Quantize an Entire Track from Chopper? -ACID Product Family

Subject:Quantize an Entire Track from Chopper? Posted by: randygo Date:4/6/2006 10:11:55 AM I was experimenting again last night with importing an old drum track for a song into Acid 6.0. The tempo was a little uneven in the original track, I wanted to see if I could quantize it to a steady tempo. I was extremely pleased with the result I achieved, however there is one thing that would have saved me an hour of repetitive and tedious point-and-clicking. First, I opened the track in Chopper and added a marker every two measures (eight beats). This resulted in about 50 markers. As I added each new marker I auditioned the loop region it made with the previous marker in chopper to ensure a seamless loop. When I had finished, I had about 50 contiguous loopable segments. This part was a little time consuming, but I accept that some human interaction is required here to get the segments just right. Now I simply wanted to drop this result into a track as 50 consecutive loops, thereby quantizing the track. A simple thing I thought, but it took forever! For each of the 50 segments I had to: 1) Highlight one of the 50 segments in the Chopper 2) Right-click "Chop to new Clip..." 3) Give it a unique file name 4) Paint the clip onto the track 5) Right-click "Clip Properties" 6) Select "Loop" from the dropdown 7) Change tabs and select my prefered stretch algorithm 8) Click Save 9) Adjust the loop length in the track to fill two bars 10) Drag the loop to the correct bar The result sounded awesome, but there really should be an easier way of doing this. Am I missing something? Wouldn't it be great to have an option in Chopper that will autochop an entire set of marked regions into a track as contiguous loops? That way, after I had arranged my 50 markers in the Chopper window I could right-click and select, say, "Chop To Track Loops..." and my job would be done. Has anyone here faced a similar situation, or is my experience not reflective of a real world editing scenario? Cheers, Randy
Subject:RE: Quantize an Entire Track from Chopper? Reply by: Iacobus Date:4/6/2006 11:30:41 AM You could cut a couple steps out by doing some things in Sound Forge (full version), like using its "extract regions" feature to automatically extract and name regions without having to name each sample. But you'd still have to manually insert all those events onto the timeline. I wouldn't be surprised to see application scripting make it into ACID Pro at some point (just not in this version). Then we can have JohnnyRoy be our code monkey! :) Iacobus ------- RodelWorks - Original Music for the Unafraid Buy Instant ACID by JohnnyRoy and mD! mD at ACIDplanet
Subject:RE: Quantize an Entire Track from Chopper? Reply by: randygo Date:4/6/2006 2:57:55 PM Yeah, Vegas-like scripting could solve this providing the API is rich enough. What are the chances scripting will make it into a future version of Acid? Cheers, Randy
Subject:RE: Quantize an Entire Track from Chopper? Reply by: Iacobus Date:4/8/2006 1:54:29 PM Considering both Vegas and Sound Forge now have it, I wouldn't be surprised to see it in ACID Pro at some point. Iacobus

Subject:Quantize an Entire Track from Chopper?

Posted by: randygo

Date:4/6/2006 10:11:55 AM

I was experimenting again last night with importing an old drum track for a song into Acid 6.0. The tempo was a little uneven in the original track, I wanted to see if I could quantize it to a steady tempo. I was extremely pleased with the result I achieved, however there is one thing that would have saved me an hour of repetitive and tedious point-and-clicking.

First, I opened the track in Chopper and added a marker every two measures (eight beats). This resulted in about 50 markers. As I added each new marker I auditioned the loop region it made with the previous marker in chopper to ensure a seamless loop. When I had finished, I had about 50 contiguous loopable segments. This part was a little time consuming, but I accept that some human interaction is required here to get the segments just right.

Now I simply wanted to drop this result into a track as 50 consecutive loops, thereby quantizing the track. A simple thing I thought, but it took forever!

For each of the 50 segments I had to:

1) Highlight one of the 50 segments in the Chopper
2) Right-click "Chop to new Clip..."
3) Give it a unique file name
4) Paint the clip onto the track
5) Right-click "Clip Properties"
6) Select "Loop" from the dropdown
7) Change tabs and select my prefered stretch algorithm
8) Click Save
9) Adjust the loop length in the track to fill two bars
10) Drag the loop to the correct bar

The result sounded awesome, but there really should be an easier way of doing this. Am I missing something?

Wouldn't it be great to have an option in Chopper that will autochop an entire set of marked regions into a track as contiguous loops? That way, after I had arranged my 50 markers in the Chopper window I could right-click and select, say, "Chop To Track Loops..." and my job would be done.

Has anyone here faced a similar situation, or is my experience not reflective of a real world editing scenario?

Cheers,

Randy

Subject:RE: Quantize an Entire Track from Chopper?

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:4/6/2006 11:30:41 AM

You could cut a couple steps out by doing some things in Sound Forge (full version), like using its "extract regions" feature to automatically extract and name regions without having to name each sample. But you'd still have to manually insert all those events onto the timeline.

I wouldn't be surprised to see application scripting make it into ACID Pro at some point (just not in this version). Then we can have JohnnyRoy be our code monkey! :)

Iacobus
-------
RodelWorks - Original Music for the Unafraid
Buy Instant ACID by JohnnyRoy and mD!
mD at ACIDplanet

Subject:RE: Quantize an Entire Track from Chopper?

Reply by: randygo

Date:4/6/2006 2:57:55 PM

Yeah, Vegas-like scripting could solve this providing the API is rich enough.

What are the chances scripting will make it into a future version of Acid?

Cheers,

Randy

Subject:RE: Quantize an Entire Track from Chopper?

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:4/8/2006 1:54:29 PM

Considering both Vegas and Sound Forge now have it, I wouldn't be surprised to see it in ACID Pro at some point.

Iacobus