SMPTE lock tempo changes

alright, well I've explained all I can and it seems you guys just want to argue about it. Good luck to the op, I'm out.

I'm sorry you feel that way. That's not the case, and on my end I feel like I understand what you've been saying here, however it does not address certain situations I've been in before when trying to create multiple cues for the same video in one single project. I even wrote a tutorial for it back when I wrote my first book for Apple showing how to use beat mapping to start a new cue at a specific SMPTE frame of the video and sync it to a grid point, but it was later determined that the tutorial was too complex for (beginner) readers and students to understand and ultimately damaged the image Apple was going for, of Logic being a DAW software that was easy to use.

I don't even think we're disagreeing, just saying the same thing in different ways. Maybe it's just a failure at communicating? Ultimately I was addressing the original request to have the ability to SMPTE-lock a tempo change, and pointing out that it wouldn't necessarily be such a simple thing to code in Logic, whereas you were offering workflow alternatives for what we're guessing must be the reason for this feature request. I believe this long discussion of us exchanging various methods and workarounds (and their respective limitations) or suggesting potential new feature solutions shows that coding SMPTE-locked tempo changes wouldn't necessarily be an easy thing.

As the admin, the last thing I want is for readers to feel like anyone, especially me, would be arguing for the sake of arguing, or for the sole purpose of being right. That's not my intent here, and I regret that you interpreted my answers as such.

It wouldn't be difficult to program IMHO

What would happen when you change the BPM value of the tempo point directly to the left of the locked tempo change?

Yeah that’s exactly what I do - but i have to use a tricky system of SMPTE locked markers and forcing tempo changes into place, but it takes me forever amd sometimes I stuff it up or make another little change somewhere and it screws it up. If the computer would lock it for me, it would honestly save me hours and hours and hours of time, heartache and frustration.

Tonight once again I dealt with a new picture coming in with all sorts of changes. It took me 4 hours to conform to it with lots and lots of trial and error. Logic is terrible at this.

I know this is dramatic, but I honestly think I would have a much better quality of life if Logic would just implement a few features like this. It’s honestly ruining my life because I have to constantly do all-nighters to work out what is going on and get things working again. Really affecting my psychological well being.

Anyway. What chances do I have? I’ve suggested it multiple times and they never respond to me

Just a note: Logic feedback is a way to send comments/bugs/requests etc to the team - not to start a two-way dialogue into your most-wanted feature requests.

 

Not having a response also does not mean your request won't be seen and considered.

Ok thanks. It’s just that I’ve been asking so it it for years now and nothing has happened except my psychological well being has been getting worse and worse and worse because of constantly having to spend so much time in my work trying to solve problems that the computer could do for me if these features existed.

listen, this may not be an important feature to you but it sure would be for me and many other film composers I know. I also tend to agree, Apple will never do it. haha

Damn do you really think Logic will never do it? mant professionals in film use logic... why would they just ignore them?

Anyway. What chances do I have? I’ve suggested it multiple times and they never respond to me

They rarely respond to the feedback form submissions however that in itself doesn't mean they're not hearing you.

However I don't think your chances of implementing that feature are high. Not because the idea doesn't make sense, it does, and I completely agree that it could greatly facilitate the life of movie/TV composers.

But unfortunately, implementing such a feature would be much more complex than you may believe. In my experience it would likely require a major overhaul of the way Logic's sequencer is designed, and of the Logic project file structure. That means that even once it's implemented it would trigger a vast array of new bugs, issues, unexpected behaviors, functionality to redesign, decisions to make, user frustrations, etc. So it's only my guess, but I don't believe Apple would be inclined to go that route.

For those reasons I believe Logic developers have determined that if you want to do scoring in Logic, then you use a different Logic project for each cue. Nearly all the professional movie or TV composers I have met throughout my carrer use a different Logic project for each cue.

So I'm just gathering information to better inform myself of issues and work on workarounds.

So your saying using this in Logic Pro X doesn't work...

because of???

So I'm just gathering information to better inform myself of issues and work on workarounds.

So your saying using this in Logic Pro X doesn't work...

smpte.png

because of???

Yeah that’s exactly what I do. But it’s so easy to screw it up and also so easy to end up in all sorts of funk when the picture changes or producers ask for notes that require all kinds of complicated tempo changes

I know how to do it all, but a computer would do it so much better.

So I'm just gathering information to better inform myself of issues and work on workarounds.

So your saying using this in Logic Pro X doesn't work...

smpte.png

because of???

But some cues i do might be in one tempo for one

Also I have an i9 maxxed out with ram mac book pro bit my sessions take 3 minutes to open because there’s so many sounds. Going between sessions would take forever. I get it for a movie, but not for a 13 minute episode with all sorts of complicated music.

But I’ve probably said all that before.

What I want to know is - if I can achieve it manually, but with trouble, why can’t it be programmed. I mean, if I can do it be stuffing around (and often screwing it up because I get confused and it disrupts my creative process), then why can’t the computer just do it? When I past in a SMPTE position to tell a tempo change to go back to its original position, it then automatically changes the previous tempo for me. As long as they are ON some kind of grid mark, which they need to be for recording sessions anyway, then it just calculates automatically what the previous buffer tempo needs to be in order to sync the new tempo mark. It might even be something like q=123.567 or whatever so that it syncs.

Also, when I use features like “cut/insert time” logic always asks me “do you want to insert a bar of 5/4 (for example) which helps keep things in sync, and that’s great. I’m essentially asking for the same thing, but instead with locked tempos.

Logic could just go “logic will insert a buffer tempo before your locked tempo mark, is this ok?”

And I would click yes. It would really just be what I already do manually with great difficulty, but it can just do it automatically, I would just sacrifice the preceding beat and it would calculate what it needs to be in order to stay in sync automatically.

I’m not a computer programmer, but I don’t see why that would be a problem, it would just have to keep doing that same calculation it already does every time I change a tempo.

Does that make sense?

hans zimmer uses Cubase and cubase doesn't have that feature.

as i said, if you feel like that is A MUST look into Digital Performer and "Chunks"

hans zimmer uses Cubase and cubase doesn't have that feature.

Hans also has an army of people to do the boring stuff, to be fair

NOne of the daws do what is currently being asked, including DP. Dp provides chunks which is very cool and I may switch back to DP someday just because if that feature If they ever add articulation management. But that just gives you the ability to have all your cues in one project file and sharing the same vrack. It doesn’t dynamically keep your hit points on the grid. Nothing does. I agree though for film score composers it would be a terrific feature. I also doubt they would add it, I don’t particularly think it would be that hard, it’s just very few people actually would use it.

Dp also has a hit point calculator you can use to give you suggested tempos over a time period thst will come close to hitting 2 or more hit points.

And it also can generate punches and streamers.

It definitely has the best film scoring tools of any daw minus articulation management. But it does not do as the op asked and hopes for.

hans zimmer uses Cubase and cubase doesn't have that feature.

 

as i said, if you feel like that is A MUST look into Digital Performer and "Chunks"

No can do. Everyone I work with uses logic. It’s logic or nothing, unless I stop working with my colleagues but that would mean not eating lol.

twistie, none of the other DAW's do what you are wishing for anyway, don't worry about it. What you're asking for is a good idea, I agree with you; but its just that not many people would need it or use it and they have other ways to spend their time in development with bigger returns; not to mention that software devs often do not entirely understand the nuances of what musicians are doing...particularly a specialized area such as this, they understand it enough to get it 75% right... So there is just a gap there...and I don't expect it to ever be filled...on that I agree with David..I don't particularly think the whole guts of LogicPro would have to change for this. (it might in order to support a chunks type of feature, but that is a seperate topic).

This discussion has motivated me to make some notes about what *I* would do if I were going to make a tool for tempo mapping..and I might try to whip some kind of script together or something that won't be as nice as it would be built into LogicPro...but at least might handle the tempo mapping. But the problem is that in order to go back and fix an existing LogicPro project that already has music..and adapt it for a new tempo map because the film director is feeling creative about edits...that's the part where it gets really difficult...as you know..and where it would be SOOO helpful if LogicPro could help make that process easier. I personally love the idea of "snapping" certain markers to grid lines...where the tempos (and meters) will be adjusted to make the snap happen. I personally would find that useful, but I also think most non-film-score. musicians would have no use for it whatsoever...so... I just doubt it will happen.

Also...truthfully...Any type you get some edits like that...and you have to move some smpte markers around...there are always going to be different ways you could approach remapping the tempo map...there will be half a dozen decent tempo choices that could be applied....different meter choices, you may go back and change the meter earlier to one consistent meter instead of just inserting one bar of 5/4 for example. There are creative choices that most likely a film composer will still need to make. So LogicPro would need to have a clean and elegant way to present some of those choices and give you the opportunity to choose or specify...it would probably be more involved then simply answer "yes" to "do you want a bar of 5/4 inserted".

But... I also think LogicPro, or any other DAW, could be at least aware of that creative process and provide tools that make it more brainless and easier to zip through that process....using your creativity to decide...rather then having to go manually insert meter changes and tempo changes until you visually see the markers line up with the grid through trial error. That is what we have to do now and its very time consuming I agree. There is a solution out there, but I just don't think any of the DAW's are going to add it.

Probably a more reasonable expectation would be to ask Apple to provide a cleaner way to import tempo maps to an existing project...overwriting the old tempo map without overwriting any midi and while not having to start a new project to do it. Then you could use other tools to rework the tempo map and just slide the tempo map into LogicPro on top of existing music...and then adjust your music as needed to the new tempo map.

hans zimmer uses Cubase and cubase doesn't have that feature.

 

Hans also has an army of people to do the boring stuff, to be fair

just saying that if cubase didn't do it for zimmer, likely Apple won't for the average joe.

I request this exact functionality via feedback ever since Digital Performer got Chunks in 2013, so i'm not holding my breath.

twistie, none of the other DAW's do what you are wishing for anyway, don't worry about it.

except digital performer

Digital Performer doesn't do that. Sorry. I have listed off already what DP can do.

ps - if it does do that and I need to know how, please share your info.

twistie, none of the other DAW's do what you are wishing for anyway, don't worry about it. What you're asking for is a good idea, I agree with you; but its just that not many people would need it or use it and they have other ways to spend their time in development with bigger returns; not to mention that software devs often do not entirely understand the nuances of what musicians are doing...particularly a specialized area such as this, they understand it enough to get it 75% right... So there is just a gap there...and I don't expect it to ever be filled...on that I agree with David..I don't particularly think the whole guts of LogicPro would have to change for this. (it might in order to support a chunks type of feature, but that is a seperate topic).

 

This discussion has motivated me to make some notes about what *I* would do if I were going to make a tool for tempo mapping..and I might try to whip some kind of script together or something that won't be as nice as it would be built into LogicPro...but at least might handle the tempo mapping. But the problem is that in order to go back and fix an existing LogicPro project that already has music..and adapt it for a new tempo map because the film director is feeling creative about edits...that's the part where it gets really difficult...as you know..and where it would be SOOO helpful if LogicPro could help make that process easier. I personally love the idea of "snapping" certain markers to grid lines...where the tempos (and meters) will be adjusted to make the snap happen. I personally would find that useful, but I also think most non-film-score. musicians would have no use for it whatsoever...so... I just doubt it will happen.

 

Also...truthfully...Any type you get some edits like that...and you have to move some smpte markers around...there are always going to be different ways you could approach remapping the tempo map...there will be half a dozen decent tempo choices that could be applied....different meter choices, you may go back and change the meter earlier to one consistent meter instead of just inserting one bar of 5/4 for example. There are creative choices that most likely a film composer will still need to make. So LogicPro would need to have a clean and elegant way to present some of those choices and give you the opportunity to choose or specify...it would probably be more involved then simply answer "yes" to "do you want a bar of 5/4 inserted".

 

But... I also think LogicPro, or any other DAW, could be at least aware of that creative process and provide tools that make it more brainless and easier to zip through that process....using your creativity to decide...rather then having to go manually insert meter changes and tempo changes until you visually see the markers line up with the grid through trial error. That is what we have to do now and its very time consuming I agree. There is a solution out there, but I just don't think any of the DAW's are going to add it.

 

Probably a more reasonable expectation would be to ask Apple to provide a cleaner way to import tempo maps to an existing project...overwriting the old tempo map without overwriting any midi and while not having to start a new project to do it. Then you could use other tools to rework the tempo map and just slide the tempo map into LogicPro on top of existing music...and then adjust your music as needed to the new tempo map.

Thanks. All true. I do actually quite like that logic offers two tempo maps. I’ve worked out all sorts of creative ways to deal with tempo but it is hours of frustration most of the time for me unfortunately. The biggest headache is producers asking for something different and/or picture changing, which might mean writing something completely different in tempo early in the session, putting everything after it off grid if you’re not careful. This happens a lot for me.

Anyway thanks for your suggestions. I didn’t actually realise other DAWs didn’t offer this either.

To dig a little deeper into it.. to really work out well from a film composer's point of view, it would need to be able to allow hit points to also be within a certain tolerance level of exactly on the grid. There is actually a frame or two in front and a frame or three after a hit point that are totally acceptably close enough for the musical beat line to line up with the hit point. Different people and perhaps different projects, would have a different point of view about that tolerance. Meanwhile, at 960 PPQN, 120BPM, there are approximately 64 midi ticks per frame (@30frames/sec). So you have a slop range of 100 or maybe even more midi ticks that could still line up with a smpte locked hit point and be "good enough". That provides a lot of wiggle room to use slightly different tempos and to wiggle through a section with fairly stable tempo and hitting several hit points good enough., etc..

So again..this comes down to film composer decision...not to say that some trick software couldn't streamline that process...I think it could be done, but there is not a big market for it.

Whether or not this is destined to be performed by actual musicians to a click track also matters a lot. if you are doing it strictly electronically, you can do all sorts of subtle tempo changes that creep in and out and make up a lot of ground from changed edits, etc..subtle enough that the listener won't hear the tempo change, but over time, enough to make the hits line up...but with real players, the click track has to be reasonably easy to follow..and there are certain things you should and should not do if that matters... Again...film composer decision.

Digital Performer doesn't do that. Sorry. I have listed off already what DP can do.

 

ps - if it does do that and I need to know how, please share your info.

https://www.admiralbumblebee.com/music/2019/11/23/DP-Chunks-Blow-Your-Mind.html

chunk is a "sub project" part of project (think of it as folder in logic - the older folder, not the new summing/folder stacks) and you can set a SMPTE start point of a chunk with it's own tempo, and you can move other chunks around without affecting the tempo or the smpte start point of the chunk before and after.

also i agree re: wiggle room.

also, i stopped doing complex films in a single project. I fan them out to separate projects when practical, it's faster to work with audio tracks in a master project to re-spot them.

One comment from Danny Elfman about chunks made me realize a cool purpose he uses them to stash lots of little ideas as he is exploring ideas for a film, each chunk is self contained sequence and he may build up dozens of ideas as he is working on it, all in one project file, before he starts assembling ideas into more concrete stuff. Chunks are just awesome for that. You can kind of do that with Logic Pro in regions and old style folders but dp chunks are all nice clean self contained sequences starting at 1:1 with their own set of tracks, really just a lot easier for that kind of thing.

I tend to agree with you about keeping each end result cue in a separate project anyway.

But back to the topic of when one particular cue has edits that force a composer to have to rework temp and meter map; how can dp make that easier?

when you rework ONE cue, not everything else after that particular cue falls apart

in logic, you need to re-edit all the "in between" tempos everytime you make a miniscule change to a single cue

You’re talking about two separate cues that are not musically related. The op is asking about edits within a single musical cue.

Also according to ABB’s article, when you layout chunks into a “song” the meters are in each chunk but the tempo is at the song level. I fail to see a workflow that solves the op’s request.

The only thing a chunk can do is have its start time locked to a smpte frame so at least that starting point will be bar beat 1:1 and locked to smpte but everything after will need to ne adjusted again and if the director brings edits in the middle of a musical cue then tempos may have to adjusted before and after the edit to make it all work. Chunks don’t handle any of that which is what he was asking about.

You’re talking about two separate cues that are not musically related. The op is asking about edits within a single musical cue.

 

Also according to ABB’s article, when you layout chunks into a “song” the meters are in each chunk but the tempo is at the song level. I fail to see a workflow that solves the op’s request.

 

The only thing a chunk can do is have its start time locked to a smpte frame so at least that starting point will be bar beat 1:1 and locked to smpte but everything after will need to ne adjusted again and if the director brings edits in the middle of a musical cue then tempos may have to adjusted before and after the edit to make it all work. Chunks don’t handle any of that which is what he was asking about.

No, I actually mean separate music cues in one project. See, I worn on episodes of animated tv that go for 7-10 minutes so it doesn’t make sense to have all sorts of separate files. I really how I keep getting off click all the time when I have to make lots of edits and changes. Would just be so much easier if I could lock a tempo change to SMPTE and it would just automatically make the previous beat some random tempo in order to ensure that it stays on click.

It really helps for playback to producers to be that flexible and have it all in one project, also helps for doing stems, only have to make stems from the one project importing from several would be a nightmare.

And often there’s not much space from one cue to the next. The music changes a lot throughout.

I think if you are trying to make multiple cues follow one continuous tempo track that is not multiple cues. That is one long cue with sections at different tempo. Because of the continuous tempo that is one single musical “thing”, call it a cue or don’t but the same problem exists as if it were one cue.

I think with or without dp you are going to run into challenges when the film comes back with edits in the middle of a single tempo track.

Again i reccomend you break things up into separate projects in logicpro, as cues, whenever there is a break that is long enough or sometimes even if there is no break at all. But still that will not provide any help to the challenge of video edits in the middle of a tempo map. Breaking it into separate cues only helps a little bit insomuch that each cue starts at barbeat 1:1 with its own tempo map. You can lock that position. If video edits come at those transitions or in between cues then it should be pretty easy to adjust. The video post editor can do it! If a video edit comes in the middle of any tempo map then it’s a challenge for you. It will be in dp also, dp just let’s you put all the cues in one file but each cue ( or chunk ) still has to follow a master tempo track if done that way, so there could still be some issues there actually.

But it may be easier in DP to export the stems of each cue from one project or even assemble those exported audio stems into a master sequence of the whole film, etc. Directors are generally accustomed to identifying sections of video where each cue will go identified by start and end smpte times. The composer composes each cue to that. The audio of each cue can be assembled directly to the video by a video post editor and these days they can even use audio stretching and other tricks to make it fit if they decided to edit the video last minute. Sometimes. generally a dialog should happen between director and composer such that they realize if they edit the video in the middle of an identified cue at the last minute, it will take the composer some time to remap the tempo map of that cue and possibly have to recompose some new music to fit it. If you have a ten minute film all as one huge cue then that would be very problematic dealing with those changes. Separate identified cues reduces those last minute changes to only when they happen in the middle of a cue

I think if you are trying to make multiple cues follow one continuous tempo track that is not multiple cues. That is one long cue with sections at different tempo. Because of the continuous tempo that is one single musical “thing”, call it a cue or don’t but the same problem exists as if it were one cue.

 

I think with or without dp you are going to run into challenges when the film comes back with edits in the middle of a single tempo track.

 

Again i reccomend you break things up into separate projects in logicpro, as cues, whenever there is a break that is long enough or sometimes even if there is no break at all. But still that will not provide any help to the challenge of video edits in the middle of a tempo map. Breaking it into separate cues only helps a little bit insomuch that each cue starts at barbeat 1:1 with its own tempo map. You can lock that position. If video edits come at those transitions or in between cues then it should be pretty easy to adjust. The video post editor can do it! If a video edit comes in the middle of any tempo map then it’s a challenge for you. It will be in dp also, dp just let’s you put all the cues in one file but each cue ( or chunk ) still has to follow a master tempo track if done that way, so there could still be some issues there actually.

 

But it may be easier in DP to export the stems of each cue from one project or even assemble those exported audio stems into a master sequence of the whole film, etc. Directors are generally accustomed to identifying sections of video where each cue will go identified by start and end smpte times. The composer composes each cue to that. The audio of each cue can be assembled directly to the video by a video post editor and these days they can even use audio stretching and other tricks to make it fit if they decided to edit the video last minute. Sometimes. generally a dialog should happen between director and composer such that they realize if they edit the video in the middle of an identified cue at the last minute, it will take the composer some time to remap the tempo map of that cue and possibly have to recompose some new music to fit it. If you have a ten minute film all as one huge cue then that would be very problematic dealing with those changes. Separate identified cues reduces those last minute changes to only when they happen in the middle of a cue

Thanks, but again I can't do that. I mean literally every week I have to turn up with a session with all midi and everything in one session so we can work on it together and do stems all together. It would slow us down and make things extremely complicated if I kept have multiple sessions for separate cues. I mean, this could literally mean 30 sessions for a 7 mitnute episode, which would be absolutely ridiculous. Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I hope it's clear now that your suggestions would not work at all - I appreciate your suggestions anyway tho. Even just waiting for the bloody things to open - I have a Mac book pro i9 with 64gb ram but my sessions still take 4 minutes to load because they have 400 tracks in my template. Furthermore no one else on the team turns up with more than one session. I have done SOME episodes with two sessions on occasion and just imported audio, but I don't like doing that because it was actually a nightmare even with two - because, every episode goes through about 8 rounds of notes and changes, sometimes more, and it meant I had to keep going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth between these sessions. If I had it separated cue by cue, mny of which are 15-20 seconds long, it would be absolutely ridiculous and I would probably screw things up. Hope that helps clear things up.

Then Digital Performer is your only option

Literally no other DAW has what you need unfortunately, and I absolutely feel your pain.

However there are a few things you could do to optimize load times:

- lower Kontakt prebuffer

- use NVMe SSD for kontakt

- delete tracks you don't need once the cues are in place (there's a command "delete unused tracks") or enable "Only load plugins needed for the project" in project settings

I’m with ploki, DP would be better but still keep each cue as a separate chunk and don’t put it all together into one huge thing, that is the part where you are going to have problems every time they edit the video. I think we are missing each other in communication somewhere because when you say it would take 30 short cues, that is not what I intended. You don’t need a cue for every tempo change.

At least if they are all in DP as separate chunks you won’t have to reload a different project to look at each cue. You’ll be able to select each cue as a sequence and hit play

But the simple truth is that if you have one big long musical cue that covers the entire length of the video with 50 tempo changes, then every time they edit the video again you will have a huge challenge to fix the tempos and probably recompose some music and there is no daw in the world that can automate that problem including DP. Even just reducing it to 5-10 cues which are each a minute or less, give or take, usually they are each related to a particular scene. This should have been discussed and decided earlier with everyone involved; where each scene is that needs music, etc… If that wasn’t discussed then I feel your pain because now you’re stuck in a mode of communication with the others where they have not identified or recognized these scenes per say and that would be very challenging.

But I still recommend you try to break each episode up into scenes with identified start and end smpte points. Within each scene there can be some tempo changes so if they edit one scene then you’ll have to rework the tempo map for the that scene but everything else will ok in the other scenes.

If the crew you are working with is just used to radically making edits all over the episode, and up to 8 times per episode and expecting you to adapt the music every time they do it, i feel your pain truly that would be very challenging. Unfortunately logicpro can’t do much about it and neither can DP except DP will at least have all your cues in one project file so that you don’t have to make them sit there waiting while you load each one. The people you are working with might have some unrealistic expectations about how easy or hard it is for you to adapt to those changes.