Hi Steinberg and fellow Cubase users. Wouldn’t it be great to add an option in the pool, where you could Export Selected Regions/Audio Files directly from the pool’s audio bin. Pro Tools has this. (Export Selected) Logic has this. Digital Performer has this. Every DAW program I can think of has this.
I am a film composer and am constantly printing stems directly inside Cubase. As I am using external computers and making long stems with lots of empty space between musical events, I need to bus my main output track onto a track within Cubase, print directly onto that, and then bounce the regions together to make one long stem from the start of the cue. I then grab those audio files directly from the Cubase Audio folder, in the Project’s main folder. The issue here is that Cubase makes .A1/.A2 interleaved audio files. If you bounce regions together, it actually makes .L/.R interleaved files. (I have no idea what the reasoning of this is, to have .A1/.A2 interleaved before you bounce, and .L/.R after you bounce) The issue with .A1/.A2 interleaved files is they confuse Pro Tools like crazy. As 100% of film mixes I work on do their final mixes in Pro Tools, this is an annoying issue. When you import these .A1/.A2 files into Pro Tools and place onto a track, it usually splits them up into 2 separate mono tracks, both panned to the center. To avoid this, you can make sure to “bounce selected” within Cubase, even if you don’t need to, and it magically makes .L/.R files. As regions don’t always need to be bounced together, it is easy to get these glitchy results.
Setting my locators and bouncing up to 50-60 individual stems in real time is never an option. Printing within Cubase is nice because I just need to print what I need in real time, throughout the cue, and then bounce all those printed regions together into one long region. Doing a batch export isn’t really practical either, as the stem requirements are often different per project. Sometimes it is completely split out stems for a music mix. Other times it is a few food group stems, for a film’s dub mix. (Strings and Brass, Big Perc, Metals, Pianos and Harps, etc)
The point of all this IS, if you could just selected audio regions in the pool and have an option to “Export Selected regions/audio files” that would certainly take out the glitchyness of the .A1/.A2 issues, and would also allow you not to have to go into the Cubase Audio files folder and hunt around for the audio you need. When you do an export audio mixdown, it makes .L/.R files. (if you have “insert i XML Chunk” turned off) So if you added an “export selected regions/audio files” option from the pool, which would result in .L/.R files, that would be very useful.
Having the ability to quickly export out of the pool would be great. At the moment, as a work around, you can take your printed stems, place them on tracks within the Cubase project, set your locators, make sure they are set to a different output (incase you had any mastering plug ins on your main out) and then do an offline bounce that way, but that seems incredibly redundant and a big headache.
I’ve spent a long time dealing with this issue and have tested it thoroughly.