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Flextime Pros and Cons


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Go to solution Solved by David Nahmani,

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Greetings good Logic Pro X folk,

I'm curious what others think are the pros and cons of Flextime. I started using it when I first switched to Logic from ProTools a year or so ago. I quickly abandoned it because it seemed inconsistent, artifact-y and fiddly. I didn't make much of an effort, but instead, fell back on a manual edit method (see below). As my workload has increased, I'm wondering if I should take the time to re-explore Flextime. 

Have others overcome the artifact issues? If I RTFM would I be pleasantly surprised? 

My current method of editing is

1. Find a transient (marquee mode,  Shift arrow)

2. Cut (command-control T)

3. Put the playhead where I want the transient (now region start) to line up

4. Click ";" to move the transient where the playhead is

5. Peel back to reveal what precedes the transient and make sure the edit point and crossfade are good and clean.

6. Massage arm and wrist.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts. Happy creating!

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It very much depends on what you're applying it to. Is it rhythmic, tonal, music, noise, etc. I'm sure you have explored the different Flex modes in depth. I generally find Flex Time to work quite well, within reasonable limits. Flex Pitch can produce strange artefacts, this gets magnified when using less-than-perfect source material, noisy or breathy vocals, and I have a growing suspicion that lossy compression (MP3) on the source is not helping either.

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17 hours ago, fuzzfilth said:

It very much depends on what you're applying it to. Is it rhythmic, tonal, music, noise, etc. I'm sure you have explored the different Flex modes in depth. I generally find Flex Time to work quite well, within reasonable limits. Flex Pitch can produce strange artefacts, this gets magnified when using less-than-perfect source material, noisy or breathy vocals, and I have a growing suspicion that lossy compression (MP3) on the source is not helping either.

Thanks so much for your thoughts! I mostly use flextime for rhythmic elements - drums and percussion, guitar, piano, etc. I have not spent much time using the different modes, but you have me thinking I should give it another go.  Thanks again for your perspective.

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On 5/7/2022 at 10:50 PM, Atlas007 said:

I find that artefacts from using flex is sometimes related to markers either (wrong) position and/or numbers (too many or missing strategic ones)…

Thanks for replying. Yes, I totally agree. Sounds like I need to re-explore the best way to edit the automatically created markers and then I'll be much happier with the results!

Thanks, again!

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13 hours ago, triplets said:

Too much cutting on flexed regions creates issues as well.

Keep the region as long as possible, and only cut when you don't want a region to include flex.

Aha! I think that is something I have been doing, not realizing it was causing issues. Sounds like I would do well to mult tracks - one for flextime sections, another for multiple cuts.  Thanks again for your tip!

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Here's a post on how to use Transient Editing Mode: 

Also if you're using Flex on drums or percussion material I recommend you use the "Slicing" mode and deselect the "Fill Gaps" option in the Track inspector. Assuming your transients are in the correct positions, there should be zero artifacts. 

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9 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

Here's a post on how to use Transient Editing Mode: 

Also if you're using Flex on drums or percussion material I recommend you use the "Slicing" mode and deselect the "Fill Gaps" option in the Track inspector. Assuming your transients are in the correct positions, there should be zero artifacts. 

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

 

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