Cubase exports without MIDI Inserts

VST Live
1

Hi the team!

The summer has been quite busy and I had very few time to test VL2 further. Unfortunately, it has not replaced my old rack-mounted equipment yet. Some annoying little things are time killer to me.

Now that I’m back to testing and trying to move all my midifiles to VL, I’m struggling with new issues.

First, during export from Cubase, Midi Inserts are ignored. This is really annoying as I use them to compress Midi notes, transpose, and so on.

Second point, VL MIDI editing is a headache! Undo is unusable (e.g.: can’t undo an accidentally deleted event) and when changing a note velocity, I can hear the now playing at different levels as I move its velocity bar, but when I playback the track, no change has been made…

So doing all the editing in Cubase seems to be the way to go, but I really need MIDI Inserts to be taken into account while exporting in VL project.

Thank you, the team!

2

Hi! Welcome back @Jihem !

Actually not ignored but currently 3rd party MIDI plugins are not yet supported. I think that is the only reason, they sem to be “ignored”

3

Hi Felician,
AFAIK, Cubase is not compatible with 3rd party Midi plugins neither, but when you export a project as Midi file, a check box allows you to say if you want MIDI Inserts to be used. I strongly think that the same choice should be proposed for VL export.

4

Oh you mean their “ job” should be rendered at media-export-to-vstl?

5

Exactly!

6

… sorry. The MIDI Inserts are part of Cubase. No chance to use them in VST Live.

… do you have some steps for me to get it reproduced?

  1. Start VL, New Project, Select TRACKS
  2. Add MIDI Track, add Clip from 1.1 - 2.1
  3. Double Click to Open Editor in lower Zone
  4. Double click to create a note, select it
  5. Delete it with … ???

—> Undo not working

… fixed. Sorry. Please re-try next version.

… which MIDI Inserts do you need in VL?

See you,
Michael.

7

Hello Michael,
I probably expressed myself badly, I don’t really need MIDI Inserts in VST Live. The problem lies in the VL export inside Cubase.
As you have admitted, VST Live in NOT a DAW, so I create all my MIDI tracks on Cubase. Depending on how a VSTi or sound module reacts, I have to make some adjustments (essentially octave shift and velocity compression) using MIDI effects in the tracks inspector.

When it’s time to export my song from Cubase to import it in VL, I have three choices:

  1. ‘VST Live > Export project…’ seems to be the natural choice, except for the MIDI Insert tweakings that are ignored.
  2. ‘Export > MIDI File’ has a checkbox to choose if I want the MIDI Inserts actions to be embedded in the track itself. Sort of ‘rendering’ (thanks @fkalmus). The downside is that when you import a Midi file into VL, you are losing the Arranger and Tempo tracks, and each track is displayed as a single clip starting at 1.0.0 to the end of the song.
  3. Drag and drop clips one by one from the Cubase window to the VST Live window. I know it’s not officially supported, and it’s obviously a longer handling, but it works for MIDI clips! MIDI Inserts are ignored, of course, so this way has no interest, except when I want to import just a few events into an song already elaborated. Since I’m talking about it, how great it would be if we could also drag and drop a MIDI clip from VL to Cubase. This way, it would be easy to do some editing using Cubase powerful tools, and then send the modified clip back to VL via another drag and drop.

Have a good day!

8

Here’s the very odd behaviour I noticed:

A. Double click an empty clip to open the Editor

  1. Draw a note
  2. Delete it
  3. Use Undo to redraw it => OK

B. Double click a clip containing notes

  1. Delete any note
  2. Undo won’t work

C. Double click a clip containing notes

  1. Draw a new note
  2. Delete ANY note
  3. Use Undo to redraw the note => OK

It looks like Undo only works in Editor if you first draw a new event, and not if you just delete events already there.

9

I just found a workaround in Cubase:

  1. Select all
  2. MIDI > Freeze Midi Modifiers
  3. File > VST Live > Export Project…
  4. Undo to put the MIDI Modifiers back to the inspector

Not perfect, but do the job.

10

:sunglasses:woke up and had exactly the same idea to write you… :wink:

1 Like
11

Things are finally really problematic…

The Cubase VST Live Export module not only ignores the MIDI Inserts transformations, but also the note mapping of Drum Maps. For this, I don’t see any easy solution…

Actually, I think the MIDI containers are exported as they are, without looking at any MIDI processor.

Am I right @Spork ? Can you do something ? I’m stuck again…

Thanks!

12

Correct, data are exported as they are. To apply modifiers you will need to render it as you suggested yourself, sorry. The export function has no access to running modifieres, plugins etc.

13

Dear @musicullum,

Thank you for your confirmation. I thought that Freeze MIDI Modifiers wouldn’t work for Drum Maps but it actually does, so this is my solution :slightly_smiling_face:

Have a great day.