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Old 03-25-2010, 03:21 AM   #1
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Default "Painted" MIDI Item position rounding problem (FIXED)

Hello,

yesterday I found for the first time a problem when painting empty MIDI items with CTRL-Drag: sometimes the created item is 1 "tick" earlier than expected.

I mean, instead of starting at 2.2.0 it starts at 2.1.99.

It is completely erratic and not consistent to reproduce, and I saw it so far on only one of the two PCs on which I test REAPER. I guess it's something related to zoom level or snap options.

Anybody else noticed similar problems?

Thanks,
Mario

Last edited by juliansader; 09-08-2016 at 03:31 PM.
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Old 03-25-2010, 03:32 AM   #2
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Yup, happened to me constantly until I switched to "Media Items snap
at: Only start/end offset" mode by default. Also you need "Grid snap
setting follow grid visibility" on, should hopefully solve your troubles.
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Old 03-25-2010, 03:52 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EricM View Post
Yup, happened to me constantly until I switched to "Media Items snap
at: Only start/end offset" mode by default. Also you need "Grid snap
setting follow grid visibility" on, should hopefully solve your troubles.
Thanks, is it a known issue then?

- Mario
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Old 03-25-2010, 04:02 AM   #4
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Yes, I think all of these little (mostly visual) rounding issues with item lengths are known, documented, submitted and discussed.
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Old 03-25-2010, 04:13 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steindork View Post
Yes, I think all of these little (mostly visual) rounding issues with item lengths are known, documented, submitted and discussed.
Damn, the only word missing is "fixed"

Anyway, this is not a visual issue, because the item is actually at wrong position timelinewise.

- Mario
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Old 03-25-2010, 04:18 AM   #6
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The issue is with snap at mouse position dependent mode, where
moving/drawing an item easily snaps to grid at start or end, and
when the item is not exactly a bar long this can cause this error,
and it's very hard to pinpoint as visually a pixel movement of the
mouse can change the result (sometimes even on different places).
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Old 03-25-2010, 04:22 AM   #7
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I don't think it's only there, I have snap fixed st start of item/snap offset only, but it happens anyway.

As mentioned by Steindork, I guess there are many little hanging rounding problems.

This is no good, I left SONAR also due to unreliability of its "snap to grid" in latest versions (when I moved clips from SONAR to REAPER, I found them in SONAR at the strangest locations while they were supposed to be grid aligned).

I'm not happy to see such things in REAPER too...

- Mario
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Old 03-25-2010, 04:25 AM   #8
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Can u record a video of a specific behavior with all the settings
(snapping, grid, ...) in description? There might be a possible
workaround in the meanwhile.
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Old 03-25-2010, 04:30 AM   #9
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Cannot now, I'm not at the computer where this happens.

Back soon.

- Mario
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Old 03-25-2010, 04:35 AM   #10
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yay, timing OCD


some say its no problem, its only visual, etc.

definitely not for me.


i'm with you Mabian, i hate these rounding issues, i'd love to see these bugs killed asap. (yesterday!)

i use the same "only at start/snap offset" setting - it happens with audio items too.



so far THIS is the biggest problem in Reaper, IMHO.

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Old 03-25-2010, 04:41 AM   #11
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Sigh. We are talking about µs (microseconds), sub-sample inaccuracies here, of which a part is visual, another part not.

http://forum.cockos.com/showpost.php...6&postcount=12
http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=1839
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=51610
http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=2006
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Old 03-25-2010, 05:19 AM   #12
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If you have snap on, and you draw a note that appears to be snapped, but it's actually not snapped, that's not a rounding error, it's a bug.

If possible, the next time you notice this happen, please save-as the project before carrying on, and when you get a chance, post the project.
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Old 03-25-2010, 05:58 AM   #13
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Schwa, it's not a note, but an item, it happens in main window.

Will post the project when it happens again for sure.

And, Steindork, I'm talking about 1/100th of second at 60BPM; it's definitely audible especially in ensemble (transients matching / shifting!)

I still have to check if it can produce nasty problems when looping objects.

Thanks,
Mario
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Old 03-25-2010, 07:23 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mabian View Post
And, Steindork, I'm talking about 1/100th of second at 60BPM; it's definitely audible especially in ensemble (transients matching / shifting!)
10ms would be certainly bad and a severe bug. Waiting for the example project. But since you mentioned "instead of starting at 2.2.0 it starts at 2.1.99.", what I've seen so far (the case where an actual offset could be seen) would be less than 1ms@60bpm in the worst case though, as the resolution of the position display has only 2 digits for the "decimal per quarter" display, meaning it could be anything from x.990 to x.9999.
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Old 03-26-2010, 12:36 AM   #15
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Hello,

EDIT: forgot to say this all was tested in 3.4rc2, but of course you can see it from the screenshot

in attachment a zip including:

- A project with some items (in red) created at wrong position.
- A screenshot with the snap settings
- The whole reaper settings folder
- A gif animation showing how it happens (the third and sixth item painted have the error in this animation)

I found it happens more frequently - but not exclusively - when doing ctrl+drag left (first ctrl, then drag). The starting position is defined (and does not change, correctly) when starting the drag. So, if it's wrong, it's wrong since the first movement.

In addition, I found a couple more glitches "things that aren't right", probably unrelated, but, since we're talking about the item paint function I think they're worth mentioning here:

1 - it's possible and easy to paint items with length 0. And this is 0 in all three decimal digits. What's the point in having zero length items?

2 - Depending on the paint drag direction, the floating tooltip information sequence changes: start position is put before or after length; this is misleading and uncomfortable, imho. What about having always a multiline tooltip, with:

- Start in first row
- Length in second row
- Snap offset in third row

With the ability to show only numbers in project timebase?

Thanks a lot,
Mario

P.S. Steindork, probably you're right, it's easily less than 10ms, didn't see the third decimal digit in item properties.
Attached Files
File Type: zip PositionBug.zip (909.9 KB, 187 views)
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Old 03-26-2010, 03:29 AM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mabian View Post
I mean, instead of starting at 2.2.0 it starts at 2.1.99.
Just for the record:

This behaviour really confused me for quite some time and it appeared a lot here.
I think it disappeared when I changed my snap settings to "snap only item start/offset".
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Old 03-26-2010, 03:34 AM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nofish View Post
Just for the record:

This behaviour really confused me for quite some time and it appeared a lot here.
I think it disappeared when I changed my snap settings to "snap only item start/offset".
I have already that setting, but it still happens.

- Mario
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Old 03-26-2010, 04:18 AM   #18
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Ok, this is very similar to the other 2 cases of "x.x.99" i mentioned. The Item Properties position display shows 3 digits ("x.999") but this is still not the whole truth, it's actually more like "x.99999":

Here's your offset item zoomed in so far that there's still a gridline visible 8ms to the left:



Here's your offset item fully zoomed in, I imported an audio item so we can estimate the actual offset:



As you see, the item is actually only ~1/3 of a single sample off the grid, if I got the math right that's ~7.5µs @44.1k. I think this wouldn't have any effect when layering audio samples and almost no effect when nulling 2 identical ones. In this case though, they're MIDI items and no matter how huge/little the item offset is, the actual events within the item would end precisely on the grid anyway.

I agree that's confusing and it comes up on a regular basis, but IMO it's a non-issue. Your points 1+2 are something else and zero length items shouldn't be possible.
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Old 03-26-2010, 04:35 AM   #19
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I can agree that soundwise it can be a non issue, but for especially for new users I think it's no good that you have snap enabled and you get misaligned items anyway, no matter if they are 10 at -35th picoseconds.

Snap should mean snap, full stop.

As I said earlier, a similar thing made me lose some trust in SONAR.

And I still have to check what happens when rolling a looped item, to see if the drift increases or not.

1) and 2) are two other examples of the little things that imo make the difference in user perception between a mature and a "still in the works" application.

- Mario
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Old 03-26-2010, 05:21 AM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mabian View Post
And I still have to check what happens when rolling a looped item, to see if the drift increases or not.
Here's your 1-bar item after loop-dragging it out to 1 hour:

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Old 03-26-2010, 02:01 PM   #21
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Do I have to take it as a "Live with it" thing?

Thanks,
Mario
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Old 03-26-2010, 02:07 PM   #22
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I think even as a psychological thing it's worth fixing. it will keep coming up for new guys and be a bit off putting for their confidence

if it can be fixed at some point it would be great!
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Old 03-26-2010, 03:02 PM   #23
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Yeah, please fix those position display errors in Media Item Properties!


FIXED (5.12)

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Old 05-23-2010, 03:13 PM   #24
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I'm getting this same issue using 3.52.

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.p...d=1#post515781
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Old 11-12-2014, 02:55 PM   #25
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I'm digging this up because it still exists. This is another really bad Reaper MIDI downfall because it creates problems with overlapping notes when you start shifting stuff around. You have to constantly quantise so that notes are back to exact positions unless you make sure notes can't overlap but that can't really be done if you're drawing in notes to a snap setting.
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Old 11-13-2014, 01:38 AM   #26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by efflux View Post
I'm digging this up because it still exists. This is another really bad Reaper MIDI downfall because it creates problems with overlapping notes when you start shifting stuff around. You have to constantly quantise so that notes are back to exact positions unless you make sure notes can't overlap but that can't really be done if you're drawing in notes to a snap setting.
Can you post an example where an actual MIDI note overlap is created by shiftinfg around quantized notes? I mean a "before" example with instruction as of where to shift what. I do see the rounding errors from time to time, but never had a practical issue (or I'd have thrown it into the discussion).
To have an example where such an issue is caused would (hopefully) increase devs motivation for a fix.


EDIT: I just found the "MIDI Import Problem thread over here: http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=1428407, where you describe the issue and how to get there more detailled. Will be messing around with that trying to get a reproducable project file as soon as I get back home.

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Old 11-13-2014, 03:36 PM   #27
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gofer.

I'm working on some MIDI arrangements at the moment. All my notes are quantised to the snap as I draw because I'm simply composing stuff and that's the way I'm working which will be quite common. I just moved a bunch of items. Because various items were a tick out of place I ended up with a zero length note at the start of each item from a note in the preceding item that was overlapping due to this out of time problem. Reaper chopped that note and included it in the new items. This needs to be fixed somehow. It's a real mess. Whether it's related to the import problem or not I don't know but you end up with the same kinds of problems. The import problem isn't just limited to Reaper though. I had similar problems importing into Bitwig when I was trying it. However it's not just with Logic output. It seems a Cubase user has the same issue.
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Old 11-13-2014, 03:45 PM   #28
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Here's the type of problems you end up with. MIDI can't be "out" even if it's one tick out. You may not hear it but it creates a bunch of editing problems.
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Old 11-13-2014, 04:12 PM   #29
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Also, for those saying that you can't hear this. You absolutely can hear it even although it's a tiny amount of time.

As far as I can see the only way to avoid the problem is to try and make sure when you move stuff around it is snapped correctly. Zooming in seems to help unless there is some other way to avoid this.
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Old 11-13-2014, 05:04 PM   #30
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This problem makes Reaper's MIDI completely useless. Everything ends up out of sync and out of time. Loops drift way out in no time if they aren't perfectly timed.
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Old 11-18-2014, 06:05 PM   #31
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It appears that this problem doesn't exist if you have the timeline set to only beats. Any time base displayed on the timeline and item snapping is messed up in accuracy for MIDI.
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Old 02-18-2015, 10:41 AM   #32
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Still got this problem. Incredible. Thousands of posts on this forum yet Reaper is fundamentally broken at a base level. You can't sequence anything perfectly in time. It always gets messed up and out of time. You have to glue all the clips together then quantise the notes but that's useless because you lose all the clips.
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Old 12-23-2015, 07:05 PM   #33
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Tried to use Reaper 5. The items appear to snap accurately, at least this is what the UI displays but still overlapped notes.

This timing issue makes Reaper's MIDI useless. This is why I'm ranting. Reaper MIDI editing = waste of time while this issue exists.

Very sad that I am forced back once again to Logic because there are many things I hate in Logic.
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Old 12-25-2015, 08:06 PM   #34
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I'm ditching Reaper now. Too much time wasted. This problem is much worse in Reaper 5 because it seems the item properties tells you it's in time when it isn't.

It's sad but Reaper has no absolutely no chance against Logic or Cubase MIDI because of this problem. You can't arrange MIDI in any detailed way in Reaper at all. Logic and Cubase have their problems but none as fundamentally serious as this one.
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Old 12-25-2015, 08:52 PM   #35
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I didn't read all your posts, but it sounds like you have some kind of bug maybe instead of it being a design flaw. Otherwise I think more people would be complaining about it. But it's still worth reporting as you did.

I know Reaper's quantizing is a bit hard to use, which is actually why I use EnergyXT for MIDI and reimport frozen tracks into Reaper.

I feel that Reaper's strength is with audio editing, and that MIDI support is still lacking and that MIDI functions really need to be streamlined and optimized to work better instead of just adding more "junk" (functions).

Yet all this effort has gone into ReaProxies instead of refining the MIDI stuff. I'm a die hard Reaper fan, but this issue has bothered me even though I feel that Reaper is the best deal around for the money.

Hopefully, the Reaper developers will get done with all their extra frivolous features and get back to basics. But I do realise they have a lot of constant work for all the different types of systems that they support. To me that's even more incentive to simplify things and make things easier to use and more reliable before adding any more extra features.
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Old 12-25-2015, 09:19 PM   #36
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Nystagmus.

This is quite simply the most disastrous problem I have ever encountered in a MIDI editor. You can't draw notes quantised to the snapping then have lots of items that you can then move around snapping to bars. It will get messed up. Reaper 5 makes the problem MUCH worse and I consider Reaper to be unusable now.

If Logic or Cubase had such a serious problem it would have to be fixed otherwise users would dump these apps en masse.

There comes a time to give up on an app. Too much wasted time and money even although the Reaper license is low cost. This problem has never been addressed and it goes back to the start. I make the assumption it can't be fixed.

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Old 12-25-2015, 09:30 PM   #37
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The sad thing is that Reaper's piano roll is in fact much better than Logic's. I also do audio but MIDI is crucial. Logic is now the only useable composing tool in my opinion because Cubase is much more cumbersome to use. However Logic 9 was much better than Logic X. Apple have even removed a few crucial tools. Logic X should be renamed to Garage Band Pro. This leaves Cubase as the only fully fledged MIDI composing DAW left. Pretty pathetic that absolutely nobody can sort this out. Studio One is quite good but missing features.
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Old 12-25-2015, 11:07 PM   #38
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OK. I think I have finally found a usable fix for this problem.

I didn't realise that you could quantise items from item processing. This means that you can tidy up the timing mess by quantising all the notes and the items so they are lined up again without losing items. This seems a workable fix because when I notice it's getting messed up then this action is pretty fast. I just need to check loops as and when I do them to make sure those are OK.
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Old 12-25-2015, 11:19 PM   #39
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There is a problem with this. Quantising MIDI items at default settings changes the play rate. However, if you deselect quantise item ends and stretch item to fit then it will stretch but not change the play rate. Notes will move but then quantising all the notes shifts them back to exactly correct time.
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Old 12-25-2015, 11:40 PM   #40
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N- "..it sounds like you have some kind of bug maybe instead of it being a design flaw. Otherwise I think more people would be complaining about it..."

I think people are just tired of complaining. It's not just this issue.

e- "...I make the assumption it can't be fixed."

Have a feeling you might be right. Can't or won't. Same thing to me.
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