crossfading between scenes

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RICHARD_TMB
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Joined: Tue Dec 02, 2014 3:16 am

crossfading between scenes

Post by RICHARD_TMB » Tue Dec 02, 2014 3:20 am

I am in Ableton Live 9, running a theatre show, and need to create an automated crossfade between two scenes that a board operator can control with a click of the button. I understand there is a way to assign A and B to tracks and manually crossfade in the master, but I am interested in knowing if a scene made up of 1 or several audio files can be cued to automatically crossfade to the next scene, also made of 1 or several audio files. This cueing point may be different every night.

Thanks.

Angstrom
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Re: crossfading between scenes

Post by Angstrom » Tue Dec 02, 2014 4:16 am

I've had to do this, in the same situation. Theatrical triggering.
There is a simple-ish workaround, which is solid and requires no silly scripting or 3rd party apps. But it's a bit hard to understand if you are unfamiliar with Live's routing. It uses what we used to call "Dummy Clips" to route the audio of the sound-effect track and then control that volume

Live doesn't crossfade between Session clips in the same track, and using the DJ crossfader was certainly not applicable in my situation. The scene change was being triggered by an on-stage trigger device.

How to do it without buying or learning any new programs:
really it requires 4 tracks. 2 tracks which contain audio, and two tracks which contain the volume fade information. I will describe this with just one paring, audio and volume track. So you can understand the process *(which is a bit weird)

  1. make an audio track , call it "noises" and drop one of your sound effects on there, as a clip( EG: "outdoor street noise", or whatever)
  2. make another audio track and call it "fades" and drag that same clip over onto this new track, in the same Scene.
  3. Name this clip in the track "fades" : "full volume". NOTE: it doesnt matter what audio we use in this "fades track" its only there to trick live into giving us access to an automation envelope on this Audio track).
  4. in the clip "full volume" on track "fades", make sure warp is enabled
  5. in the clip "full volume" on track fades, select Envelopes:mixer : volume. and set an envelope point to set the volume automation highish.
  6. Now, in the next scene (down a horizontal row) ...
  7. In track "noises" remove the stop button from beneath your original clip (ctrl & E, or right click and choose the option)
  8. In track "fades" duplicate the clip named "full volume" and place it below "full volume". Name this new clip "fade out"
  9. In track "fades" clip named "fade out" set the Volume envelope to ... fade out !
  10. In track "fades" set the input From : "Noises": Post Effects.
  11. In track "fades" set the Monitor toggle to "ON"
  12. In track "noises" Mute it.

right, now ...
the first Scene row, with the original clip and the clip named "Full volume". when you trigger that scene it will send the audio out of the muted "Noises" channel and via the "Fades" channel, whose volume is set high. The sounds are therefore audible in this scene. Clicking this scene will play the soundeffects audibly.

Activating the SECOND Scene row, with the removed stopbutton and the clip named "fade out". When you trigger that scene it will send its audio (as before) out of the Noises channel and into the Fades channel, whose volume envelope clip will now begin a slow fade from whatever it was before down to zero.

Now, all you need to do is duplicate the clips "full volume" and "fade out" for the required scenes and they will do those actions on any scene in the NOISES channel which happens to be playing.

To crossfade between two sound effects requires making a new "NOISES 2 " channel, with its own "FADES2" channel. When we trigger a "fade out" scene all that happens is a clip in a separate track begins to fade up. You don;t need to write a "fade up" volum fader automation clip. You can put the fade up in the nsoundeffect clip itself, as the fade-up does not need the same care that fading out does.

there's a lot more to this, but it's late here, and that's basically how to do it.

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Steve Glen
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Location: Edmonton Alberta

Re: crossfading between scenes

Post by Steve Glen » Tue Dec 02, 2014 4:35 am

The benefit is that tour sound engineer still has mixing control of noises 1 and noises2 (relative to the full volume).

I will add that you might want to have the default fader volume completely turned down, so in the case of a dummy clip finishing/not playing, the volume will not jump back up of the clip that was previously faded out (but with a audio still playing).

Just automate "volume up" so once it goes up, it stays up. You can loop an end part where the volume automation is constant.


Clip envelopes, man.

Calagan
Posts: 268
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:44 am

Re: crossfading between scenes

Post by Calagan » Sat Nov 26, 2022 9:41 am

ok, this thread is 8 years old, but I absolutely needed to thank @Angstrom for the amazing trick he shared.
THANKS A LOT !
It's very clever, very simple, and works like charm.

The only issue I see : you can't change the order of your scenes without a bit of work with the volume automations, but it's actually like complaining about the champagne quality when you are travelling in the first class...

davide93
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Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 4:50 pm

Re: crossfading between scenes

Post by davide93 » Wed Oct 11, 2023 9:08 am

This is so complicated actually especially when you have so many tracks in the scenes. Wouldn't be easier if there was a transition time between scenes set to 0 by default that the user could change to have the desired transition time?

Greenapples2019
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Joined: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:43 pm

Re: crossfading between scenes

Post by Greenapples2019 » Wed Oct 11, 2023 12:02 pm

If you have M4L you can achieve something similar with this device: https://maxforlive.com/library/device/2 ... er-control

Your noises are still on two tracks, alternating clips as above, but set one track with X-fade set to A and the other set to B.
Add the M4L device to a MIDI track, group the M4L device and map the Crossfade control to a macro. Then add a dummy clip (on the same scene as the second noise) and automate the macro as needed (A to B, B to A, setting whatever time/beats you want the crossfade to take). You can use as many different dummy clips as needed.

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davide93
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Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 4:50 pm

Re: crossfading between scenes

Post by davide93 » Fri Oct 20, 2023 8:24 am

@greenapples2019 THANK YOU SO MUCH I've just seen your reply. I will try it as soon as I can but I'm afraid it will not work for me.
My audio clip are connected to resolume video clips so I need to use different columns to trigger the video from the audio... I will try it asap and I will let you know. But I wish such important feature could be implemented directly into live. That is a must during a performance with just a laptop.
THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR SUGGESTION!

one2Stevo
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Nov 26, 2023 10:44 pm

Re: crossfading between scenes

Post by one2Stevo » Sun Nov 26, 2023 10:48 pm

@davide93 HI, I'm trying to do something similar to you for an immersive theatre experience and I am trying to trigger a clip (Intro) and then trigger a second clip with timecode and then a third clip (outro). I'm curious to know if this worked?

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