Mixing down the same live track, cut and uncut

Cubase
1

Hi
I have a multitrack live recording of one hour. Added some inserts. I want 2 differnt mixdowns:

  • One full length mp3
  • Separate tracks for each song with fade in/out (and no blabla in between the songs)

Of course I can copy the tracks, but when I later do an edit, i need to copy again and again do the cut/fade. How can I do this?

2

From the top of my head: Use adequately named cycle marker to separate the individual songs, so you can then export all the songs in in go. And instead of fades you could use volume automation (on a bus where all tracks are routed to), which you then could disable for the export of the whole recording.

3

Of course, I don’t know how you want to edit it. But if you keep both tracks in sync with each other, then you can group both tracks when editing.

4

If you use Track Versions you could have the full length on one Version and individual songs on the other. Take a look at Version IDs in the Manual - you can config those so all the Versions on different Tracks change at once. Then you can easily flip back and forth between Versions.

5

Raino’s tip with the versions and Version IDs looked most promising so I tried. Switching indeed is easy, but editing after making the version is not on both versions.

Indeed Mas, editing tracks with sync on works as well, only very sensitive to errors (when you forget, or miss one track).

The tip with the volume automation is indeed the best one, with as a backdraw that using automation for fades is not as handy as just cut and use the track controls. But at least this works, thanks Fese!

6

That’s actually the main point of using Versions. Changes and edits made to one Version are exclusive to that Version and do not occur in other Versions. You can even have totally different Audio or MIDI on different versions. If you have some editing that you want to occur on both the full length & single song recordings then you need to make those prior to creating new Versions. The workflow would be:

  1. Perform all the editing that will be in common for the single songs & full length versions
  2. Select all the Tracks and create a New Version based on the current Version. This will cause the ID numbers to be the same so you can switch all the Tracks at once.
  3. Make any edits that are exclusive to the full length version
  4. Make any edits that are exclusive to the single song version (these last 2 steps can of course be flipped)
7

When I am finished with the first stage of edit, I like to export the separate songs, so I can listen to it in the car. (A 1 hour mp3 track is not workable in the car audio system). There I will spot any mix or edit issues and then I go back to my computer and fix it in the full mix.

I came up with another way which works for me:
When finish the first round of edit on the full length version: I do a mixdown to wav.
In the export dialog there is an option “After export”, which I set to “Insert as track”
On that mixdown track I do the cuts/fades. Then I export this track as mp3

After the second session I again do a mixdown as wav. But now option “After export” set to “Insert to pool”
Then I open the pool, grab the just created mixdown and drop in (holding the shift key) on the first event of the cutted previous mixdown. Then cubase asks if I want to replace the audio. Yes, that’s exactly what I want!!
In this way my cuts and fades are preserved and I can directly make a new mp3 export for my car session (don’t forget to revert the “After export” to nothing)