The nine step procedure outlined above does not use any cycle markers. I’m sure your one track procedure works fine. I was pointing out that in general exporting events from multiple tracks with ‘Export Selected Events’ works fine too and without cycle markers. Cycle markers are not relevant at all when using the ‘Export Selected Events’ dialogue. Complications can occur if you have real-time effects on your events and you use tail size in the ‘Export Selected Events’ dialogue.
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I slipped up there. I meant to write ‘export all consecutive audio events which use effects’. So that what you see in the display precisely matches what you hear and all your events are consolidated and contain all required effects as audio data.
But agreed this can be awkward for workflow.
I agree that Nuendo is certainly not perfect when it comes to exporting single events as discrete audio files. But where tails are concerned there are various conundrums regardless. There are probably technical reasons why Steinberg did not choose your -infdB suggestion, probably related to how some plugins might define -infdB. And currently, if a user activates a tail size, this same tail size is applied to all exported events, which may not be what you want, unless all events are subject to the same effects. So we are left with making compromises. In my opinion, most of the time, when exporting large numbers of events as single audio files among the best compromises are consolidating events before export and ignoring tail size… or organising events appropriately spaced (or on different tracks) before export and using tail size, accepting that all audio files will have the same tail size even though some may need it and others may not.
There may be a better solution to all of this. Perhaps an automatic flag in ‘Export Selected Events’ which cuts the tail of the current event if the next event on the same track begins before the tail has ended.
You mentioned Logic and seemed to suggest that it can do export single events to audio files flawlessly. If so, what method does it use to achieve this?
As mentioned I strongly sense that Logic is designed to “give full power” to events instead of range.
And it makes sense in any scenario (music production, game audio etc…) since events contain what we compose and that’s all we care about so they should be a center of the exporting/rendering process.
Here’s a typical scenario:
- I created 20 events and selected all of them
- pressed the Export key command
- checked “add tail”
done…
To iterate on the FX tails, here’s another area where the tail limitations in Nuendo will create another issue even if do not use reverbs or delays: having a synth sound with a long release.
- here the release of each note i 5 secs long but
- each event range is way shorter (they never need to match as long as you’re working on the project)
Logic is smart enough to render each event separately (you can see the playhead exceeding each event range during export)
btw all my suggestions aren’t mine but simply based on Logic behavior which is by far the most optimized export/render architecture I’ve seen so far where every possible redundancy among features is eliminated.
There are probably technical reasons why Steinberg did not choose your -infdB suggestion, probably related to how some plugins might define -infdB.
Well -infdB should be no amplitude and that’s it but what you’ve highlighted here contains the only downfall of having automatic tail detection based on dBs.
Imagine a vinyl plugin that generates crackles: in this case Logic creates a file as long as the project is since it never reaches -infdB. (but it’ll keep it separated anyway - because events are King in Logic, they dictate the range and they’re kept separated at all times)
While this might seem a big flaw on paper, my real life decade long experience using this feature, tells that it’s not.
I worked on a game where we created all sorts of procedural audio tools from scratch and we fed these tools with thousands of separated audio clips (in the end they were slightly over 7000 of them) and I’ve used a plethora of different processings (including tape, vinyl and other self noise plugins) and I can safely say that that happened on a handful of them over 7000+ exports.
To me that’s a total win.
Sometimes I think that there could be some sort of gentleman’s agreement among DAW companies (like the one Japanese motorcycle manufacturers did back in early 90’s regarding top speeds) where they state “copy whatever you like but don’t touch these 2-3 functions, these are ours.”
Just a theory tho’. But just because I can’t explain why in 2023, some features are still very juvenile.
Or you might be right, there might be technical reasons and it’d be too hard to redo large bits of code from scratch (because it is). But as my long time audio programmer buddy said to me back in 2010
“with code you can do anything: change, create, destroy, rebuild. It’s all about time and money”
And this exporting architecture has been around for over a decade and it’s clearly much much better designed.
Apart from all of this: it’s all possible in Nuendo, it’s just slightly more clunky and that’s it.
interesting TH!
I’ll be curious to know what’s your daily procedure.
If you do this daily I’m sure you’ve found the most optimized way to do it and it’d be interesting for me to have a bullet point list of the actions that you perform.
Yes, but my question remains. What method does Logic use to achieve this?
Is it the following method?.. it mutes all other events before and after the current event being exported to avoid overlapping effects and it adds tails automatically when audio is detected after the end of the event, and finally it ends the tail when the audio level has dropped below a certain threshold.
@coro
For example, we digitize 3000 audio cassettes for an archive we use 4 tape decks at the same time and record 4 tracks. Such a part project then has 4 x 50 cassettes = 200 cassettes = 400 files (a/b sides).
We mark [Ctrl + a] all events in ONE track and name these events (rename events) using a list (copy and paste from Excel to all 100 clips/track). These are usually barcodes. The whole thing is repeated for all 4 tracks.
Then you mark ONE track again and just choose “File → selected events”
Then the entire track with 100 events each is exported in such a way that each file generates its file name from the description. (I use Nuendo in German and hope the menu names are correct).
Then the machine works for an hour and you export the next of the 4 tracks.
If you only select the events of ONE track at a time, you don’t have to pay attention to anything or do anything extra.
yes even tho’ I’d say its design doesn’t require to “mute” anything while exporting ( if I’m correct, that’s another sign of solid, well thought design by not adding redundant actions like “mute”)
Being the export architecture strictly event focused, it simply tackles the selected event and focuses on that until it’s done. The other events don’t need to be muted or whatever as they’re not part of the current export task.
and if you have multiple events like in this case, it exports the first selected event - starting from the beginning of the project - and once it’s done, it moves to the next until the latest event to the farthest right.
If you think about it, it’s the same thing when we tackle “big tasks”: a wise way to do it is to divide the big task into small chunks, focus on each small task at the time without cluttering the mind with everything that’s on the plate . Once you’re done with it, you move onto the next… etc…
The video is pretty self explanatory in terms of how streamlined and to-the-point is exporting events in Logic.
Also another well designed tool is naming events: I renamed the events on the fly right from the project view by selecting them all → Rename → typed Test_01 → enter
and it renamed all of them with increasing digits.
In Nuendo it opens a separate window that has a lot of - in my opinion - redundant options you’ll never use and it takes 3 clicks more to do the same thing.
But again, doable, so that’s all good.
Thanks for sharing TH 
question: why do you need to rename events in the list if, in the export settings, you re specify unique names again?
I’m sure it is. However, FYI I couldn’t really see what’s going on. The size of the video is too small!
P.S. Did you report your suggestions to Steinberg as a feature request? or invite readers of this topic to vote for it? even though some say the voting system has no particular influence here.
LOL I know … had to reduce the vid so that it could fit here (4MB max)
So that’s something that I obvs wanted to do at some point. As a developer myself, I’d love to get this type of feedback + structured suggestions.
But in order to do so I’d need to sit and make a proper document. But I’ll do it as soon as I get some spare time.
Know which one is the best way to submit a feature request?
I suppose here on the forum but I was thinking to actually send an email to Steinberg and if they find it useful, I’m sure it’ll be passed to the dev team.
Hopefully, you may get a response here in the forum.
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We have to name the events after the names of the customer’s sound carriers. For example TA247 for tape 247. Or AD-1993-0004 for a DAT cassette. The customer puts barcodes on the sound carrier and has an Excel list with the content.
The customer either puts barcodes on the sound carriers or there are old designations on the tape.
If Nuendo numbers it itself, no one knows which sound carrier is behind this number.
omg missed this
Thanks for the explanation TH!
The method works perfectly fine as long as the tail of one event does not overlap with the succeeding event.
If you switch off the tail in your example you will get five files.
That is, the discussion is entirely about Nuendo not being able to create individual files for events where the tail setting will cause an overlap with the next event on the same track.
Would be nice if that could be addressed in Nuendo/Cubase.
Nothing for steinberg to fix imho.
If you want separate events why would you make them overlap? Isn’t the whole point about designing/creating assets that they are singular, than why would they need to overlap with a event-tail? Realtime Reverb tails is different thing ofcourse just space your sounds from each other.