> PT 8 Beat Detective

[Howardk]

I often wrestle with Elastic time for quick drum tightening of a multi-region drum take and still go for Beat Detective often. I am not a total pro with beat detective, probably only done a couple hundred songs and find it does act up sometimes, but only if I mis-select or miss a step or setting. I use both Normal and Collective modes depending on what I am up against. . . however it does not work for me in PT 8 in any mode. The same session in PT 7.4 worked like a charm, while in PT8 it is moving the audio to the completely wrong spots leaving huge gaps. I tried the exact same steps/settings that I usually use, and that just worked in PT7.4, and still no luck.

Is it buggy, or am I missing something?

Any pointers to great information on how to get Elastic time to jump thru hoops editing drums with ease/speed? Separate thought.

[barismanco123]

The new waveform resolution in PT8 is a higher bit depth, I think it's 16 bit as opposed to 8 bit now, this may take some getting used to - also we also have new waveform views now, RMS and Peak - if you havent already done this try setting the waveform views to Peak in the View tab and you may find it easier to edit that way, though if that doesnt work try resizing the waveform on that track to suit your needs by using the cntl + alt + left and right bracet keys.

Lastly there is also the outlined view too, this can be turned on or off, which for some means tighter editing.

Hope that leads to help.

Baris

[Howardk]

Baris

I presume that the waveform view selected would have no impact on the Beat Detective algorithm. . . and where it proposes/places the slice markers?

I wish I had a paper manual for PT to do some reading and get up to speed and some of the little things I am not aware. Thanks for the heads up on the waveform views. . .

[usd]

already discussed here.
hth,
alex

[AchimHamburg]

Originally Posted by Howardk

I often wrestle with Elastic time for quick drum tightening of a multi-region drum take and still go for Beat Detective often.

Maybe you should make some effort to get into EA, it's by far easyer to use than it seems to be while looking at those manual pages and for me it's much better and faster than BD. Maybe you want to try out those videos (worth every ct IMHO and fun watching):

http://www.grooveboxmusic.com/str/elastic-time.html

Once you get used to EA you'll never want to miss it I bet.

[Howardk]

AchimHamburg, Alex Thanks for the links guys

I have used EA for drums many times, probably on 30% of the songs on the last 5 CDs I have produced and just as many for beds I have cut for others. It has been self taught and I am sure there are shortcuts I need to learn. Although much more powerful/flexible that BD, it is also slower/more manual in most situations and it can be tricky to use when the drum track is a comp of a bunch of takes (easy to mess up without mooring every last region first, or consolidated to a single length region before starting). Basically I have a basic EA process, I need to continue to find out little tricks to be more productive with it all the time. I find Beat Detective quicker in a brut force sort of way, which may change with more EA experience, but that is where I am now and some of the local projects are so low budget I need to make compromises to save time on drums and have more time for others things, like 10 minutes to do a vocal ride when mixing. Last night I recorded drums for a project being completed in an LE system. We tracked drums for 5 songs in 6 hours including setup, tracking and exporting. Setup is quick because I have 3 DW kits ready to go and the drummer was prepped so it was all good. . . what I am trying to say the range of work is so extreme from: a) recording and mixing, cd assembly with itunes a 15 song CD in 12 hours total to b) 800 hours just to track a CD and 14 days for mixing, with a multi-session master CD that included a Windows and Mac desktop application. Extreme example "a" wasn't pretty, and I would not allow my name on it, but they got 5 for 5 stars in a National Vintage Car Magazine CD review so go figure. I enjoy both types of work, understand the differences and sometimes quickest way is the only option.

Re the link to the earlier thread. I did do a search before I posted, but could not find anything relevant. I did a quick read of all the posts in the link you provided and there are a couple I need to sit in front of my computer with, but nothing that looked obvious. What I mean is Beat Detective is just whacked and not working right any more for me. I mean I grabbed it all did the capture, then grabbed the kik, analyzed just it setting the slider to pick the right density of slice points, then grabbed all the drums, did the separate, and it looked good. Did the conform and things moved all over the place with huge holes in time. I know to grab complete bars, I think I was doing 16 or 20 at a time, and I tried it a number of different areas, with a few different settings beate 4/4 16ths, beats and sub-beats, but not luck. I used the same process and Session in PT 7.4 and done right in less than a minute. . . something is very wrong. . . I will setup a another test scenario when I have time, and carefully peruse the thread(I saw something about BD now looks at the Grid resolution, which is news to me because I thought it only considered the tempo/Bar line + the settings within the BD dialog).

I am a little buried with tracking, mixing and mastering on several projects and fly out to a couple gigs on the weekend so I am trying to cheat time a little. . . I just want to hit things with my hammer, I don't want to spend more time trying to make my hammer work. Yea, I know, then I should be a carpenter.

I need a new 17" Mac Book Pro so I can work in my hotel room as well(Mmmm, 1920x1200, I must have!). . .

Thanks for both your thoughts. . .

[suicune]

Hi Howardk

Just to give you an update on this, I'm currently in discussion with HappyKyne trying to find a fix for BD. You may have read through the salient points of my original posts and not thought it to be relevant, but the problems you describe could certainly be caused by the double trigger issues I'm encountering on a daily basis. I assure you Digi are now aware of this problem and are working on a fix. They changed the mode of operation in 7.4 so that it no longer made cumulative quantize errors when drums were playing to a click. In 7.3, if it detected a downbeat a 16th late and you didn't correct it when you conformed all beats following the error would also be a 16th late. In 7.4/8 it no longer does this, but they have unfortunately created a host of other problems in the process.

I should stress that as things stand currently you should not be using the same settings in V8 as 7.4, as the 16-bit overviews have drastically increased the sensitivity of the beat detection. To give you a benchmark - in 7.4 I set sliders around 46% now I use about 9%. I've logged this with digi as a separate issue and I hope they'll readjust the sensitivity in a future release but for now I would try experimenting to find a new 'default' setting for yourself.

Personally even despite all its current issues I still much prefer BD to EA for drum editing. I use EA on pretty much everything else, but on multi-channel drums I've often found EA to cause audible flams and cymbal phasing, particularly where the drums include ambient mics (as ours always do). Plus if you're well-practiced at it, BD is still faster.

[EvilElfBoy]

Suicune,

This is probably a stupid question, but are you using the drums in an edit group before quantizing with EA? If not, then try doing that. This keeps the phase relationship for the hits on Multi Drums. EA works really well, but I do agree that sometimes it can be a bit slower then BD in certain situations.

The fix is in the works and we shall have it soon! Hooray for that!

Best,

-Evil

[suicune]

This is probably a stupid question, but are you using the drums in an edit group before quantizing with EA?

Well obviously.

No it's not a grouping issue, it's just that sometimes when you time stretch drums it creates flam glitches. And EA doesn't maintain phase relationships perfectly across multiple channels, if you've ever tried to EA a stereo piano or acoustic guitar you'll hear the slight phasing. But I must admit I never experimented to much with EA on drums. I tried it out a couple of times and decided pretty soon that it was slower and didn't produce as good results as BD.

Anyway, let's not divert the post into a BD vs EA argument, I'm sure different people will have their own preferences and it's not really the issue.

[Howardk]

Originally Posted by suicune

Hi Howardk
the problems you describe could certainly be caused by the double trigger issues I'm encountering on a daily basis.

I will look at the posts in that earlier thread in more detail to see what I can glean from it. I think my problem is a lot simpler and I am hoping it is simply a pilot error. . .

In my case with PT8 the first encounter was with a very basic drum track. I had no problems capturing/analyzing, adjusting the sensitivity and the trigger lines showed in the right places, and it separates exactly how I expect it to, but when I conforms the regions move so far there are huge gaps and the drum pattern is not even recognizable. . . I have caused this problem myself in earlier PT versions, by not setting up the "Contains" or "Resolution" division settings properly, or by grabbing an odd length region by mistake, but otherwise it behaves as expected. Not so in PT 8 so far but I need to get back to it and confirm with a fresh start.

And I second, I have no intention to start a war on EA versus BD. I love 'em both equally it is just that one of them is misbehaving at the moment or I am just not understanding something basic.