sync reaper to laptop clock

[metal_priest]

Hi guys,
this is not a "musical use" of reaper, so any workaround could be useful if i can achive what i want!

I need to make a recording into my house to prove how much noise my neighbors are, and I need to prove also when they are so noising during the day or night time.
So I need to make a recording where is easy to see at what time they make the noises.
The easiest way should be to synch reaper to the laptop clock, hit record and it will record following the day time.
Is there a way to make it?

The only workaround I thought it's to sync by hand, watching what's the time when I hit record and start the recording at the same point in the timelime. But, this way, I'm not sure they're really synched because they aren't really linked togheter...

any ideas?
thanks!

[clepsydrae]

I think there are better ways.

I would not rely on the timeline to indicate the time of the event: I don't know who you are giving these files to (presumably the local police?) but they won't care where in a Reaper project the file sits. You're not giving them an .RPP file anyway, right? That's the only place that the timeline location would show up anyway.

Instead, go to Options -> Preferences -> Audio -> Recording and find the "Filename format for recorded files". I don't know what the default is, but you can make it look like this:

$tracknumber-$track-$year-$month-$day_$hour$minute$second

...that would generate .WAV files that look something like this for an un-named track:

01-2017-03-22_210715.wav

...or this for a named track:

01-trackname-2017-03-22_210715.wav

...that way the date and time are encoded in the audio file name.

Even if you don't do this, and just have tracks with meaningless names, the file system that the files are stored on will have a datestamp associated with them which will also record the last time that file was modified, and a separate datestamp that will record when the file was created.

There is a special place in hell for noisy neighbors. Good luck. :-)

[metal_priest]

thanks clepsydrae for the reply!
Yes, actually I was thinking something like BWF files with the timecode written into the metadata like when I work with video, because i want to hit record and let the mic do the job for hours, this way, once i cut the files with the loudest noieses they should be with the exact time but indeed maybe it's easiest and faster simply to print in the file name. I don't want to be mad because of a jackass

[clepsydrae]

Ah, so you're saying you want an item to take on the name of its location on the timeline when you cut up the master item and glue the pieces? I wonder if there is an SWS action for that or something ('name items by timeline position' or something.) If not, you might be able to make a script request for that in the script request forum -- would probably take a scripter 5 seconds to whip that up.

[clepsydrae]

Alternately you could look into scripts (that must exist?) that start recording for a certain length of time when the input audio goes over a theshold, thus possibly saving you some editing time later.

[serr]

Originally Posted by metal_priest

Hi guys,
this is not a "musical use" of reaper, so any workaround could be useful if i can achive what i want!

I need to make a recording into my house to prove how much noise my neighbors are, and I need to prove also when they are so noising during the day or night time.
So I need to make a recording where is easy to see at what time they make the noises.
The easiest way should be to synch reaper to the laptop clock, hit record and it will record following the day time.
Is there a way to make it?

The only workaround I thought it's to sync by hand, watching what's the time when I hit record and start the recording at the same point in the timelime. But, this way, I'm not sure they're really synched because they aren't really linked togheter...

any ideas?
thanks!

Oh. Not a sample rate clock question. Alright then.

I'm not a lawyer but as I understand it the ONLY time stamps that will hold up in court are in the surveillance systems sold that use proprietary recording systems that can be shown to have not been tampered with or altered after the fact.

I don't think it's so much that your own method could be shown to have been altered or not. It's more about that 3rd party surveillance system paid the fee to the agency that created itself to collect said fee and said to the courts that "only ours is secure". A 'follow the money' kind of thing.

To be fair, because there's literally no way to prevent editing a file and/or its attributes, the surveillance systems rely on a system to show the physical device containing the recording equipment has not been opened. But it's also very much a 'follow the money' thing and you aren't going to be able to use anything else in court.

Find a way to get the police annoyed with them so nature takes its course and be careful not to get the police annoyed with you in the process!

[metal_priest]

no police or courts involved, guys! ahah sorry, maybe I should be more precise!
I need to prove how much they're annoying to my host and to the building administrator, because anybody before me and my girlfriend had this kind of problems with this neighbour in particular...it looks like we are crazy and I want to prove them we're not having allucinations.. so nothing that needs to be legally approved. I just need something that print the exact time on the file into metadata or, as clepsydrae said, on the file name.

I will take a look to the sws actions as i didn't think about them thinking to the sync way... probably the "name items by timeline position" stuff could be usefull if it exists!

[serr]

Default in Reaper is date and time stamp in the filename.

It's in Preferences.

[typhonj]

Hi, just an idea. . .

Maybe instead of only recording sound, recording video would be your easy way out.
How about the laptop's camera aiming at a nice little desktop clock sitting on the desk right in front of the camera!

Then using the appropriate software which can start recording when appropriate sound threshold is reached would do it and reduce the huge amount of memory that would be required if you let it run/record for hours.

Quick search for 'laptop surveilance softwares' show this as example;
http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/la...ecurity-system