Beat Detective Click and Pop Assistance please!

[mftorso]

An old subject, one I've not found the answer to.

In some cases, conformed regions ( in the case of multi tracked drums) have zero crossings at the region In/out point that are opposite, or nearly so.

No matter what I've tried with fill and crossfade, different length xfade, moving certain regions manually (sometimes works,not always) or using PT's bulk create fade with innumerable variations in pre-set and custom fades, I still get clicks and pops.

I am at wits end.
And need your advice asap!
Thank you all beat detective gurus in advance

It's obvious to me the sonic physics and why this is as it is. I simply need to know if there's a way to "fix" it.
Believe me, I've spent hours manually tweaking AFTER the BD fill/Xfade functions and in some cases, it simply appears to be un-fixable.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

This is because Beat Defective (BD) doesn't have an "Intelligent Crossfade ©" option... I've suggested this to Digi before. To make BD usable they need to drag the front of all regions by 60 ticks into the previous region before doing crossfades. Currently it just drags the front of all regions up to the previous region (and not into it) and then creates the crossfades which means more than likely it's crossfading right on where the kick or snare used to be which causes the clicks you're hearing.

My method -- don't crossfade with BD... then do the following:

Program your right mouse button to be a Right Arrow. Hit F6. Group your drums. Zoom in and tab to the first edit BD created... drag the front of the region 60 to 75 ticks into the previous region (if there is one and the previous region is longer than 100 ticks), then hit your right mouse button and drag the next region... etc. Do this for all region boundaries.. then Command+A and Command+F... and uncheck Fade In and Out... and create the fades.

Rail

[snoop]

Maybe a purist would disagree, but I like to work fast and the easiest solution (which might not actually be easy) to your problem involves the following:

1. It is very important in preserving time to make sure beat detective is going to cut at the right spots. Play around with the different kinds of analysis and add and remove sync points as needed. You'll notice certain benefits in using high and low emphasis on how accurately bd will detect transients. In addition when gathering this information DON'T!!!! use the grouped drum tracks!!!
2. Here's where the purist might disagree. Use the Region pad option when separating regions.

I realize this lacks a great amount of detail, but in fear of wasting my time with the gory details of how I do it, I'll wait. I f you are interested I can give you a play by play of what I do to avoid this time wasting nuisance. The nuts and bolts are above, so I hope that helps and doesn't annoy anyone. Oh yeah, I forgot how to use : and ; properly.

Snoop.

[mftorso]

Thanks to you both.
Railjon,
I pretty much do and have done all the things you mentioned. I still have trouble with the occasional zero point being at opposites going out of one, to another region and that at times, is maddening and virtually impossible. Hundreds of attempts, different fade types, different spots.

Snoop,
Also thanks.
I'm using low emphasis and almost entirely cutting on Kicks and Snares. Everything in between is acceptable "swing" for this cut. Yes, I'm zooming in and moving trigger points to just a smidge before the transient I want to affect and getting rid of triggers other than the ones desired.
I AM doing it with the group of drums, 14 channels, but seeings how I use the inside kick mic and close snare mic for trigger points, everything else comes later in time and in general don't think this is making things worse.
Again it's the issue of zero crossing points being at opposites and crossfades of any sort seem not to be able to deal with SOME, not all clicks.

I do not know what you are referring to re. "the region pad option".
Feel free to contact me directly at your convenience: mftorso@yahoo.com
I'll take your gory details!
Thanks you all!

[MAXIMUSIC]

I, was pretty much, doing what Rail said..... till PT7..... now you can separate regions at transient leaving any # of msec before the transient ( I keep this # for future use), then I open BD, apply quantize and cross-fade, beautiful...... oh well.... almost.... my track is a little behind the beat........ now I get the mentioned # and apply a shift using it.
It sounds like too many steps, but it has been much faster than doing it by hand.
my2c

[mftorso]

Tried all the methods suggested.
In the end the clicking little bastards had to be manually fixed. I would estimate about 10% of the edits weren't acceptable via any of the fill and crossfade or batch xfade methods I've tried, including reply's to this post.

I used control/nudge keeping regions the same, moving audio forward and backward. I'd get as close to a zero crossing as possible without screwing the groove and do manual xfades, usually in a number of places before it would finally stop clicking.
Even still, there are minor tiny clicks, some more apparent than others depending on which of 14 tracks you listen to in solo.
When in mix context, even just drums soloed up it's fine, not noticeable whatsoever.
Still, it's a drag to know they're there.
I don't think Roger Nichols would let this slide, would he?
I also cringe for the many mixers out there who doubtless receive hundreds of clicking drum tracks, shoddy edits, abusive and obvious auto tune, brickwalled to death tracks and on and on and on.
I shall make no one cringe, this I pledge!

Ah well. Must go on, too much to do to obsess further.
Still would like to hear from Beat detective gurus about their method for absolutely click/pop free tracks that are created FAST.

Thanks all.

[Jeff Ulmer]

I always pad the cut point before separating (which you can do automatically in BD). I rarely have clicks to deal with, and the conforming does what it is supposed to (except for the bug in v6 that won't allow quantising eighth notes). I rarely need to fix clicks.

[Iain Graham]

I have to say, I follow Rail's method. Fill only, don't fill and fade. Then go back to the start of the drum tracks. Tab to region boundary, and drag the region on the right of the edit to the left a little. I leave it on the trim tool. Repeat until the end of the session.

I find if you get the zoom settings right, you can see the front edge of the kick/snare/hat/whatever hit at the end of the region before the edit, and at the start of the region following the edit. It's the same hit, just smeared over the edit. This results in some nice big pops.

Sometimes you need the then nudge the hit back into the right point. Especially if there's an early kick on the one immediatly after your selection. That can get real messy. Also, on certain ride grooves, I've seen Pro Tools do some very strange things. I usually duplicate the top playlist of the kit, so I can jump back and check what should be going on. I've had some extra cymbals appear, that kind of thing. It could be the way I'm cutting things up though, wouldn't surprise me.

It's a bit time consuming, but it's the easiest way, well, AFAIK.

HTH,

Iain

[Happy_Kyne]

Hi All,

I thought it might be time for the software engineer that developed Beat Detective to chime in.

Regarding "conformed regions ( in the case of multi tracked drums) have zero crossings at the region In/out point that are opposite..."


First off, I need to ask a stupid question. Are you sure that event detection has not detected any false triggers? I only ask because if there are additional erroneous triggers, you will hear artificial transients where an edit is created (crossfade or not) within what should be a sustained segment of audio.

Assuming false triggers are not the culprit....

It is likely a case where the audio within a region (after conform) is out of phase with its neighboring region. From my experience, this is only an issue with audio that has a strong harmonic structure, or fundamental tone (ringing kick drums, toms, pitched instruments, etc.). I have encountered this problem while time alligning some guitar tracks.

Given the current capabilities of Beat Detective, the only solution is to manually slip offending regions back into phase. I find the easiest way to do thins is to....

1) Be sure to have an edit group enabled so that all drums are edited together.
2) Find the track with the hottest signal where the click occurs. Remove any crossfade that might exist there.
3) trim the front of a region left to expose a stable portion of the waveform in front of a transient.
4) slip the region so that in becomes phase alligned with its neighbor (look for a repeating wave shape). Yes, this will have a minor affect on event timing.
5) Reapply a crossfade.


Sorry to not have a more automatic solution for you. Perhaps in a future Pro Tools release....


Mark Jeffery
Software Engineer
Digidesign

[Happy_Kyne]

One more thing...

It's already been mentioned previously in this thread, but just to be clear....

Using "Pad" can be very helpful in avoiding pops and clicks.

Rail mentions the need to "need to drag the front of all regions by 60 ticks into the previous region before doing crossfades". Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems to me that using a "pad" setting equivalent to 60 ticks would produce the same result. (With much less manual labor.) Please let me know if these steps don't result in the same thing.


Mark Jeffery
Software Engineer
Digidesign