What people try to tell you, though: the rectangular boxes around the notes are not part of the midi file. Every DAW creates them by themselves. Different DAWs might have a different or the same strategy of creating the boxes as Cubase does. Your clients should try to educate themselves and not blame you for soemthing that is beyond your control.
If they keep insisting on being simple minded you’ll have to insert midi events onto each track. It doesn’t have to be a long note. You can also create something like CC119 events on every bar or so. CC119 does not get used often.
Is this the default behavior you always see? While this particular behavior doesn’t necessarily “matter” to me personally, I am curious as to what defines the technical parsing differences. .
I only see the behavior you see when importing an older Reason midi file - I wanted to further test from yesterday so went in and dug out other sources. This screenshot is a very old midi file that is not “optimized” (Funkotronic Beat from Sega Genesis “Toe Jam and Earl” because, why not?) contrasted with what is being called “optimized” against an older Reason file export:
Same project, very different behavior. Looks like this is part of the file format and not just the DAW parsing the data, though of course the DAW can choose to parse what it wants when there is interpretation of the standard. I would have to presume that in DAW-to-DAW-to-DAW tests the inherent midi data is being retained.
Again, it doesn’t really matter, but at some point it COULD (e.g. this very thread).
This is really the key here, particularly since they already know better if they are actively opening midi files from other sources as part of their normal course of business.
[Addendum, leaving the original text for transparency]
You’re right, I’m wrong. I get it now. Having to see for myself I went in and just narrowed the space between events a bit at a time, staying in Cubase, and what you describe above is indeed what happens - it’s not in the file at all (I parsed them to make sure I saw it myself) it’s just a “time between events” Cubase reaches when parsing it and it decides when to create a new part. Bringing the parts in the Reason file closer and closer results in exactly what you describe:
Yes, this would make everyone’s life better! However, I’m referring to hollyweird editors here. IYKYK.
Exactly!! Just because this is how the program works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon…even if some people here think this isn’t a problem because it doesn’t affect them negatively.
Anyways, thanks for the constructive discourse and consideration Johnny and Thor.
