Mark Mitchell

@Starship Krupa I do think that the timing is related to the source - and my wanting to have those 2 bars lead in is ignoring that Cakewalk is still starting the video timing and there is not a negative number in SMPTE - my timing source is Audio - I will try using internal. Apologies for not starting my own topic - it just seemed to be very related. During the night the feeling was settling in on me that I will probably have to move to Cubase - as that is the Windows tool relied on by a good number of respected composers for film are using. Logic has been a Mac only tool for many years - they ended the Windows version when Apple bought Logic. I will probably wait until they have some sort of "Black Friday" sale on the Steinberg products - Cubase and Dorico, and save my money up for them.

OK - end of workday and now can look at the posts I imported the file originally at 48 - video playback - no issue - same if imported at 44.1 It is when I am recording a sound track to it - with a two measure lead in - the video display is stuttering during the lead in two measures. I had setup Markers using SMPTE Locks to the video. I added the two measure lead in - after that. My Audio is a MOTU Ultralite MK5 - using the ASIO driver. (I just checked for driver updates on that - and there is an update (just applied) if that fixes it - great but I do not think that is it) One video I watched - for a Cubase demo - moved the video over 2 bars - that would seem to be ignoring the SMPTE idea - that should still have a standard starting point and markers set to STMPE - should allow for that. I set the tempo of my metronome at 68 - and waited the two bars to start recording - and if I am seeing the video in real time - with alignment to SMPTE - I should be able to cover the first segment of the short video -with a track of music - but it is not doing that.

I came to the discussion board with a very similar question. There is a video that you receive from ThinkSpace for an interest in writing to film. I attended their OpenDay sessions on 10/08/2022 - so they sent me an invite to ask for that. My prior experience with working with video was that I had to set the audio to 48000 so that it would be in sync while recording. My first attempts were out of sync immediately - I checked the video and it said that its audio was at 44100 (CD) So - I reimported the video at that rate - but my attempts are still out of sync. I set the project to count in 2 measures before recording as well. It is still way out of sync. During that OpenDay event they recommended several DAWs - but Cakewalk was not one of them - which has been my DAW for decades. I asked about Cakewalk - and they replied that it was not robust enough - to do video - so these sync issues are making me wonder if they are correct Their site has an entry on what DAWs to use Guy Michelmore - Thinkspace CEO - Reviews peoples submissions on this video which if you click to read more about the entry - will have a link to get the video from So this makes me feel I am at a crossroads - a simple video should be able to sync with a two measure lead time If I cannot figure this out - then I probably have to think of going to Cubase - based on that OpenDay discussion. I want to solve the Sync Issue and stay with Cakewalk and have them include it in the DAWS that can do video - so any help would be appreciated. The suggestion in this conversation stated to use Media File - I downloaded that - and got the information below: General Complete name : D:\CueTubeDownloads\How_to_write_film_music_PDF_Film\How_to_write_film_music_PDF_Film\Viking Scoring Video TC.mp4 Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media / Version 2 Codec ID : mp42 (mp42) File size : 34.8 MiB Duration : 1 min 22 s Overall bit rate : 3 547 kb/s Codirector : codirector Production studio : studio ContentType : Unknown Type Encoded date : UTC 2021-07-14 08:48:02 Tagged date : UTC 2021-07-14 08:48:02 Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : Main@L4.1 Format settings : CABAC / 1 Ref Frames Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, Reference frames : 1 frame Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=25 Muxing mode : Container profile=Baseline@4.1 Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 1 min 22 s Bit rate : 3 539 kb/s Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 25.000 FPS Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.068 Stream size : 34.7 MiB (100%) Language : English Codec configuration box : avcC Audio ID : 2 Format : AAC LC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity Codec ID : mp4a-40-2 Duration : 1 min 22 s Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 3 102 b/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel layout : L R Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz Frame rate : 43.066 FPS (1024 SPF) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 31.1 KiB (0%) Title : Stereo Language : English Default : Yes Alternate group : 1

Today - there was a youtube video suggestion of EastWest Silk library using the Opus Player - that I paid a subscription for recently - (it was on sale). Now I have been a long time EastWest user - 2009 I believe is when I purchased a good number of plugins that used the Play plugin. I rebuilt my music computer and got a new sound card in June of 2021 - and had to get an Older version of play - to work with what I had already licensed. I had Silk plugin from that time frame - and so I loaded Silk with the Opus plugin - I could play the instrument and record the midi - however nothing on playback. I could see the keys move - the midi was registering - but no sound - I toggled things that might be the issue. Then I searched over some of the discussions here on the forum - and my impression is that I can record and play the new Opus Downloaded libraries - only with Opus - if they were licensed before the subscription model - then I have to use the Play plugin. It is probably going to have me not continue with the subscription.. They will have to add a lot of value for the libraries that I did not have - for me to even consider their normal fee.

Drive technology has kept changing over the years, and the prices have usually dropped on cost. Article on Drive Comparisons - touches on some of the new drives that plug into the PCI slots - being the most expensive currently. So the comment that it was expensive at 1TB makes me think that might be the type here? I opted for size of disk when buying parts to rebuild my music computer - and went with HDD - which is slow - and with antivirus software slowing down the sound files made some of the loading really slow. I have a 16TB disk for sound files - and it is half full since with the sound files from last june to now. If that drive dies - it will take a week to reload - I do have a 16tb USB drive for backups - and I will probably hook that up to protect some of the investment. The libraries are not cheap - nor is the hardware - so it is a significant investment of time and money. It does bring satisfaction of having the right tools to create with.

I was searching for a topic of sound load status - and hit this thread - which reminded me of a sound situation that is not being discussed here. I was working on a project over the last two weeks - and I kept hearing a crackling sound - and thought it was maybe a part of the sound file.. in parallel with that - I had some brand new libraries that were talking over 6 minutes to load.. into Kontakt. Searching for that answer led me to understand that the antivirus software could be scanning the sound sample files and slowing things down - which in turn I figured was also what could be happening to create those crackles in the audio . I found the location in my antivirus to add Excluded Folders - and it fixed the load times - now down to 15-20 seconds and I am not hearing the crackles. Now - what I had hoped to find was - when you load a project - nothing tells you when all the tracks audio plugins and finished loading their samples.. A status light or a popup might be a good signal to have.

I am not sure that the documentation can be updated to match every release and its changes, however there has been a post about where to get the latest reference manual - from May of 2021 = and after I posted the link - see they are keeping up - Jan 4 of 2022 - great work

I only recently learned something about Sample Rates -the standard default is 44.1Khz. I did a video scoring competition entry - and did not know that for video the standard sample rate is 48Khz. I came across the mention of the 48Khz from another post on the forum and as I am looking at doing a new Scoring entry and had done my markers for the points in the video - in 44.1Khz sample rate - I needed to change the sample rate to 48. That meant setting my sample rate to 48Khz and creating a new project and importing the video into the project at 48Khz - and all that work to get the markers - was in the first version. I tried the Copy special you mentioned here - and pasted it into the new project - but the timing was off.. My markers were locked in SMPTE and not aligning. Then I remembered that I had changed the tempo in the original to 96 from the default 120 - and I had done my markers at 120. - I reset the original back to a tempo of 120 - did the copy again - and it worked. I had to lookup how to select form the start and to the end ALT+F6 and ALT+SHIFT+F6 respectively - and used the copy special you called out here. It did make me wonder about the SMPTE and the TEMPO affecting the alignment on the SMPTE. That may need to be research for another time. Your post helped - Thanks (I tried to use the MIDICSV <midifilename> > csvMidi but It did not seem to do anything)

I was trying to use some Spitfire Albion One voices - and was confused why the Dynamics was resetting over and over - and frustrating too. The Zero Controllers checkbox was the issue - I unchecked it and could then go back and focus on using the library voices. I did not see anything that was in the "Wrench" box for Kontakt to solve this. I would agree that having the reset to zero - on a single track only - instead of global would put the control at the right level. This turned out to be something that ate up time - learning a bit more about Cakewalk impacts that I had not encountered before. The forum taught me where to look - Thanks.

Well, my significant other gave me birthday card that had a dog on the front - with lines to show it was pivoting its head between positions looking at you or looking at something off to its side - the words said " Happy - SQUIRREL - Birthday". She points out that I often get distracted by other things - and I have come to think of those "mindshifts" as yet another "Squirrel" moment - one to be careful of - so that we spend our time on what we need to and not a distraction. I have used the term "rabbit-hole" for this same type of mind drifting over the years. I am trying to make sure that I learn more of the software's capabilities - like a toolbox - we learn what we need to use .. and then when faced with something that is not being solved that way - we explore a bit and pick up something new - constant learning is part of life for musicians and software developers. Here's to learning something every day - that aligns with you.

After making my post - I was out walking and the thought of re-using Arranger Track in this way came to mind. Thanks for the pointer to this line of thinking as it confirmed my guess on one way to do it in the current version. I will have to experiment to see how well it works.

I have been a user of Cakewalk for decades, and have been very pleased with the Bandlab support of this application which in the Gibson shutdown set me into a bit of depression - my tool of years was feeling dead to me. I came across the idea of a Chord Track from a YouTube Video yesterday. The antics of the guy are excusable - he does provide good info. He used Cubase - which the posts here have shown was first. It really sounded useful from the idea of improvising in the DAW software and making a visible outline of the harmony to use going forward - or reminding you on reopening what it was doing. I went searching to see if we had this and found this thread - yes I would love to see this added. I also read in the thread that there is not any Music XML support - another thing that I would like to have included. The only XML import in the manual shows up ACT files only. I have been looking at the scoring software area and the ability to export and import Music XML is standard. Musescore software is working on allowing plugins of VST for their next version - version 4. That software is open source - which to me would mean that contributions to that code base might make it interchangeable with Cakewalk. It might be challenging - however the interchange of that Music XML might be one way of getting it started. I want to stay in the Cakewalk space - but without these contributions - it does make Cubase seem like a strong contender in pulling me into a new tool.

I stumbled accross the idea that articulation maps even existed yesterday. I had to experiment a bit - and got it to work. Getting to them is in the Alt+3 view - I found Steinberg had a set of maps for download for a number of older VSTs - which I have a few of. I did find that for the ProjectSAM Symphobia - where the screen says it has Keyswitches in C0 and several half steps above - that in the Keyboard view - of Kontakt - the actual keys that hit the Keyswitch were C2 and several half steps above. The Symphobia libraries have a good number of keyswitches - which does correlate to the statement that these are mostly used in Orchestration (and film scoring). I will have to Edit the Artic(ulation) maps to be sure I have a good working set - that work over all of my VST instruments. This is a feature that I did not know existed - but am very happy to have found it!!

It has been a decade since I tried to import a midi file - at least. Today I had a midi file that I needed to import to see a sample setup of some Kontakt Plugins. I first double clicked the file - got all the Midi only tracks - was not successful at figuring how to get the plugin set. So then I tried my template for the Kontakt on Channel 1 - then I dragged and dropped the Midi file on the project and got all the midi Then I just had to locate the plugin instrument selection - Put the Kontakt device as the output and the Kontakt Midi Channel - (midi file had 12 channels to assign). That worked - and I could then play the midi file through the sounds I had purchased. ProjectSAM Symphobia series. Hopefully that helps someone later.