Render Multiple Tracks in Reaper

[Voxxprofundo1969]

I have a 90 Chapter Audiobook I'm trying to render from Reaper without doing them one by one. Each file is a different length and all require 5 secs of silence at the end of the file. When I create a time selection that encompases the longest track, all the tracks end up that length...thus making them all too long. Is there anyway to batch render multiple files that allows me to keep each unique file length intact?
Thanks in advance!

[vdubreeze]

Originally Posted by Voxxprofundo1969

I have a 90 Chapter Audiobook I'm trying to render from Reaper without doing them one by one. Each file is a different length and all require 5 secs of silence at the end of the file. When I create a time selection that encompases the longest track, all the tracks end up that length...thus making them all too long. Is there anyway to batch render multiple files that allows me to keep each unique file length intact?
Thanks in advance!

Hi Voxxprofundo. Welcome! Here's what I do: I'll do a time selection around each chapter and then use the action "SWS: Create regions from selected items". You need to install the SWS extension to use this but the SWS extension really is crucial to a lot of workflows in Reaper, so don't hesitate. You might go to the region marker manager in the view menu just to double check the region names, if there are many. It's usually easier to name them in the region manager than to name them all before. Then I go the the Render window and select Maser mix in source and All Regions in bounds. Set the output formats how they should be, and set the naming convention for how they should be (I usually go with region name at this stage of the game). That should do it. Hit render and it will render all of the regions as separate files.

[Voxxprofundo1969]

Thanks so much for your quick reply vdubreeze!

I'm hung up doing a time selection around each chapter. I've set up one chapter = one track. Do I time select each track individually and render...or is there a bulk way to do it I'm not getting?

Thanks again for your help!

[vdubreeze]

One track per chapter is another way to do it It has some advantages, especially in naming of the rendered chapter. If you name the track as chapter then you don't have to name it again when you render, just render with track name. OTOH, you have to deal with 90 tracks

What I'd do in that case as far as selection and rendering (others will have other and maybe better ways) is you can double click on the track and it will select the whole edit. Then if you use the action "Time selection - Set Time Selection To Items", which by Reaper's default is simply hitting "t", you'll have a time selection for the whole edited chapter. Go to the render window, set for time selection, but instead of hitting "render" hit the "queued renders button" and select add to queue and close. Then you can continue to the rest of the tracks/chapters and do the same with each, and it will add each to the render queue. When finished you can go to the render queue and render all at that time.

[mdkb]

Originally Posted by Voxxprofundo1969

I have a 90 Chapter Audiobook I'm trying to render from Reaper without doing them one by one.

Did you solve this?

I am in the same boat with an Audiobook, and can't believe there is not a simple option to render out multiple tracks according to their existing length with a 2 second tail stuck on it.

Do I really have to go through every chapter (track), turning it into regions or bouncing it down, and then organizing them one-by-one into the render queue? If so, it is the first time since leaving Cubase behind over 5 years ago that Cubase is better than Reaper at something.

EDIT: looks like I found a solution to render out multiple tracks based on their individual lengths:

- Add in the 'Superglue' script to ReaPack from here - https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=264478
- Get all the items on each track ready to render (in my case a track = an audiobook chapter)
- I add a blank item to the front to create the silence I need to start each chapter
- cut the end of the track tight to the last sound (I will use the tail option in render window, so each track will have a default tail length of silence).
- select all the items on a single track and user 'Superglue' action to turn them into a non-destructive glued item (i.e. you can reverse it later using 'unglue' action)
- in Reaper Render window choose source as "Select Media Items"
- set the tail for default length silence at the end of each track.
- select all the tracks I want rendered in the main window
- render out
- sorted

[future-bit]

I would do it in 2 steps:

1. Make the first render of all tracks as is (in which silence at the beginning and end is more than 5 seconds)
2. Crop silence with 5 seconds offset of each file (using script "Edge silence cropper" https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=271671)
3. Make the second render in the desired format.

I have similar situations, so I have already made custom scripts where with one button I cut, add silence and save files with the right names in the right folder). All this takes literally seconds.

You can also use this script to add 5 seconds of silence to your finished file https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=278606 (need edit yourself to add 5 seconds).

[mdkb]

Originally Posted by future-bit

I would do it in 2 steps:

Crop silence with 5 seconds offset of each file (using script "Edge silence cropper" https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=271671)

that's a great little script. I love the fact it shows you where the threshold level is.
very useful.

the second one you suggest is in the realm of "too fiddly" for me, but the 'Superglue' solution with tail set for the batch render out has saved the day for me.