I’m working on a MIDI mockup of Prokofiev’s Montagues and Capulets that I downloaded from Musescore. I don’t know if it’s something in the MIDI file itself that’s causing this, but no matter how many times I set the project duration to be 7 minutes long (a little over the 5 minutes and 10 seconds the piece lasts), it returns to this sooner or later:
Well, to test that I just opened the original MIDI by double clicking on it, since .mid files are associated with Cubase Pro 14. And it opened with a duration of 7 minutes, which was the duration I had set on the Prokofiev project earlier and then saved and closed.
So whatever the 27 minute duration is, it doesn’t seem to come from that MIDI file.
I just spent five minutes experimenting in a new EMPTY project. I added 1 Marker Track, a Tempo Track and 1 VSTi (a piano). I set the project length to 10 minutes.
I added a 4 bar MIDI part and inserted a few random notes, CCs and automation data in the part, some Volume automation on the Stereo Out, added a marker and tempo events. and moved the whole lot to the 8 minute mark.
Then I set the project length to 2 (two) minutes. And the MIDI part vanished, as the project length was, in fact, 2 minutes, as displayed in the Settings and in the project.
So, heaven only knows why you can’t set the project length.
The big trick is to eliminate any inadvertent events that might be present at a very far right place in the timeline.
For example, when a marker event is sitting at 1:00 hour in the timeline, then setting a shorter project duration in the Project Setup will not make the project shorter, but it will stay long enough to include the last marker event. – But it could be any event, not just markers.
I learned that the hard way, because it took me quite a while to hunt down why all my projects ignored the Project Duration settings: It was because my main starting project template had a stray marker way, way off to the right in the timeline.
p.s. It’s quite easy to inadvertently create marker events via a fumble fingered key command, since on an extended keyboard, the “Insert” key (what I use for inserting a new marker - not sure if that is the Cubase default?) is very close to the “Home”, “End” and “Delete” keys.
OK, but for that, you need to have a marker track. Cubase doesn’t have any other type of markers that are set on the timeline directly, it needs a marker track first. So if you don’t have any marker tracks, then what you mentioned doesn’t apply.
Sure, that has happened to me a few times, but what are types of events that may not show on either the project window or the key editor? Because when it magically sets the project to the 27 minute length, and I zoom back all the way, I don’t see anything past the 5 minutes or so, depending on the project. So if I accidentally pressed a key that triggered a key command I wasn’t familiar with, I should see that event, whatever it may be.
Also there’s the fact that while I can’t say I’m an expert in Cubase, I’ve been learning it since March 2023 on a very regular basis and have done several MIDI mockups and other things with it, so I’m familiar with it. And if this had happened before, I would’ve noticed, but in all these years, whatever I set the project duration to, it stays put.
@Nico5 is right - this can happen very easily and it might very well slip under the radar. For example automation data - you won’t see it unless you open the automation lane in the project window.
Please try this: Open the Automation Panel (F6) and click on the dropdown arrow
Now, pick the option to delete all automation data.
Any change?
If you don’t want to delete everything or you are curious: F6 Automation Panel > Show Used. This will open all automation lanes in the project window with data on it.
Good catch, although the option to delete all automation data was grayed out, and many others were. Only two options were showing, something about filling something else I already forgot because my memory… what was I saying?
But for some reason I had clicked on the tempo track, and on the left panel there were all the tempo events, just 6 in total, but the 6th was at position 634 etc etc, which seemed like a very large number to me, so I zoomed out all the way (the project was back to the 27 minute duration as before) and deleted the lone tempo little dot event that was all the way to the end.
After that I set it to 7 minutes, closed Cubase, opened the project again, and so far so good. So thanks for the tip, to you and everyone else who mentioned it. Hopefully it was just the tempo that had events so far out.
