Importing Jamulus sessions (LOF and RPP)

Is there a way to import Reaper projects into LPX? Jamulus provides session recordings with individual WAV files and they are indexed in decimal-based seconds. So I know that file1.wav should be positioned to start at 29.32342 seconds. However, I can't find a way to actually get LPX to move a region to that time period. I realize I can probably convert to M:B:T (all projects are 120bpm) or convert the seconds into minutes:seconds:frames, but I was hoping there was an easier way to reposition each WAV file in the LPX project without have to convert each starting point. Again, all I know is the starting position in seconds (decimal value). Am I missing something obvious and/or can someone point me in the right direction?

If the audio files are timestamped then in Logic you can use Edit > Move > To Recorded Position. Otherwise you have to place them by hand (or by typing the SMPTE manually inside an event float).

Also, someone creating files that require to be positioned at 26.2323245467 seconds is just plain mean in my book. Like, dude, WTF?

It does not appear that the time is encoded into the WAV in any way. "Move to recorded position" does nothing. @fuzzfilth: I agree it is odd, but it seems this is the way Reaper stores files. There are two meta file "standards" that describe assembly this way. The first is an "rpp" file that looks like:

 

<REAPER_PROJECT 0.1 "5.0" 1551567848
 RECORD_PATH "" ""
 SAMPLERATE 48000 0 0
 TEMPO 120 4 4
 <TRACK {6ff3a0bf-f4f8-4335-be63-695cde525e3d}
   NAME AMY_K-73_16_118_x_1031
   TRACKID {6ff3a0bf-f4f8-4335-be63-695cde525e3d}
   <ITEM 
     FADEIN 0 0 0 0 0 0
     FADEOUT 0 0 0 0 0 0
     POSITION 508.55599999999998
     LENGTH 466.68666666666667
     IGUID {d5c7633a-d9e1-431c-960d-143354a33f65}
     IID 0
     NAME AMY_K-73_16_118_x_1031 (1)
     GUID {1b39f21e-68a7-4c9d-b2cd-845f77aef92b}
     <SOURCE WAVE
       FILE "/jamulus/recordings/lol1/Jam-20200808-021022429/____-73_16_118_x_1031-381417-2.wav"
     >
   >
 >

 

And the second is an "lof" file, encoded as:

file "____-73_16_118_x_1031-381417-2.wav" offset 508.55599999999998
file "____-68_187_221_x_22134-54578-2.wav" offset 72.77066666666667
file "____-172_248_20_x_22134-392503-1.wav" offset 523.33733333333328
file "____-73_198_106_x_22134-16569-2.wav" offset 22.09200000000000
file "____-73_198_106_x_22134-123810-2.wav" offset 165.08000000000001

 

Given that even moving the regions in the event window would require that I convert a decimal seconds value into SMPTE or MBT, this is becoming a lot of work.

 

A quick shortcut I found is to load the project into Audacity (which can read LOF files). Add a bit of silence to time=0 on each track, and then export the tracks as separate stems. This doesn't take as long as you might think, but it really would be better to be able to pull these directly into LPX.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm a bit surprised that this hasn't been asked before -- guess the folks using Jamulus are not the LPX crowd. If anyone has other suggestions, I'd welcome them...

The proper way to transfer audio between applications is to export one continuous file per track, starting at 1.1.1.1. or TC 1.00.00.00. Or AAF if you're lucky and it works.

 

Everything else is for folks that have a masochistic trait.

You're right -- but Jamulus is a live internet collaborative platform. People join in at different times so their individual 'track' recordings start and stop at different times. At the end of the session, you can download the stems for every person who was in the room during the session. I'm guessing Jamulus used the Reaper format because it natively supports describing tracks in this way. And Audacity supports it natively too. Perhaps its not as masochistic as it first appears... Could be the 'wav' of the future....

Well, the "wav of the present" perfectly supports time stampimg which in turn can be read by any application so I am at a loss why they don't just use that.

Yes timestamps have existed in audio files for ages. Not sure why those platforms don't embed timestamps in the wav files they export, that would make it much easier for anyone to sync them.

Someone should talk to them about this. Jamulus is open source. I think I will...