Video: Source/Destination 3 and 4-point Editing Actions

User Pelleke has really proven the awesome power of custom actions with his Source/Destination 3 and 4-point editing actions just released.

What is Source/Destination editing?

Source/Destination editing is a technique primarily used by classical music editors and can benefit anyone that works on projects with big track counts and many takes of the same audio content. Basically, a clone of the recording project (source) is made with identical setup except for without audio files. This is the destination project. A selection of a take can be made in the source project and instantly pasted into the destination project. Once you wrap your head around the workflow this makes comping large sections of audio within a huge project a much simpler task.

A 3-point edit is a time selection in the source project pasted into the destination project at the cursor point.
A 4-point edit is a time selection in the source pasted into a time selection, replacing that area in the destination.

The concept and setup of such a system is quite complicated, and is not an official feature of REAPER. Thanks to the hard work of Pelleke and those, finally the operations have been made easy for all.

Pelleke made a demonstration of his new actions in the video below.

Inspired by the earlier work done by gembez, Art Evans and panphonic, I would like to share my custom actions with the rest of the world. I’ve been using them now to edit one project, and I am definitely happy with the way it went.

A few key features:
– A set-up action that creates a Destination project tab, asks you to save it (which you can cancel). It duplicates the tracks of the source project, and copies some other data that would otherwise be left away, such as the FX chain on your master track.
– Source and destination are in separate projects, which give them the advantage of having separate timelines, zoom factors and time selections. Also, it gives you a lot better screen real estate, so you don’t have to hide tracks to make it work.
– Three points edits and four points edits. Both are done using the same action.
– These actions don’t depend on markers so you can use your markers independently, any way you want.
– These actions do not depend on showing and hiding tracks from your TCP
– Two edit actions, one of which automatically adds crossfades to your edits, with a configurable length.
– Although untested, automation envelopes should also be copied.

Here’s the forum post with all the details, instructions and download link.

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=1100627

Posted

January 10, 2013

ACTIONS, REAPER CUSTOMIZATION

Admin

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Comments

6 responses to “Video: Source/Destination 3 and 4-point Editing Actions”

Pelleke

January 10, 2013

Very nice, many thanks for sharing my work on your blog! I really hope as many people as possible give it a try and report their experiences, so together we can make this thing even better.

Reply
Daniel Lyons

January 28, 2013

This looks really helpful thanks.

Two questions:
1)Was this recorded with a click track? If so is it really feasible without a click track? Perhaps 3 point editing is feasible without but me thinks that 4 point editing would be a bit of a struggle if it wssn’t recorded with a click track.

2) Does the custom action automatically group the items? It seems like it does.

Reply
1. Admin
  
  January 28, 2013
  
  Hi Daniel
  1 – orchestra stuff could have a variety of timing methods, usually the conductor dictates the tempo but he could be hearing a click track. The music in the demo seems to be to a click.
  2 – I think the items were already grouped. There is an sws action to group any items recorded simultaneously. But I think the action copies and pastes all tracks within the time selection.
  
  Reply
Daniel Lyons

January 28, 2013

I can’t wait to give this a try.

Reply
Daniel Lyons

January 28, 2013

Thanks. It seems this would actually be helpful for more than just classical (though it does seem vital for classical). It would be really helpful for anything that has a live band recorded with bleed. Nowadays a lot of people just overdub over mistakes but that doesn’t work if there’s bleed because the mistake can still be heard in the bleed. So a lot of recordings forgo that live tracking sound and instead have a separate tracking sound but a lot of times that can sound sterile and lifeless depending on the song. So if you want a full band in the same room before you would have to just pick which ever take had the least amount of mistakes and then just kind of deal with it. Any edits you made had to be minimal and had to affect all of the tracks equally or else you’d have those bleed problems.

But now with 3 and 4 point editting it seems like this whole process would be very streamlined and no longer do you have to choose between great comped performance and live room sound. You can have the best of both worlds.

Reply
Pelleke

January 29, 2013

Daniel:
1. No, this has not been recorded with a click track. Apart from some very modern pieces, classical music should never be recorded using click tracks or overdubs. I don’t really understand your comment, but for me, having 4 point editing available is actually fantastic just because you don’t have a click track. You can make very precise edits of audio that isn’t on any type of grid.

If what you mean is that you can’t edit two takes in different tempi, it should be noted that a professional recording engineer always brings a metronome, and immediately aborts a recording if the tempi don’t match. My experience is that with professional musicians, the amount of tempo mistakes are really minimal. A click track for a conductor is almost never used, because it would immediately limit him in his creative possibilities / interpretation.

2. The source tracks may have been grouped in my demo, but that doesn’t really matter. The destination chunks are being grouped by the actions, since you want to be able to simply change your edit after you made it.

Please, let us know what your findings are when you’ve played around with it!

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