Beat Mapping issues.

This is completely messed up (yet again something, my oh my...).

Look at this picture:

The waveform should be displayed using a lighter blue on a dark blue background on the beat mapping track. And it was until some moments before. Now it isn't anymore.

At the same time, the audio file editor stopped to behave normally, not allowing me to click inside the time ruler anymore to set the playhead. The playhead would now always follow the position in the arrange, regardless of which window is focused.

This happend 2-3 times now.

I managed to get the beat mapping display back once by closing the beat mapping track, copying the screenset and then re-opening the beat mapping track, but right now this isn't possible anymore. So: "Bye bye, beat mapping!" - I need to start all the way from scratch as it seems.

 

In addition, when you connect some time ruler position to a beat mapping transient (given the bug described above hasn't kicked in already...), Logic will MOVE the audio region away from its starting point. To adress this, it's absolutely required to insert a tempo event at the beginning of the region and connect the beggining position to your audio region. Quite obviously this shouldn't be required at all, by definition an audio file is anchored at it's bar position (unless you SMPTE lock it).

 

All this is 100% reproduceable. It just happens when you fool around with things a bit (a very safe receipt seems to be manually moving transient markers in the audio editor window).

 

Again something Logic was once excellent at horribly messed up. Yuck!

Hey Sascha,

I was just brought on for a new project and recently uncovered this bug as well (super frustrating to say the least).

 

How did you end up 'fixing' / dealing with it exactly??

 

Thanks for any help

Hey Sascha,

I was just brought on for a new project and recently uncovered this bug as well (super frustrating to say the least).

 

How did you end up 'fixing' / dealing with it exactly??

 

I simply didn't. It's nervewrecking.

If you restart a project often enough and avoid switching screensets, things sometimes seem to be back to normal.

But if I had to beatmap a song right now (fortunately I don't have to...), I'd likely fire up OSX 10.6.8 with my LP9 install and do it there.

 

From all I know this issue is related to audio files mysterially not being displayed in the audio editor anymore. That's at least something to also happen when using screensets.

 

Oh, and one thing that really *needs* to be done is to create and connect a transient marker at the beginning of your region and connect it to the bar ruler. Otherwise Logic will start moving the audio file around at some point in time (which is as wrong as it gets).

Edited January 22, 2019 by Sascha Franck

Ugh...

Thanks for the quick reply, much appreciated.

Ugh...

 

Yeah, that is about the only truly matching comment regarding this very situation. Pretty discouraging.

In earlier Logic versions, I could always beat map a "typical" song in as much time as it takes to listen through it just a handful of times (ok, plus a little finetuning here and there) and even rather complexed tempo changes in the original track wouldn't cause much issues.

But as is, it's more or less hit and miss.

Really, there's been a time when I was beat mapping on an almost regular schedule (creating live playback tracks for originals recorded without a click, including things such as programming a useable click track for the drummer, etc.) and Logic has always been the most excellent tool for that kinda job. So it's really frustrating to see this going downhill that much, the only good thing being that I don't need that functionality these days (and as said, if I had to, I still have my LP9 install).

I'm wondering whether they will actually adress this...

hey Sascha, I think I remember you from the old LUG digest! I'm having a similar issue, there is no waveform displayed on the beat mapping track. I've tried some of the suggestions I found online (convert region to new audio file, convert region to aiff file, etc.) to no avail. In my case the problem existed from day 1 of setting up this old Mac Pro 2.66 running El Capitan and Logic 10.3.3

 

I have Logic 9 also running on this rig (Snow Leopard) on another hard drive and beat mapping works perfectly. (I still prefer working in Logic 9 for any number of reasons, but I've been forced by circumstance to get used to Logic X, grumbling all the way). Beat mapping is also working fine on my iMac (High Sierra) running Logic X 10.4.4. And, if I open an already-beatmapped project from Logic 9, in Logic X on either computer, it displays and functions correctly- I just can't beatmap a new project on this El Capitan system on the Mac Pro-which is maddening.

 

I tried all the simple stuff, like Disk Utility, Diskwarrior, etc. Since the system seems to function perfectly in every other way, I didn't want to do a clean install of the OS. I wanted to try re-downloading Logic X though, but I haven't figured out how to do that. Someone online suggested deleting the existing installation-saying then the App store would allow me to re-download, but I'm reluctant in case it doesn't work out and I am left with nothing. I doubt the current download is for anything older than Sierra. I have a call appointment w/Apple support tomorrow afternoon. Sometimes they're brilliant and super helpful, other times not so much. Maybe I'll get lucky...

hey Sascha, I think I remember you from the old LUG digest!

 

Ah well, those were the days...

 

I have Logic 9 also running on this rig (Snow Leopard) on another hard drive and beat mapping works perfectly. (I still prefer working in Logic 9 for any number of reasons, but I've been forced by circumstance to get used to Logic X, grumbling all the way).

 

By now, I'd go back to Logic 9 pretty much any day instantly if it supported the recent plugins that I'm using (I only have it installed on Snow Leopard). I could potentially hack me through things and try to get ahold of the last macOS supporting it (was that Sierra?), but plenty of plugin companies are already only actively working on High Sierra and Mojave support, so that'd be less than ideal.

Anyhow, I'm almost getting more grey hairs every day looking at all the things that they managed to mess up royally in LPX.

 

Beat mapping is also working fine on my iMac (High Sierra) running Logic X 10.4.4. And, if I open an already-beatmapped project from Logic 9, in Logic X on either computer, it displays and functions correctly- I just can't beatmap a new project on this El Capitan system on the Mac Pro-which is maddening.

 

Yeah, opening a beatmapped project is no issue here, either.

But well, it doesn't work for me with High Sierra and 10.4.4, so it's likely not the older macOS to mess things up.

 

Fwiw, I seriously doubt reinstalling Logic would adress anything. And if that was so for whatever weird reasons, they should re-think their installation procedure - which they should anyway. You are forced to have your studio computer on a high bandwidth connection to install Logic, which is absolutely ridiculous - and Logic is the only sequencer requiring such a horrendous nonsense, all the others can be downloaded to any machine and then installed onto whatever target computer. Especially given that Apples servers aren't exactly the best (there's countless issues reported when it comes to library installs and what not), this becomes an even more nonsensical idea.

Until a few months ago I had a dedicated music refuge (kinda like a mixture between my personal rehearsal room an a demo recording environment, unfortunately I had to move out there...) and there's only been very little, sometimes even no mobile internet available at all (let alone my monthly data on the mobile phone is capped to 10GB, still common over here), so I had to take this huge and heavy cheesegrater home with me (including the monitor) to install LPX there. Only to find out there were several library items missing when I was back in the room. Completely inacceptable.

Well, enough of the ranting...

 

I have a call appointment w/Apple support tomorrow afternoon. Sometimes they're brilliant and super helpful, other times not so much. Maybe I'll get lucky...

 

Please keep us informed how it went.

ok, so the phone call went remarkably well, the guy at Apple ("Chris") who initially explained that he knew nothing about music, Logic, or recording in general, etc., was very patient and helpful despite my confusing him by having to deal with other issues cropping up on the fly (like my new Focusrite Scarlett that doesn't want to behave in Snow Leopard at higher sample rates). In any event, working in El Capitan/Logic 10.3.3 (which is where I was having the problem with beatmapping) we figured out how to get it working. (As an aside, in the course of time I'd realized that if I opened a new project and dragged in a "fresh" file, beatmapping worked fine. So I knew that, at least in some situations, beatmapping was working. Interestingly though, if I copied a track from a problematic project into a new project, while leaving both projects open, it didnt work). The problem I was having was that a number of projects I had that were multitrack analog tape transfers wouldn't display the beatmap track. There were about 75 of them, all done at 96K sample rate and they all wouldn't display the beatmapping track, so I thought maybe it was a sample rate issue, but apparently it's not that-although the guy couldn't really explain what it was; only that "something" in the files was screwing up the functionality of beatmapping. What I learned to do was to open a new Logic project, then go to File/Import/Logic Projects, select the project I was having trouble with, then in the main window on the right side there's a list of all the tracks, instruments, etc. I had to first select all, then check all the checkboxes across the top row (so that everything on the page is checked) then at the bottom right click "add". In other words, select everything, then add it all. Then I got a dialog box that asks if I wanted to import tempo information, I said "yes" but apparently it doesn't matter (according to the guy at Apple). At that point an Untitled project opened with all my tracks, only this time Beatmapping works as it should. Retitle and save, all good. As to why it happened in the first place, who f$@%ing knows? Life in 2019, what a scene...good to be here, good to be anywhere!

Uhm, so how did "Chris" manage to help you out when he doesn't know anything about Logic?

I mean, you need to know your way around Logic to even get to the beatmapping function, let alone make suggestions about how to adress a broken function.

Do they just have a list of known things there - and how to work around them?

I wondered the same thing, as he said it a few times; didn’t have a clue what beatmapping was, etc., but he did seem very bright and certainly familiar with Macs in general. Somewhere in the early part of our conversation, he asked to put me on hold so he could confer with a colleague; that’s probably where he got the solution, as I think I was holding for three or four minutes. It didn’t feel like one of those scripted tech-support calls that you get when calling your cell-phone company, though. Very interactive, friendly, and thorough.

well, this continues to be a problem. I was able to get it working the day I spoke with Apple, and again (I think) shortly thereafter. Now, however, if I follow the instructions I used previously, clicking on the "Show/Hide Global Tracks" button doesn't bring up the beat mapping option-only Arrangement, Marker, Signature, and Tempo. (Beat Mapping used to appear under those other headings). I guess I'm just going to continue beat mapping in Logic 9, or try calling Apple Support again. Maybe this time I'll get someone who's actually familiar with Logic (although I can't fault the guy who helped last time, at least he was able to get it working...for a minute).

Fwiw, I managed to beat map quite some things recently without any issues - the weird thing being that I don't even use .7 (freezing too often) but .6.

you lost me... .7 what? I'm using El Capitan on my main computer, and I use Snow Leopard for certain Logic procedures. Obviously, I can't run anything newer than Logic 10.3.3, although I have an iMac in the living room (that has Logic installed) which *is* running High Sierra at the moment but I think can be upgraded to Catalina...

 

I'm just not always enamored of the latest and greatest..

well, I discovered that-at least in 10.3.3-in order to see the "beat mapping" option, I need to "control-click" in the Global Tracks area. That's if the project is one that was started in Logic X. If it was begun in Logic 9 and then imported to Logic X, it behaves as before, in other words, simply opening the Global Tracks window shows beat mapping along with the other things like Arrangement, Tempo, etc.

 

It doesn't make it any more useful though, in the sense that actually being able to see the markers is nearly impossible a lot of the time (although randomly, they show up almost as well as in Logic 9) and I can't seem to figure out how to manually place a transient marker where it actually belongs, as in Logic X they will sometimes appear in really inappopriate places and can't be moved. I've tried various key combinations that seem like they would usually work in situations like this, to no avail. At some point I actually read the manual, but the instructions there didn't work either. I feel like beatmapping in Logic X is just not working...maybe Apple is trying to force everyone to use their new Smart Tempo feature (which apparently a lot of people are also frustrated with?).

 

so aside from all my general ranting, I guess one of my main points is, why can't I manually place a transient marker where I f$@%ing want it to be? Or, move one that's already there? I've found discussions about this online, where people explain how to do it, but the methods they describe certainly don't work in 10.3.3 (the post that had the "answer" was from 2010 or something, so they may have been talking Logic 9?)