Live with Command Line / Arguments

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.
Antigone
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:42 pm

Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by Antigone » Sat Jul 25, 2015 12:40 am

Hey there,

I would like to start Ableton Live with a project I specify in the command line.

What I would actually like to do is be able to start an export - with default or specified parameters - of an ableton project.

The interface wouldn't even display, and that would be great.

Something like :

# live my_project.als --export my_export.wav [some export options here]

DO you think that would be possible ?

I am sure that you see what I have in mind here :)

Cheers !

Bayley
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Nov 24, 2010 2:14 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by Bayley » Fri Jul 01, 2016 4:55 pm

+1

chapelier fou
Posts: 6002
Joined: Mon May 15, 2006 12:15 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by chapelier fou » Fri Jul 01, 2016 7:45 pm

Antigone wrote: I am sure that you see what I have in mind here :)
No ! Can you be more explicit ??
MacBook Pro 13" Retina i7 2.8 GHz OS 10.13, L10.0.1, M4L.
MacStudio M1Max 32Go OS 12.3.1

Antigone
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:42 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by Antigone » Fri Dec 23, 2016 9:30 am

@chepelier fou : sorry I didn't see your message earlier.

The idea is to develop "Ableton CI" - for Continuous Integration.

The workflow would be something like:

- you work on your project within ableton live
- you (of course) regularly save your work
- each time you save your work, a little program looks out for your changes (and tries to summarize them in a phrase, a easily understandable "changelog")
- each of these changes are committed to a git-like local repository (with possible branches, etc)
- they can be pushed on a distant repository, and cloned elsewhere (given you have the needed VST, for instance)

* pause : all of this is already pretty easily doable. I would work on it, if it would interest the community. Now comes the cool part :

- since Ableton CLI (command line interface : this is the feature I am looking for) can export from a command line, you can still work on your project while you export another (or the same) project (on the same machine, another local machine, on in the cloud)
- you can automatize this step and generate exports each time you "merge" your work in a certain branch, for instance
- you can "test" your exports with some rules
- you can automatically push your exports (artifacts) somewhere - this artifacts could be the whole song, or stems, or whatever your decide

* bonus benefits

- you can work with several people at the same time on the same project. The changes are merge automatically (and the conflits are detected)

... That's pretty much it.

What do you think ? Would you use it yourself ?

Maybe I should do a full and dedicated post about this.

Again, I have all the required knowledge to develop this, and I am more than ready to work full time on this, if I had Ableton (and the community) support.

Antigone
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:42 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by Antigone » Fri Dec 23, 2016 9:34 am

oh, I just saw this : http://cdm.link/2016/10/ableton-live-ex ... atterning/
and : http://ableton.github.io/export/

I haven't fully read it yet, but it looks like it's going in a good way.

NSU_Spray
Posts: 47
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:24 am
Location: Russia
Contact:

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by NSU_Spray » Tue Dec 27, 2016 5:10 pm

> Would you use it yourself?

Maybe… Idea is good, but it’s realy for geeks (:
Give us the programming of music!

Antigone
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:42 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by Antigone » Wed Dec 28, 2016 9:48 am

maybe a bit geeky yes... :)

But I really like this flow for working.

I can't really believe that in 2017 we will still have filenames like :

MyPrettySong.als
MyPrettySong_New.als
MyPrettySong_New2.als
MyPrettySong_New2_WithHugeBass.als
MyPrettySong_FINAL.als
MyPrettySong_FINAL_FINAL.als
MyPrettySong_FINAL_READY_TO_EXPORT.als

...and so on ;)

TRPWZ
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2017 6:42 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by TRPWZ » Sun Apr 02, 2017 6:48 pm

+1

This would open up so many possibilities. Have there been any new attempts/news/experiences in that direction?
For now, maybe it would be possible to hack something together using apple script?

Antigone
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:42 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by Antigone » Mon Apr 03, 2017 2:57 pm

Nothing new here... But I'm still very interested in developing it.

I just need this sort of Ableton-CLI (command line interface) with basic export functions to work.

Maybe there is a hack I haven't heard/thought of ?

arctican
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2018 11:31 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by arctican » Mon Mar 05, 2018 11:33 pm

I've just wanted to do the same thing, and supplying the set as the first argument does the trick for me..

Code: Select all

/Applications/Ableton\ Live\ 9\ Suite.app/Contents/MacOS/Live ~/Desktop/Basic\ Project/Basic.als
I presume it's the same on Windows.

djconxn
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Dec 14, 2018 6:04 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by djconxn » Fri Dec 14, 2018 6:06 pm

+1 and bump

Morgrugyn
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Feb 24, 2016 10:20 am

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by Morgrugyn » Thu Mar 07, 2019 5:49 pm

The way we work is there's individual "main" projects made up of groups in ableton. Each group when a major change is made is dragged/saved in a shared folder. And collaborators then pull those latest "stems" into their project. Someone mixing this can then grab and render any stem they want by opening one of these group als files. The work is done in ProTools or Cubase for the final mix, so it means shutting that down and opening Ableton in order to export whichever groups have changed.

It would be great to be able to dump an als in the shared folder and have a script watch for changes and "export" that to wav. E.g.

abcli.exe -q 96 -b 32 -normalize -in BassLine.als -out BassLine.wav

djFig
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Mar 03, 2016 2:18 am

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by djFig » Wed Sep 25, 2019 12:41 am

+1 :bump:

xjermsx
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2021 9:28 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by xjermsx » Sat Apr 24, 2021 9:30 pm

+1

I would love to be able to run a script to collect all and save on all of my sets, or export as MP3. This would be especially helpful right now as I' moving laptops

GuiltySarcasm
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat May 26, 2012 4:48 pm

Re: Live with Command Line / Arguments

Post by GuiltySarcasm » Fri May 07, 2021 11:09 pm

+1

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