How to default Lock to SMPTE time while adding Markers

[Sonarman]

So in a video project if I have to lock the markers to SMPTE time I will have to manually insert the markers every single time using the Markers Dialog box and select the check box everytime? That feels unwieldy. There gotta be a way to easily achieve this!

[tecknot]

Hi Sonarman,

You only have to move the Now Time marker to the desired location (or SMPTE time) and then press the M key on your PC keyboard.  That will bring up the Marker properties dialog where you can enter the Marker's name, then click on "Lock to SMPTE..." and also set the exact time where the Marker will be placed.

Kind regards,

tecknot

Edited March 5, 2020 by tecknot

[Sonarman]

@tecknotI'm sorry I wasnt clear in the first post. Thats how I insert markers. I press M and the Marker Dialog Box appears and I click enter. Another way is to press M on the flow while the transport is moving. Eitherway its cumbersome if I want all the markers to be locked in SMPTE time I need to select it everytime while entering or I have to open the markers view and open the Markers dialog of each marker and select lock to SMPTE. This could be made a little easier.
 

[user 905133]

10 hours ago, Sonarman said:

@tecknotI'm sorry I wasnt clear in the first post. Thats how I insert markers. I press M and the Marker Dialog Box appears and I click enter. Another way is to press M on the flow while the transport is moving. Eitherway its cumbersome if I want all the markers to be locked in SMPTE time I need to select it everytime while entering or I have to open the markers view and open the Markers dialog of each marker and select lock to SMPTE. This could be made a little easier.

You have my curiosity. I use markers, but have never used the "Lock to SMPTE" feature.  What does it do? How do you use it?

Though I don't currently use SMPTE, I have a basic understanding of what it does and how to use it.  I have no idea what locking some or all markers to SMPTE time code would do.  It might be useful to me at some point.  Thanks. 

Thanks.

[winkpain]

@User 905133

"Lock to SMPTE" is another way of saying lock to absolute time. This is as opposed to the markers being tied to a musical time - Measure:Beat.

When working with film or non-tempo based or fixed audio (dialogue, voiceover, or an unchanging source audio track you want to work with) it is very common to want to mark off "hit points" (in the film or audio) that stay fixed to those points in real time in the source material. Then you can work on/edit your score music, editing and developing your work, changing tempos and time signatures without affecting the placement of those locked markers. Without being "Locked to SMPTE", the markers would move around with the Bar:Beat that they are associated with as you edit your tempo based material, and they would no longer be in their desired place in the film, as this material will not move or stretch along with tempo changes. For example:

If you want to work on a track that builds to a "Ta-da!!" right when the pie hits the face in a film clip,  place a marker locked to SMPTE at that point, and it will stay there as you work on music leading up to that point.

[user 905133]

31 minutes ago, winkpain said:

"Lock to SMPTE" is another way of saying lock to absolute time. This is as opposed to the markers being tied to a musical time - Measure:Beat.

When working with film or non-tempo based or fixed audio (dialogue, voiceover, or an unchanging source audio track you want to work with) it is very common to want to mark off "hit points" (in the film or audio) that stay fixed to those points in real time in the source material. Then you can work on/edit your score music, editing and developing your work, changing tempos and time signatures without affecting the placement of those locked markers. Without being "Locked to SMPTE", the markers would move around with the Bar:Beat that they are associated with as you edit your tempo based material, and they would no longer be in their desired place in the film, as this material will not move or stretch along with tempo changes.

Thanks.  I am currently working on a project marking and editing some oral history interview tapes.  So basically, I am ignoring musical time at the moment.  But I can see how for later use of the material, I might want all the markers to be locked to real time. The explanation and the reason for having a parameter that sets all markers to real time makes sense. It would also be handy (as suggested elsewhere) to have markers exportable.

[winkpain]

1 hour ago, User 905133 said:

It would also be handy (as suggested elsewhere) to have markers exportable.

There are several improvements in the Markers world that we could see: Layered markers, color-coded, multiple auto-insert, chord-based, locked to clip boundaries...

But at least we can lock them to real time, or musical time.

Anyway, your current project sounds like it is precisely where you would want to lock your markers to SMPTE, especially if you are going to be adding musical tempo based material to it.  Just go to the tempo setting and change it to something other than what it currently is and watch how the the markers end up at different absolute (SMPTE) time locations. (mind you, It looks like they don't move because the visual scope changes to maintain the same amount of measures in the screen, but your audio file will appear to stretch out or in, and the markers will not correspond.)

[Erick Alcántara]

Hi, what I tried doing is doing a spotting run with the markers set to the default setting. 

Then I open the Markers window and select all my markers and just "lock them" with the padlock icon, and they all turn to being locked in smpte.

It would be faster it could be set to default as you said in the beginning, but this works, just the extra step.

[Shane Taylor]

I'm working to re-score a short film I did using Adobe Audition in Cakewalk (in parallel with Rearper and Cubase to see which is most effective and easiest to use). I ran across this too, but something else as well. The TC in the Markers list start to vary after some time in relation to the actual TC shown in the Now Time box as well as the entry box in the marker itself. The Now Time TC matches what's in the entry box when you open/edit the Marker, but what shows in the actual Markers list is different, increasingly being slow by a frame or two as time progresses. Anybody else experiencing this, and/or know what might be the cause. Perhaps 24 fps vs 23.976 fps?  See below for an example. The markers list show 01:01:29:04 but when you open it, the Time box shows the CORRECT value of 01:01:29:05. This is only a frame, but it gets worse at time goes on.

I ran into the Lock checkbox issue as well. I was copying and pasting from Reaper, which actually IMPORTED all the markers correctly from the WAV file that was exported from Audition. Cakewalk did not (nor did Cubase), so I have to enter them manually. That's what I was doing here. However, I had to check the LOCK checkbox in order to see a TC (versus M:B:T) in the entry box in order to paste in the TC from Reaper.

Since it appears BandLab is not looking at expanding Cakewalk (Sonar) as a paid product, I'm hoping that they can add two features to markers that I could have used:

(1) Import markers from WAV files (this is huge when working with others in Post Production).

(2) Allow the creation of Region Markers that have a Start and End time so you can mark REGIONS. I had these in Audition, and in the WAV file I imported, which Reaper also imported correctly. ?

 

So, BandLab, if you are listening... I discovered Cakewalk only a few months ago and am absolutely loving the UI/UX. I hope you spend the necessary resources to bring Cakewalk (Sonar) back up to a leading position among DAWs very quickly, like updaing the look, number, and capabilities of the built-in effects (they look a little "70s", and not in a good way). I know that I'll be watching closely, and if so, will gladly purchase a PERPETUAL license (but if you go SUBSCRIPTION only, I'm gone - that's why I no longer use Audition). Don't make the same mistake AVID and Waves Audio made betting you future on subscriptions alone.