Is there a way to export a mixdown of an Arranger Track chain to the exact duration of the song specified in the Arranger Editor dialog box?
As an example, let’s say that I have five sections in my chain (as shown below) that amount to a Song Time of 42:00 and I want to export the entire chain to that duration. What do I need to do in Export Audio Mixdown to get that duration?
The problem is that there are no options in Export Audio Mixdown that allow the Arranger to set the mixdown duration; you only have two Export Range options: 1) Locators and 2) Cycle Markers (see red arrows below).
My best workaround is to drag the Locators to the Song Time indicated in the Arranger Editor (42:00 in my example), but that always either adds a little bit extra from the first section of the chain (Export loops around briefly to the beginning of the chain) or the song is partially cutoff (Export stops before bouncing down the entire chain).
I should mention that I am aware of the Flatten Chain option, but do not want to do that because I only want an evaluation copy of my project prior to completion to allow others to evaluate it before I finalize it (at which time Flatten Chain would be appropriate).
Not that I’m aware of. Flattening is the mechanism that’s intended to resolve this. But if you rule out using the intended method things will likely get messy.
You could also just Flatten the Chain to export the mix, but not Save the Project (or use Revert) and it will be as if the Flattening never happened. But using Save As… seems to me the cleanest, easiest & least error prone method. Why try to create a complicated solution when a simple one already exists?
One of the workarounds I’ve been using was to flatten and export the chain w/o saving the project, as you suggested. However I’m afraid that I may fail to save my project before flattening and might lose important changes.
So, I just came up with another workaround that’s safer for forgetful people like me.
Here’s the procedure:
create a section of ~ 5 seconds of silence in your project
drag this to the end of the Arranger chain
set the Locators to the Song Time + a few seconds short of the silence duration
Yes that is the main risk of using that method. That’s where using Save As is safer - it avoids the risk of doing that because your main version of the Project never gets flattened to generate a client test mix. That flattening will only occur in a separate Project dedicated to generating the test mix. It will also take less time than messing around with locators and adding extra silence. For example:
Save As… Project Name + test + today’s date
Flatten
Export
Save (or not) & Exit (meanwhile the main Project sits intact on your disk)
You seem quite enamored of creating complicated workarounds that are like driving from Manhattan to Brooklyn by way of Chicago while ignoring the bridge that goes directly between them. I’m trying to convince you to use the safest & easiest method, but of course it’s up to you.
Using the Save As method results in the creation of new files that either accumulate on your disk or have to be deleted (which would be a problem for me b/c I frequently mixdown my projects). But worse still the Save As method takes much longer!
The method I described only takes a few seconds after the initial creation of the silence section (Step 1) and the dragging of it to the end of the chain (Step 2). And those two steps only take a few seconds each.
Steps 3 & 4 also take just a few seconds and are what you normally have to do anyway when exporting (so they don’t really count).
And step 5 is actually something that I don’t do but included merely for sake of completeness b/c it’s quite easy to set the Locators to produce an exported file with a very short segment of silence at its end.
Just want to add:
You can flatten the chain to a new project by setting it up in the options dialog (cog wheel next to “Flatten Chain”). Destination needs to be set to “New Project”.
I’ve given up on using flatten the chain because it does not appear to allow you to include events (such as keyswitches or notes slightly off the grid) without creating gaps of silence. In lieu of flattening I manually drag clips together.
It seems the Arranger was created soley for loop-based production.
I have tried for years to figure this out and have unfortunately failed! The best thing I can recommend is to flatten the chain, export the audio and then UNDO!
This way I have a copy of the exported Audio and Arrangement chain, if I ever decide to use that arrangement!
