream.

Now I must decide if it is worth the time and possible degredation of the tracks to re-create the majority of them and move into CEP where I am truely more comforable and can do better and more efficient work. To tell the truth, this project was so, um....haphazardly recorded that I almost think it would be worth it to do a little reorganization and level management. Plus I could get everything to 32 bit until it's mixed to 1/2 inch.

Anyway, as always thank you all for helping. Now I have to finish rewiring, I'm tracking the bass tommorrow.
Cheers.......Charles
 
one last time!!

Alright,

If I haven't bored y'all yet I got one more:

I've decided to just jump in a mix this thing where it was born: in Cbase. BUT, to do so with any semblence of sanity, I must be able to automate the faders with a midi controler.
By luck, I have access to a (don't laugh) a Peavy PC 1600, borrowed my friend down the road, Mark (who designed and makes the RNC).
Can Cubase be set up to recognize this peice, and if so how,
Thanks....Charles
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top