- Open Nuendo or Cubase
- Create a MIDI-only track and generate a few notes
- Save it as DawProject
- Import the DawProject file into existing project
What happens:
Nothing is imported. No import MIDI present.
What I expect it to happen:
Nuendo/Cubase is supposed to import plain MIDI tracks with all notes intact.
I only stumbled over this issue today as I was trying to import an extracted EP-133 song/pattern via this online tool: https://ep133-to-daw.cc/
The tool itself is fantastic (props to this developer) and it exports your songs into either Ableton or Dawproject format.
When I imported this into Nuendo, I had a problem: all tracks were being loaded as an instrument with no VST assigned to it. I had to do extra steps in order to turn these tracks into plain midi tracks and re-assign them. This is sometimes tedious.
So I tried to find out what’s in this Dawproject xml that makes Cubase/Nuendo think that this is an instrument rather than a Midi track. Apparently, I wasn’t even able to make a plain MIDI track export from Cubase/Nuendo itself!
IMHO, this is an internal issue of Cubase/Nuendo as it doesn’t seem to be able handling the tag inside Dawproject files properly or - there is simply no Midi data being routed into the export.
Because if I look at a test file that I made, the only XML I can see is for some EQ bands - but there is no track information visible at least to my eye.
Test XML from the dawproject file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Project version="1.0">
<Application name="Nuendo" version="14.0.32" />
<Transport>
<Tempo unit="bpm" value="112" />
<TimeSignature numerator="4" denominator="4" />
</Transport>
<Structure>
<Track contentType="tracks" loaded="true" id="id25" name="Eingang/Ausgang" color="#939393ff" />
<Channel role="master" audioChannels="2" id="id0" name="Stereo Out" color="#737373ff">
<Mute value="false" name="Mute" id="id22" />
<Pan value="0.5" unit="normalized" min="0" max="1" name="Pan" id="id23" />
<Volume value="1" unit="linear" min="0" max="2" name="Volume" id="id24" />
<Devices>
<Equalizer id="id1" deviceRole="audioFX" deviceName="EQ" deviceID="297BA567D83144E1AE921DEF07B41156">
<Band type="lowShelf" order="1">
<Freq value="100" unit="hertz" min="20" max="20000" name="Freq" id="id3" />
<Gain value="0" unit="decibel" min="-24" max="24" name="Gain" id="id4" />
<Q value="1" unit="linear" min="0" max="12" name="Q" id="id5" />
<Enabled value="false" name="Enabled" id="id6" />
</Band>
<Band type="bell" order="2">
<Freq value="800" unit="hertz" min="20" max="20000" name="Freq" id="id8" />
<Gain value="0" unit="decibel" min="-24" max="24" name="Gain" id="id9" />
<Q value="1" unit="linear" min="0" max="12" name="Q" id="id10" />
<Enabled value="false" name="Enabled" id="id11" />
</Band>
<Band type="bell" order="3">
<Freq value="2000" unit="hertz" min="20" max="20000" name="Freq" id="id13" />
<Gain value="0" unit="decibel" min="-24" max="24" name="Gain" id="id14" />
<Q value="1" unit="linear" min="0" max="12" name="Q" id="id15" />
<Enabled value="false" name="Enabled" id="id16" />
</Band>
<Band type="highShelf" order="4">
<Freq value="12000" unit="hertz" min="20" max="20000" name="Freq" id="id18" />
<Gain value="0" unit="decibel" min="-24" max="24" name="Gain" id="id19" />
<Q value="1" unit="linear" min="0" max="12" name="Q" id="id20" />
<Enabled value="false" name="Enabled" id="id21" />
</Band>
<Enabled value="true" />
<State path="plugins/FA6C1829-C115-4734-8F98-F3DA9B7200A9.vstpreset" external="false" />
</Equalizer>
</Devices>
</Channel>
</Structure>
<Arrangement>
<Lanes timeUnit="seconds">
<Lanes track="id25" />
</Lanes>
</Arrangement>
</Project>
As you can see the Arrangement tag is completely empty despite me having midi data in there.
PLEASE fix this.