Flex time is shifting and changing the audio speed?

[dontknowdontcare]

So I'm mixing a song for someone, and I've run into a problem I've never encountered before. The person whose song it is had a falling out with the guy who was originally supposed to be doing this, and long story short, I have been handed the audio files of the studio session, and had to figure out the entire song/arrangement/everything from scratch.

 

I have used flex time plenty of times before, but never on a project that constantly changes tempo so maybe these are issues that are easy to fix but I couldn't find anything helpful. Since I wasn't supposed to be involved in this particular song, I wasn't present at the recording sessions, but the guy who was supervising and was supposed to do this mix made the decision to increase the tempo by 2bpm every verse/chorus changeover. So I made those tempo changes in the project, and switched on flex time to tighten a couple of things that were out of sync.

 

The first problem I had: I combined two different ukulele takes, and when I switched on flex time to fix a sync issue, the second one kept jumping out of place, and then jumping back when I switched it off. If I merged the tracks then the entire thing jumped. I solved this by cheating somewhat, bouncing that entire track and using flex on the new one, where it worked fine, but I kind of need to know what happened there.

 

Second problem, where I'm at my wits' end right now: I'm trying to use flex time to adjust a guitar strumming line. I switched it on (didn't make any adjustments, just switched it on), and the entire thing has gone out of sync with the project. Switching it off doesn't make a difference. It seems like using flex time changed the tempo of the audio somehow, and I have no idea how to fix it.

 

I'm guessing it has something to do with flex time trying to map the strumming to the grid and something's getting messed up because of the constant tempo changes. But I can't figure it out and I really hope someone can help me. Thank you!

[David Nahmani]

One way to "reset" an audio region is to select the region, choose Edit > Tempo > Remove Tempo from Audio File, then while in Flex view, control-click the region and choose Reset All Flex Edits. 

[dontknowdontcare]

Just tried that, it hasn't changed anything.

 

A couple of things: I didn't clarify in the first post that when I referred to switching it on and off, I meant doing so by using the button in the audio editing area.

If I check the Flex box in the top left corner, I can see the waveform stretching, and if I turn that off, it goes back to normal. So when I'm trying to do this, once I switch on Flex view, the audio is already changed, and Reset All Flex Edits isn't making any difference to it.

[David Nahmani]

I didn't clarify in the first post that when I referred to switching it on and off, I meant doing so by using the button in the audio editing area.

That button doesn't actually switch anything on or off, it just shows/hides Flex data in the audio editor. 

[dontknowdontcare]

Oh ok. But still... how do I solve the problem?

[David Nahmani]

You have to actually turn Flex off with the Flex button on the track header while in Flex view after resetting all Flex edits and removing tempo information.