I’m pulling in numerous clips of different lengths from one project to another, both of which have a different tempi.
I’ve noticed that when I copy/paste the exact clips I want, into the destination project track, it’s automatically trimming the clip to the same relative amount of bars.
In other words, if my source selection is 2 bars, when I go to paste, it will trim the audio to 2 bars as well. But because they are at different tempos, this throws everything off.
I have noticed that the range locators shows the full length of what the clip should be after I paste:
So you see, that clip is being forced to fit within 2 bars just as it existed in the source project. However, I would like to do a lot of my own time remapping from the full clip. If I drag it out to the locators this helps me somewhat, but requires more steps than it should, and it’s also hard to drag it out to accurately fill the locator area.
Is there a preference or paste setting somewhere to paste without auto-trimming to bars? I played around with some of the alternate paste options under the edit menu and couldn’t find anything.
Ok, lets get the naming convention straight first: The blocks on your screenshots are called “audio events”. The audio clip is what the event refers to and the event always shows a section of a clip (anything from 0 to 100% of the clip).
In the project view you only have events. The clips are in the Pool.
If you copy an event, the event will be pasted in the same way afterwards. Anything else would be bad.
If you want to have an event showing the entire clip you can e.g. drag’n’drop it from the Pool into the project.
Apologies, I have worked between numerous DAWs in my lifetime, as well as three video editing programs, and they all have different words for these things. Regions, clips, events, and so on. As a composer I bounce around between them frequently so it’s hard to remember what program calls them which way. I appreciate you letting me know.
Why would it be bad to paste an event of its exact length (as opposed to this relative translation)? I do a lot of music which is free-time/rubato, not requiring the metric grid. Also sometimes pasting in non-musical sound design and voiceover which doesn’t need to be aligned on the grid for that matter. So therefore, when I copy and paste from one project at 90bpm to another at 100bpm, I don’t need Cubase deciding to trim my events to what it perceives was the same bar length as before. I can decide how I want to time it myself from the raw, untrimmed version just as I had copied.
So there is no way to paste a selection at the exact length rather than forcing it to the new tempo’s grid?
Since it sets locators around the area, is there an edit tool which extends the event to the right locator?
But it is pasted with the exact same length - the length of the audio event.
If in the first project the event showed 40% of the clip, then it will show the same 40% of the clip also in the new project.
Make sure the original event has the “musical mode” switched off. Musical mode tells the event to adhere to the bpm. Ie. it will probably keep its bar+beats length rather than the length in absolute time.
Interestingly, it doesn’t appear to be behaving this way for me, and I just checked and musical mode is off. So just now I tried a few tests, and this is interesting… I’ll reproduce my steps to show what I mean:
I have this waveform which spans 4 bars in a project set to 120 bpm. I made sure it was not set to musical mode:
Next, I copied it into another project which happens to be set much slower at 70 bpm.
Then, I deselected it and reselected it to copy and back in my original project, I created a new audio track below the first one and pasted it at the same starting point:
So evidently it’s not timestretching the event, and you can see the selection area is the same as the original, but when it pastes back in it is trimming it based on the 70bpm grid!
To be fair this example is not something I would ever do in the real world but it does illustrate well what I’ve been seeing.
Here’s a more musical example, with this tom that has clear transients on every 16th note, at 80bpm, for a single bar
You can tell most clearly on the 16th grid because rather than 16 transients there’s 9 1/2 basically. So then I have to pull the event out to where the selection/right locator ends:
I may sometimes want to do this with rhythmic grid-based music, but sometimes not – I just wish it would paste in that “ghost” selection area that I can clearly see but it just won’t give me the whole event!
I may be going around my elbow to get to my nose here, so let me know if there’s an easier approach to what I’m trying to do. I’m just working on a film score where I have to pull individual elements into other cues quickly all of which have different tempos, so I’d like to just have the full raw selection to work from regardless of the bpm in the destination project.
Ok, I can reproduce the problem now. Please check if I am doing the same steps as you:
I need to have two projects open at the same time
I select an audio event in project A, select Edit → Copy
I go to project B (it doesn’t matter whetehr it is active or not) and select Edit → Paste
What happens is that I get the shortened version of the event when I copy from a slower project to a faster project.
When copying from a faster to a slower project the issue doesn’t occur.
Usually the event length should be stored as time (or actually as samples) but when the issue occurs it seems to be stored in the musical format (bar+beats).
The range shows the correct value when you, well, use the Range Tool at that time.
Again, it only happens on my end when copying from a project with less bpm to a project with a higher bpm setting. What a wicked little bugger.
Ok, so I’m not totally crazy haha What you’ve described is exactly it. And you’re right, I’ve noticed now that the trimming only happens when going from a slower project to a faster one. Actually, now after testing the other way, I realize going from faster to slower results in the type of paste I was expecting (not trimmed)! So now I at least observe how this behaves I can be cognizant of the issue when coming from a slower project.
I also found a quick and simple solution in this context. Immediately after pasting it sets a range selection with locators (of the actual length) - if I merely drag the clip out to be a bit longer (just outside the range selection, I usually have some kind of post-roll) and then go to Edit > Range > Crop, it trims to the correct absolute length that I am expecting. Slightly annoying but no big deal, this is not something I do all that often (it’s usually when I need to just pull “that one sound which lasted for a few bars” and I find it easier to navigate to exactly where it is in said project; otherwise when I need to pull a lot of full tracks in, Import > Tracks From Project is usually what I would do).
Anyway thank you for investigating on your end. Now I know. Cheers!
if you still want to copy audio events from a slower to a faster project, can you try to switch the tracks to Linear Time Base before you copy and paste?
What you’ve described is exactly it. And you’re right, I’ve noticed now that the trimming only happens when going from a slower project to a faster one. Actually, now after testing the other way, I realize going from faster to slower results in the type of paste I was expecting (not trimmed)! So now I at least observe how this behaves I can be cognizant of the issue when coming from a slower project.