PDC without Offset

[foxAsteria]

Currently "preserve PDC delayed monitoring in recorded items" option never places the first MIDI note correctly, but always late by the PDC amount.

Especially noticeable when duplicating items recorded with the PDC option, the first beat is always slightly late unless we (1) glue the item or drag the left edge inside MIDI Editor and (2) manually move the first note closer to the item start.

It would much better if Reaper started recording slightly before the cursor (by the PDC amount) and then trimmed the excess item start, rather than offsetting the item contents and always butchering the first note:

[Allspice]

Yes, please. This happens every time you record with “Record: input”.

The way this is currently implemented, it also means that your options for editing the item are limited because of the offset in the item. So every time I record like this, I have to glue it immediately after recording. Which is oddly counter-intuitive, and something you can’t do if you want to preserve multiple takes of a performance.

[Allspice]

Does this annoy anyone else? I enjoy "take-based" MIDI recording in lots of my sessions so I use "Record: input (audio or MIDI)"

What would be involved in making this happen? It seems like after recording, and after that item start offset is made, the MIDI item could be lengthened by the PDC amount and any notes that fall precisely on that previous left offset edge could be moved back by the PDC amount.

That way the first note would be in the right spot and users could draw in notes on the left item edge instead of being limited by that offset.

[deeb]

Originally Posted by Allspice

Does this annoy anyone else? I enjoy "take-based" MIDI recording in lots of my sessions so I use "Record: input (audio or MIDI)"

yep yep ! i couldn't verbalize it

[foxAsteria]

Originally Posted by Allspice

So every time I record like this, I have to glue it immediately after recording. Which is oddly counter-intuitive, and something you can’t do if you want to preserve multiple takes of a performance.

I recently stumbled on a way to make it editable without needing to glue item first (thus preserving the takes.) Simply drag the left edge of the item a little bit and back again with grid snapping turned on. After doing that you're able to move that first note to the item start.

[Allspice]

That’s neat.

Hm, wonder if that can be scripted?

[Allspice]

Here’s an example of a use case.

When I’m doing sessions with other writers, I’ll do a lot of edits and takes of my/my colleagues playing while playing looped sections of songs. Usually they play it a few times, I engage record, then let them get down two or three variations and disengage record.

This leaves me with a few takes to use (usually one for the beginning and one for the end), but they look like the top photo in this thread. It’s easy to discern that the first note is late by the PDC amount but the fixed offset makes it more difficult to edit without gluing one comp. It isn’t crazy to fix it manually (especially with what FoxAsteria noticed), but it gets a little tedious after the 50th time in a session.

[foxAsteria]

Originally Posted by Allspice

Hm, wonder if that can be scripted?

I should think so. Would be great too because I could just add it to my record Cycle Action to do it automatically. Maybe perfectly quantized 1st note isn't what we always want, but for me it is 99% percent of the time.

[Allspice]

Is there some way REAPER can move the notes individually instead of using “start in source” when using “preserve PDC delayed monitoring”? It seems like that mechanism has something to do with how we end up with awkward editing when recording MIDI as takes.

Altering this would be in keeping with REAPER's general pattern of non-destructive editing. The current behavior of using "start in source" requires that I either make a few annoying manual edits for every MIDI item I record or glue the item, semi-destructively making it more difficult to get back individual takes.

[Allspice]

Should we make a more clear FR for this or do people just not care about take-based MIDI recording?

One use case where the “Start in Source” method really falls flat:

1. Create a track with some virtual instruments and plugins (for a little latency)
2. Set record to “record: input” and turn on “Preserve PDC”
3. Record a few looped takes of MIDI data
4. Turn on “loop source”
5. Grab the right edge of the item and loop it ten or twenty times.

Notice that after this, the looping is not based on the item length, but the source length. So the notes get further and further off beat every time they loop because “Preserve PDC” doesn’t alter the source.

[deeb]

Originally Posted by Allspice

Should we make a more clear FR for this or do people just not care about take-based MIDI recording?

maybe a screen cap is more explicit! i hope people care!

[foxAsteria]

I don't really know how the request could be any clearer, but feel free...

I think the reason most people don't notice this issue is because they don't bother using PDC. The timing errors it solves are not that noticeable unless you are switching between different devices and/or samplerates/buffer sizes during a session. If you stick to the same device and settings, the error will always be about the same and so all recordings will be off by the same amount and you will not hear it, only see it when zoomed way into the grid.

I have one device that needs a recording offset of maybe 12 samples and another that is off by thousands of samples. This made for some very noticeable timing errors when I would start a session on one and add more recordings with the other, but it took me a long time to realize it was not just my sloppy rhythm. I think most won't ever notice this unless they have some reason to do a loopback test or have some other sample-accurate needs.

I think the way around this is to find someone who is willing to script an auto-correct for the start of PDC offset recordings.