Melodyne Question - Timing Off

[Dopamine]

I bounced my lead vocal out of ProTools (24/44.1 Wave file).

Opened in Melodyne Editor stand alone, did the tuning and saved as .Wav.

I import back into Pro Tools, but for some reason the timing drifts and is way off.

I didn't do any timing correction at all in Melodyne-- just pitch.

The recording was not done to a grid and the tempo in ProTools was the stock 120.

I went back into Melodyne and set the tempo to 120, but it is still way off. I also unselected 'Active Grid' and 'Dynamic'.

Any ideas? Thanks!

[Phil Ogden]

Is there any reason why you are operating Melodyne in standalone mode and not within PT?

When you open an audio file in standalone mode, the program auto detects the tempo (as best it can). It does not have the host as a reference.

I have found that you may need to manually set the tempo to match that of the session from which is came BEFORE doing any editing and saving i.e at set-up. Otherwise an incorrect auto detected tempo will be locked in to the file.This is particularly so with recordings that don't have strong transients from which to derive the tempo accurately like vocals.

[albee1952]

Do you mean it starts off in sync but then drifts off, or it imports completely off time? If it just comes in in the wrong place, put it on its own track and use the original audio as a guide and place the new audio at the same spot in the timeline(using Tab to Transient).

Having said that, why export and import? I use Melodyne as a plugin and never have any issues with timing(but I do agree that it should not act as you described) Here is my method that has served me extremely well for years:
1-insert Melodyne on a track
2-play the audio into the plugin
3-Tune as needed
4-create a blank audio or aux track beside the original, set output to an open bus
5-drag the Melodyne plugin FROM the original track, TO the blank track.
6-Set the input of the original track to the same bus as above
7-Place the cursor back at the start of the track
8-Create a new playlist on the original track and name it "track.Tnd"
9-Put the original track in record(now you have the original un-tuned track as a playlist, and the tuned audio right where it belongs)
10-Make the Melodyne plugin inactive and drag back, or delete that track

[Dopamine]

Thanks for the replies. The reason I used Melodyne Editor is because I was on a trip and don't have Pro Tools on my laptop. In the studio I bounced out all the lead vocals and transferred them to my laptop.

It looks like Phil is right. Melodyne auto-detected the tempos and set accordingly. The thing is I am just dong pitch, no timing correction. Is there a way to disable this? These songs weren't cut to a grid. For some reason Melodyne is time stretching things. Even If I line up the beginning the files are much longer.

Frustrating because I spent a lot of time timing these suckers.