What happened to Beat Detective?

[OddsAre]

I've moved from 7.4.2 straight to 9, so as I drum edit my first session on 9, I notice Beat Detective does not react the same way as in PT7. Is anyone else noticing it to be a bit clunkier? Let me preface by saying I have drum edited 100's of songs over the years, so I am no novice.

For example...

1. In choosing "Capture Selection" if the region overlaps beat 1 (backward on the timeline) when you go to conform, it wipes out all of measure 4 in the prior region. It never did that before, so now you have one more step to do, either trim the beginning of the region to ensure it doesn't overlap, or change the Start Bar|Beat setting in the Beat Detective Window.

2. Also it seems to be way worse at detecting the beats and bars. Sometimes as bad as the kik hit sitting right on top of a beat marker on the grid and it reading over a 16th note off!

3. On PT7 if BD did happen to make a mistake and you corrected it, it would correct all the beats after it to reflect. Now I have to go through and change every beat marker if one is messed up.

Is it just me or are there some significant changes to the way it operates now?

[OddsAre]

Also, when you "Capture Selection" if the region on the back end is short of beat 1, and the captured selection's End Bar|Beat window reads something like 15|4, you cannot add markers after beat 4... such as a hi hat or tom hit on 15|4|480. Again you have to manually change the End Bar|Beat window. That was never an issue before. If the Capture Selection read Start Bar|Beat 7|4 and End Bar|Beat 15|4 it knew you were trying to edit a region between 8|1 and 16|1.

[slater05]

it's fine if the section you need to conform doesn't perfectly line up with the grid. But when you change beat detective to conform, change the start and end selection to what it SHOULD be, and make sure you hit enter after inputing a number or else it acts as if you didn't change it. I had to go through some trial and error to figure this out.

[OddsAre]

Thank you Mike for taking the time to reply. I have settled on having to add that to the scenario now, I'm just bummed that they have changed that, when the older version seemed to take it into account automatically... It's just one more step that I did't have to do before...

I have a message into tech support to see if they can explain a few of the changes. We shall see...

Thanks again...

[suicune]

Yes it has changed a lot since the old days - it changed first in v7.4 and then again in v8 and 8.0.3 for a few bug fixes. If I understand the discussions I had with the software engineer correctly the primary reason for this change was to eliminate the potential for cumulative quantise errors when the drummer played to a click.

For example in 7.3 and earlier if it incorrectly identified what should have been beat 1|1|1 as being 1|1|240 and you didn't correct it, then every subsequent beat for the entire song would have been a semiquaver late. Now it takes the actual position in respect to the potential grid (that being in relation to the first/last calculated trigger not the actual grid) into account so it is able to correct itself for such errors, and as such should always put the last beat of the song in the correct position regardless of what errors it made in the meantime.

One side effect of this is that the capture selection button is not really as useful as it once was. You should instead manually enter the bar/beat numbers that the beats should be on, rather than those closest to the current selection. This is what's also causing the difference in how it recalculates subsequent beats when you make a change - it's looking at the position in relation to the potential grid instead of the trigger you just changed. Plus if it hasn't got the position of the very last trigger correct, it'll make plenty of mistakes inbetween so be sure to check that first. Although I don't really understand why you're getting the problem of it reading accurate downbeat markers wrong - this is exactly the sort of thing it's not supposed to do any more. Most likely cause for that is your selection numbers being wrong in the first place.

You can read most of what Mark Jeffery said about this over here:

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=238100&page=4

I had a little more via email. Although bear in mind that some of the bugs discussed in this thread have since been fixed.

I must admit I never did really warm to the new behaviour myself, (my LE editing station is still on 7.3) but since I don't use BD in quite the normal way in the first place I didn't really feel I had the right to continue arguing once the main bugs plaguing me had been addressed. I'm almost as quick with v8 now. I can also understand how someone new to it might find the new version easier. I just got too used to dealing with the quirks of the old one.

I hope that helps a little.

[yeahimsteve]

Manual pocketing of drums > Beat detective.

From a quality and realism standpoint, nothing beats doing it by hand.

That would be my solution for ya!

[OddsAre]

Thanks guys for the replies, it's starting to make more sense... and after editing another song last night I can see where they made the minor tweaks, and I can see why they did what they did. Although in some instances their fixes seem to be 6 of one half dozen of the other when it comes to, making it a better tool.

I guess at this point my only gripe is having to manually change the selection area, equaling one more step and slowing the process down. But I'm sure in a week I won't even remember in created this thread! :)

After more time on it, I have not had any more instances where the beat markers were reading wrong even right on top. I think I will chalk that off to user error, I can admit that.

yeahimsteve, judging by your rant earlier I'd assume you have had projects come along over the years that don't warrant the care and time needed to manually edit an entire album. :) Although I have done plenty of manual editing and I agree, the accuracy is far superior.

[RedTriangle]

+1 on not enjoying this since the move from 7.4. Capture selection is basically useless now...

[rhythmtechnologies]

+1

started editing my first session on pt9 that needed BD last night and thought i was losing my mind with the selection process!

also came straight to 9 from 7.4

seems clunky and awkward, whereas in the old version i'd do a full multitrack in a few minutes now its gonna take a lot longer :/

[Kourquie]

Have you tried editing 32nd notes? Its impossible for me! It will not let me move triggers! Total crap. Leave it to Avid to "upgrade" and make it worse!