Cannot convert a selection of more than one clip from arrangement video

Technical questions and support
#1

I have been making visual music using Ableton since 2014, and felt like I was living in the pre-MIDI historical ages all these years, until EboSuite came along. I’m very excited to have the eSampler and all these cool new ways to make music with my videos, but I’m frustrated that I can’t do the thing that’s an integral part of my process:

  1. My process starts in FCP X, where I take multi-channel audio and video recordings of a live music performance, and I create video stems for each channel (they’re available for free download here: Remix The Music — Remix ⟷ Culture).
  2. I export them as Apple Pro Res 422HQ / 96kHz.
  3. I convert these stems to PhotoJPEG
  4. I drag the photojpeg video stem into Ableton’s arrangement view
  5. I warp, cut, copy, paste until I have a nice loop.
  6. Because of my several cuts, the loop usually is comprised of more than one clip in the arrangement view.

With the eArrangement plugin + the eConvert plugin - I am not able to select more than 1 clip in my arrangement view track and have the whole loop converted to HAP as a single file. I have to drag and drop each cut clip one at a time to create different files. And actually, when I drag the single clip from the arrangement track into the eConvert plugin, it shows a green progress bar go from left to right, but when it reaches the right it just stays there forever and never finishes converting the file.

  1. Since 2014, I’ve always used the Export Audio/Video to render these edited loops at the highest quality HAP setting and 48kHz audio. And this worked great until Live 10.x when Ableton decided to simplify the video export settings and only offer 3 encoding options (and 16-bit 44.1kHz audio). To work around this, I kept my older 10.x Ableton so that I could export video to HAP / high quality.
  2. Now that I’m on an M1 machine and using Ebosuite 2, I can’t go back and forth between Live 10 for rendering and Live 11 for Ebosuite and M1 compatiblity. So I’m stuck in Live 11 for better or for worse. I was really hoping this eConvert would solve this problem by allowing me to create my video loops from the arrangement as highest res HAP and 24-bit/48kHz audio.

How can I export from the arrangement any selection of video content to 1080p HAP / 24bit/48kHz audio?

#2

Hi hat,
Unfortunately we currently do not have an export function yet, sorry for that.
If you are looking to make loops from this then you have a few options:

  1. export that part of the arrangement as a video with Ableton’s video export functionality (this is without everything that EboSuite adds: fades/fx etc). I see you already mentioned that with @7. Yeah, bummer that Ableton simplified this…
    @8: You can still use Live 10.x on an M1 using Rosetta
  2. record that part with something like syphon recorder and an internal audio routing driver.
  3. we would love to make a renderer at some point, but that’s quite a daunting task, also because Ableton does not give easy access to all the data necessary (e.g. the automation data is not available from the api).
  4. I might be able to make an eComper that works with eArrangement, but that would exclude support for warped videos, so I don’t think this will be a solution for you.
    best,
    Timo
#3

Thanks - unfortunately, using Live 10.1 isn’t a great option right now, because it does not talk to Live 11. So I would have to do all my work in 10.1. I tried to copy and paste tracks and clips in between live 11 and live 10 but it doesn’t work. So all the musical video loops I created in Live 11 would have to be re-created manually in Live 10 before I can export them. And as I understand it, if I were to exclusively work in Live 10.1, everything, including Ebosuite 2.0 would be running under Rosetta, and so I wouldn’t be taking full advantage of this M1 Max processor / there might be performance issues with video playback (I perform my video remixes live, and it’s critical that I have the most responsive / stable environment).

I understand the renderer is a daunting task, and I would be eternally grateful (and would of course pay for such an upgrade). If and when you ever get to a testable feature, you can count me as a beta tester. I do think that’s the long-term solution - full audio and video rendered (everything you see and hear should be rendered - with ample codec and quality settings to choose from, including 48k/24-bit audio).

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