Missing First Beat?

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eisnein
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Missing First Beat?

Post by eisnein » Tue Apr 04, 2006 5:26 pm

anyone ever have the first beat chopped off their rendered files?
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longjohns
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Post by longjohns » Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:18 am

i've heard of it. try inserting some blank space at the begginning and then editing it off afterwards

Amaury
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Post by Amaury » Wed Apr 05, 2006 9:13 am

Hello,

There are some issues with certain plugins. What do you use in your arrangement ? Could you give us a detailed list of used devices ?
Also, what version of Live are you using ?

Kind regards,

Amaury
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purplenoise
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Missing beat cause could be...

Post by purplenoise » Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:29 am

I have done software development for audio workstations in the past. One common problem with some VST problems can be that the buffer for events has a fixed size and... especially during the beginning of a rendering pass, can be overrun, because of all the controller and reset events queued up.

A solution that I have had success with is to "flush" the pluggin by sending one spoof audio buffer after all the setup events have been sent, and before any notes are queued up. Those audio buffers should not count towards displacement of the "transport", of course, since their only purpose is to make the plugin consume the setup events.

This solution is very inelegant, granted, especially since the cause is a design problem on the plugin, and this is where a proper fix should belong, but its a viable alternative.

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Post by Smashed Hat » Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:11 pm

I frequently experience this problem, and in every case it's been solved by putting a couple of bars of silence at the start opf the track.
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James Cater
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Post by James Cater » Mon Apr 10, 2006 9:24 pm

Putting a 2 second gap is not going to work in the middle of a mix album, or recording a live set.
Last edited by James Cater on Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

huffcw
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Post by huffcw » Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:18 pm

Why wouldn't it work?

If you record a live set - you can always shift everything over a bit before rendering to make sure everything gets buffered properly when rendering.

And if you have a second of silence at the beginning of your rendered file that you don't want, it's very easy to edit it out using a program such as Sound Forge (or, if burning to disk, you can use a CD burning program to edit the start - I believe even Nero allows this simple editing).

As I mentioned in another post, I have had a similar issue in Sonar - so I don't think this is something that is isolated to Live - and Cakewalk provided the same tip as above (all production should have at least one bar of silence at the beginning to ensure proper buffering).

James Cater
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Post by James Cater » Tue Apr 11, 2006 4:52 pm

The whole poingt is you are loosing time here (when the track is in the middle of a mix) and time could be a beat so chopping it out would completely ruin a mix CD.

Even one beat would sound ridiculous, never mind 2 seconds.

The solution is simple, Ableton should start a "virtual" render 1 bar before the render start point and then start rendering to disk when the rendering hits the requested track marker.
Last edited by James Cater on Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

Chris J
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Post by Chris J » Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:11 pm

James Cater wrote:The whole poingt is you are loosing time here
no you're not. You're just inserting silence at the very begining.
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Chris J
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Post by Chris J » Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:12 pm

James Cater wrote:(when the track is in the middle of a mix)
if it's in the middle of a mix, then it's not at the begining nor the first beat, is it ?
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James Cater
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Post by James Cater » Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:57 pm

Chris J wrote:
James Cater wrote:(when the track is in the middle of a mix)
if it's in the middle of a mix, then it's not at the begining nor the first beat, is it ?

I have a CONTINUOUS mix of 13 songs, I have track markers at cutover point of each track. This is generally 17 bars into the next song.

At the start of each rendered song there is a 1-14ms of silence (ie the waveform that should be there from the end of bar 16 has been removed by Ableton.)

When Ableton renders from the start of Bar 17 it failes to take account of the fact that 14ms should be copied from the end of Bar 16.

If Ableton Started rendering at Bar 16 with all the effects enabled, then by the time it got to Bar 17 the 14ms of sound from bar 16 would be in carried over into the gap.

I'm sorry if this is not clear, but it is a real issue for anyone trying to use delay in a multi track arrangement.

As noted above there is a workaround to remove any delay on the track boundaries.

Chris J
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Post by Chris J » Tue Apr 11, 2006 6:26 pm

James Cater wrote:If Ableton Started rendering at Bar 16 with all the effects enabled, then by the time it got to Bar 17 the 14ms of sound from bar 16 would be in carried over into the gap.
what if YOU started rendering at bar 16 ? :roll:
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HMage
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Post by HMage » Wed Apr 12, 2006 2:17 pm

Hello James,

As a sound engineer I'd recommend you to render whole mix in one audio file and split it later using audio editing tools - that way you will even have an extra freedom.

Or, as an alternative, create a cue sheet for your wav file and split it up with proper software that can split music according to cue sheet.

These are workarounds for your problem, though. Ableton Live should be able to produce sample-correct positioning during render, delay compensation is there for a reason I believe, and it should work.

Chris J
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Post by Chris J » Wed Apr 12, 2006 3:54 pm

HMage wrote:Hello James,

As a sound engineer I'd recommend you to render whole mix in one audio file and split it later using audio editing tools - that way you will even have an extra freedom.

Or, as an alternative, create a cue sheet for your wav file and split it up with proper software that can split music according to cue sheet.

These are workarounds for your problem, though. Ableton Live should be able to produce sample-correct positioning during render, delay compensation is there for a reason I believe, and it should work.
you're joking right ?
he said he can't because it would exceed 2Gb as he's @96Khz
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huffcw
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Post by huffcw » Wed Apr 12, 2006 4:13 pm

It seems like one of the easiest fixes for this problem is to implement a way around the 2GB barrier:

1. Allow files larger than 2GBs on systems that support this (e.g., Windows XP)
2. Automatically divide into several files as it renders so that the files are perfectly sliced and can be easily combined later (for systems that do not support files over 2GBs)

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