MIDI Track transfer between projects

Hi -

I’ve spent a few hrs :smiling_imp: learning some ins and outs of doing this. I thought I’d post my experiences, so that 1) maybe someone can tell me how dumb I’m doing it and show an easier way, and 2) so that maybe someone else won’t have to do all this from scratch.

I had some MIDI tracks in SX3 I wanted to bring over to new projects in C6. First thing that surprised me is that when I did “Import MIDI track” in a new C6 project, and navigated to the SX3 project, C6 could not “see” the MIDI track in the SX3 project - only the project itself. I was kind of hoping it would work like an audio track where I could point it straight to an audio track … it probably should but I might have messed up somewhere … if someone has any ideas here, that would be awesome, thank you.

So, after that I just "Open"ed up the SX3 project as a C6 project (“C6 Project #1 - from SX3”). I was kind of wary of working in this new C6 project out of concern that some evil setting from SX3 would mess things up in my C6 project, so I decided just to bring the MIDI track alone into a brand new fresh C6 that didn’t have anything to do with SX3 (except of course the MIDI track itself, which I figured would be “clean”/harmless). This step might be unnecessary, but I haven’t had the time to see if things are OK working in this SX3 project opened in C6.

******So I opened up a fresh C6 project (“C6 Project #2 - MIDI track only”) , un-maximized the two project windows, and just click-dragged the MIDI file from C6 Project #1 into Project #2. Easy as pie!

Here’s where the main lesson I learned is: It is essential that the Tempo Track in the the target project ( C6 Project #2) be the same as the origin project ( C6 Project #1). Otherwise, since the MIDI track plays back according to the project’s Tempo Track, the MIDI track will play back at the wrong speed. Yeah, I know it’s not brain salad surgery, but it took me a lot of time to work through all the variables to come to this conclusion, so I thought I’d put it down here in case just maybe it might save someone else some time.

I guess if MIDI had a Musical Mode toggle like audio, it wouldn’t matter what the Tempo Track settings were … ?

Thanks for reading, and any suggestions, thoughts :smiley:

  1. Dragging a MIDI Part from one Project into another is not a bad idea (but see **below). This will always adopt the tempo of the destination Project… the MIDI Part doesn’t contain any tempo data… do not confuse this with MIDI Files (see **below).
  2. If you still have the opportunity of launching the Project in SX3, you could (instead of opening both Projects and dragging from one to the other), use the export option, “Export Selected Tracks”, which you would then import into Cubase 6 via “Import Track Archive”.

** 3) You could also (while still in SX3) export as a MIDI File (making sure to mute all unwanted events) then Import the MIDI File. There is the option , in Preferences>MIDI>MIDI File>Import Options> “Ignore Master Track Events on Merge”, allowing you to choose whether or not the tempo data will be imported.

Just to say thanks again, vic_france for these hints - been doing them a lot lately moving projects over from SX3 to C6 … much better than drag and drop!

:smiley: