Change tempo without altering a track in any way

[brkrzyzanowski]

Hello REAPERs, I'm working on my scoring chops today. So I insert a video into REAPER, but I wanna make adjustments to the tempo of the track (based on what's on the video), without altering the video track in any way.

As I have it set now, REAPER automatically stretches any tracks to fit with the new tempo. Normally this is extremely helpful and useful, but not this one time. How do I go about changing it? Thanks!

[EvilDragon]

Set the project timebase for items to Time. Or, if you only need it per track, you can set it per track, too.

If you have SWS installed, check this out: http://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/index.ph..._grid_with_SWS

[brkrzyzanowski]

Thank you. Now the plot thickens! What I actually aim to do is have the tempo change specifically to fit this video. In other words, if there's text on the screen for a certain amount of time, I want my project to comfortably fit that duration into, say, two bars. Can't figure this out for the life of me.

[EvilDragon]

Yeah that sounds like a job for the Warp Grid, which I linked to

[brkrzyzanowski]

Alright, now I have a new problem! So I'm using "Move closest measure grid line to play cursor." What I want is to be able to select a part of the video and then have it fall nicely on the grid to fit music to it. But what happens is all the other previous parts of my tempo map get adjusted and I have all these huge, crazy leaps between tempos slowing down and speeding up.

[EvilDragon]

Yep, that's how warp grid is supposed to work...

[fetidus]

Can you be more specific about what you need to do? There may be another way to skin the cat.

[brkrzyzanowski]

I’ll try. So in this gif http://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/index.ph..._mouse_sws.gif it looks like they’re changing discrete parts of the grid without affecting previous parts of the grid. When I do it, it changes the entire tempo map

Let’s say there’s a title card on the screen for three seconds, then we see a mountain for two seconds. What I want is to have each of these scenes line up to the grid in some way. It doesn’t necessarily have to be on beat one of a measure, but as long as it lands somewhere “musical.”

What I’m getting instead are very jarring and large tempo changes. What I want is for them to be more subtle, gradual. I can’t seem to move the grid in a discrete way without getting really big, obvious changes in tempo. It’s decidedly unmusical.

Is there a tutorial somewhere for REAPER film scoring?

Thanks!

[vanhaze]

Maybe this is abit of help to ya ?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy8X1-nO5V8

[brkrzyzanowski]

Here's a visual: https://imgur.com/a/wqtJC

Notice how the first title card is nicely aligned with the grid, but markers 2 and 3 are slightly skewed on the grid.

Here's a gif https://imgur.com/a/vl1ep

I need those markers I placed to align with the grid in some way. If I use "move closest measure grid line" it does what I want, but then it skews everything that I've done earlier.

For example, I align marker 2 with the first beat of the measure, but then it's moved so that marker 1 is no longer aligned with the grid. Is there any way to prevent those other ones from moving? Thanks everybody!

[fetidus]

Hi brkrzyzanowski,

What you're describing is a common kind of task that film composers and sound designers have to deal with often -- that is, lining up music and/or sound so it hits specific frames for emotional impact, etc. -- sometimes directly on a specific frame/beat, or some other musically- or emotionally-valuable interval. There are many ways to accomplish this, and they will take practice and experimentation for you to make them work well. You may find an approach that is best for your workflow and type of music. And there is no magic bullet IMO (although you may get lucky with one approach or tool)! The solutions/approaches typically involve one or more of the following concepts that you'll have to eventually get very comfortable with: dealing with and manipulating tempo maps, time signatures, time compression/expansion, and/or some kind of tempo/time warping or elastic audio (under different names in different DAWs).

Some DAWs have some extra tools that help you with one of those approaches, but virtually every extra tool is based around one or more of those approaches, so you might as well get comfortable with each one of them.

Fortunately, Reaper, and most highly-capable DAWs, have similar tools to help accomplish this. And with Reaper, there are obviously some helpful scripts, and extra goodies I've been discovering. I don't know Reaper's community of scripts well enough yet (I'm coming from the land of other DAWs and I'm blown away by what I've seen in the scripting capability already!), but I do know that Reaper has the same basic tools to accomplish the common techniques built-in, and then some cool bonuses for people who want to push some boundaries.

For what you describe, you may find less is more. Start very subtly, and perhaps start with manually manipulating the tempo map, and don't get hung up on some magic tool that may fit things to the timeline, etc. Try manually first. Open up the tempo map (View->Tempo Envelope) and start there IMO.

However, your source material is going to make a difference -- if you are using a WAV file as the source of music you want to sync, you may benefit from Stretch Markers, warping and/or time compression/expansion. Reaper is really good at that. A little goes a long way, so don't overdo it. If you are using MIDI, then just dealing with the tempo map may do the trick. Each situation will be a little different, but out of the box, Reaper already has plenty of functionality to do what you need, so just focus on doing it manually and subtly first.

I haven't played with all the extra scripts yet myself, but from what I can tell from looking at what's out there, they are helping to automate one or more the basic approaches above, and you might as well learn how to do it manually first, then learn the extra capabilities of the scripts later on. Personally, I don't see a need to install the extra scripts for normal tasks, as the basic functionality is more than powerful enough in Reaper.

In fact, in addition to the basic tools that most DAWs have for this kind of operation, Reaper has some extra-special (and frankly advanced) features IMO that will give you more flexibility later on. Now these are not likely relevant to your current situation IMO, but they highlight the incredible power that's available when you are ready. First is the fact that time signature markers in Reaper can "allow a partial measure" before the marker starts a new measure. Super helpful to start off a new cue on a specific frame with a new measure. Second, is the whole concept of Subprojects, which will allow you to isolate your music cue in a separate file, and then apply a variety of techniques to the subproject (which will have its own unique tempo map), and then separately to the parent project, where you can implement warping and time compression/expansion on the proxy wave. And third, is of course the myriad of additional scripts that can help.

Anyway, good luck with this, I hope this helped a little!

[brkrzyzanowski]

Hey Fetidus, I really appreciate the detailed response! So my original intention was to do it manually with just the tempo map:

https://imgur.com/UYSGsU5

You can hopefully get an idea of what my issue is here. So I'm moving this first point to get the grid to align with that marker on the right, but it moves in very large increments and seems to go everywhere BUT where I need it to! You can see it's moving from 120 to 124 to 129 and I need it to be a lot more fine than that. Is there a way to scrub through this a little more finely so I can get it nice and lined up? Thanks!

[fetidus]

Originally Posted by brkrzyzanowski

Hey Fetidus, I really appreciate the detailed response! So my original intention was to do it manually with just the tempo map:

https://imgur.com/UYSGsU5

You can hopefully get an idea of what my issue is here. So I'm moving this first point to get the grid to align with that marker on the right, but it moves in very large increments and seems to go everywhere BUT where I need it to! You can see it's moving from 120 to 124 to 129 and I need it to be a lot more fine than that. Is there a way to scrub through this a little more finely so I can get it nice and lined up? Thanks!

So I'd handle this one of two ways. If you want to continue on the tempo map approach and want more control, you just need to enter in explicit tempo values. Right click on the tempo point and click on "Set Point Value" and you'll get a dialog box where you can manually enter in the tempo, down to three decimal places! You can create as complex a tempo map as you need.

OR, you can probably approach this with warping and/or time compression/expansion if you're dealing with just a single WAV file. And with that kind of approach, there are several sub-approaches. For example, the most crude (but sometimes effective) approach would be to slice up the WAV at key points, then hit Item Properties (F2) and then you can play with the "playback rate" for each segment (time compression/expansion). Be very subtle with it, otherwise it will sound strange. I've used that technique hundreds of times and the client never knew it. :-)

EDIT: Oh, and BTW, that "crude" technique can get very messy very quickly, as you'll have to slide the other segments in the timeline forward or backward as you do it and of course adjust the "out" point, crossfades, etc... it gets messy, but can work in a pinch. Plus that's where ripple editing can become your best friend.

Hope that helps!

[fetidus]

P.S. another note on the "crude" method -- make sure to toggle the "Section" feature in the Item Properties before you change the playback rate for this technique, as it will help you line up the subsequent segments. And if you have too many segments, it gets too messy, so then try another approach. Just goes back to the idea that there are many ways to skin a cat, you just have to choose which tool(s) to apply.