Quote:
Originally Posted by airon
The devs have often responded to stated goals, and not so often proposed methods.
I got them onboard with Latch Preview(Justin called it that, not me btw) because I needed a safe space to develop a setup that didn't mess up existing automation. I had to explain it in great detail.
At that time I realized I'd probably made the mistake of assuming that Justin and Schwa knew some of the same stuff about mixing that I did. But I have to assume now they had not. And that's the assumption I have to keep in the back of my mind for everything I ask of them, or any script writer or extension dev.
So your goals count. What do you want accomplished with edit groups ?
In the end I found I don't need that as much as I thought, because I don't deal with recuts much any more. Vordio takes care of those if necessary, and other tools will follow if the need is there.
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I agree, mixing workflows seem to be not much of a focus in Reaper.
Most of the mixing features are unbeatable !!!
When mixing in any media format, usually complex changes need to happen in a timeline.
SO for example, a section of music in a song (or film) that has around 100 tracks or more, needs all of the lower frequency instruments shelf adjusted for a period of time, in multiple places during the project.
So the elegant workflow method is to select any track that has been assigned to the low freq group, adjust the automation to raise the shelf, so that the music now has less low freq for the sections.
When I have 100's of tracks, the lower freq audio group is usually spread over the tracklist
eg bass drum Tk1 / bass amp Tk 14 / brass track Tks 87-90 / low synths Tk 112).
With this method, I just select a time section, adjust the bass freq shelf by 1.5db on the bass drum, and bang - all of my lower freq audio across the project is adjusted.
No need to slice up the audio for item grouping, no need to hide / show tracks / no marquee needed - just a simple mouse adjustment on ONE track deals with all of the low freq plug in automation in the whole project in one mouse move.
Now extrapolate this to all of the plug ins in a session (and edits).
These types of grouped track adjustments are happening all throughout complex mix sessions - like I may down the track realize I adjusted the LF shelf too far on all of the sections, and do a quick re-adjustment on one of the grouped tracks - no slices of audio to select / item grouping / ungrouping.
The slicing of audio to be able to group media items and adjust is not elegant in a large mix, when by the time one gets to the end of a mix, thousands of sliced audio items are displayed.
I record and mix lots of live bands in studios, and when I get to the end of the mix, all of the live / unedited tracks show as long audio files, with maybe a slice here and there for a timing fix-up.
With one glance over the whole session, I can see where any edits/ drop-ins happened in the tracking stage.
If the session was all chopped up to deal with item grouping adjustments, then the whole session is a mess that tells me nothing about any drop-ins we did, or if we edited a bass line to make a section push a little more.
On lead vocals it shows me where a word may have been replaced by another take.
(this is handy as sometimes dropped in words may need a different EQ setting)
So - all of the way through the mix stage, I can tell by looking at the vocal track, what is a live performance, and what has been edited or dropped in.
Being able to leave my audio as long takes shows the session history right back to the initial live recording right there in front of me.
In a film mix, I can see where I have looped any atmos tracks, replaced dialog etc - all of this is ruined if I need to chop all of the audio into segments for item grouping /.
Don't get me wrong - item grouping is a killer Reaper feature for film SFX especially
My most recent project was nearly 1000 tracks of audio, and the lack of track edit /automation grouping was the most severely time crippling part of the mix process.
So in the end, the project was a complete visual mess, I had hundreds of thousands of audio items throughout the project .
Incredible time waste - and visually, I had no idea when mixing, what was a live performance, where any drop-ins were, where my edits happened...
Just a mass of audio items.
Not an elegant workflow,
Everything else about Reapers mix workflow and customization is THE BEST
Linear Mode
