Hi I’m scoring to a video so the grid is non linear.
How can I set the RULER to have Beat 1 at a non-beat location?? It only allows per bar not per beat. Which means I cannot use the Cubase grid to place my 12 bars starting here around bar 33.3.1 . I see I can set timecode anywhere, but that means I cannot use my Cubase grid and quantize to work with the bars and beats !
Help would be appreciated !
Essentially : how to make timestamp A be the 1 and timestamp B be the 12 ..?
Then Cubase can give me the grid and the tempo !
I’d love help, and also realize this might fall into a Feature Request..?
Hey,
I hope I’m understanding your question correctly. Listed below are my personal approaches. You can achieve this by using either of the two methods:
Method 1 : Time Manipulation/ Tempo Maps
You can place your parts at the closest bar to where the music is supposed to start and put tempo changes to have your picture move to the bar. Since movies are always time locked, any changes to tempo move them around the Musical Grid (Beats/Bars). If you reduce the tempo., the picture shifts left and if you increase the tempo, it shifts right. Based on how big your tempo swings are, the movie will shift more or less rapidly
The downside to this is that if you have multiple cues in the same project and they are very close to each other, then finding a place to put these tempo changes can be tricky. Also, any pre-existing cues that happen later in the movie will also lose their sync due to these tempo changes.
Method 2 : Changing Time Signatures
You can change your time signature before your cue so that your part can land up perfectly on the first beat. You can experiment with beat divisions and also the number of beats in a bar to have your grid line up. Instead of quarter beats you could make your grid into smaller divisions like 8ths, 16ths, 32nds etc. and determine how many beats you need to have your part lined up to the next bar perfectly.
If we take your screenshot as the example, your parts starts just slightly after the second beat of bar 33. I’ve tried to replicate it on my end here.
My end goal is have to the part line up nicely on the grid
1) Initial : 4/4 Signature
2) Make Bar 33 a 2/4 so that we get the part closer to the first beat in the new bar
3) We can see that our part is sitting on one of the 16th beats, so I’ll make a Time Signature change of 1/16
4) Now from Bar 35 onwards, we can have our regular/intended time signature (4/4 in this case)
There are some tools in Cubase like Time Warp (Warp Grid) and Process Tempo to achieve similar results as well.
Here’s one of Dom’s video about this:
I’d recommend not to hesitate to move your parts around a tiny bit here and there to have them sit on the grid because at lower beat divisions, the number of frames elapsed also reduces, so your sync won’t be disturbed.
It’s better to decide on a case by case basis on what approach to take as one may be have some advantage over the other. More often, it’s a combination of the two approaches that work for me.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
VJ
Yes this helps massively, this is perhaps the most comprehensive help I’ve ever received on this or other forums, many many thanks for taking the time to edit this so well for me !
I am in debt, I shall pay it forward 
Thanks VJ and all the best !! 