I´ve encountered a bug and don´t know how to get around it and need a little help. Its quite difficult to explain.
First things first. I am still using version 1.9 because I was half way through a big project and decided not to upgrade to 2.0 until i start the next one.
I have a project: 2 tracks with eArrangement and background tesxture video files in the arrangement, 1 track with an eISF and a bunch of eFX on all the tracks all automated by envelope followers on the music etc. I was already experiencing some issues with the eArrangement plugins in this particular project. The timings of the texture videos weren´t playing back as expected, but I managed to get a result I was pleased with in the end despite some buggy playback. I think the issue started when I deactivated a video clip in the arrangement and then re-activated it at a later date. It never played back OK after that point. Have you experienced that?
And today I´ve added a 4th video track with eArrangement. A drumming video that critically needs to stay in sync for the duration of the song. However this video doesn´t seem to play back properly either. It plays fine to begin with, but then at a specific point the video seems to go completely out of sync with itself. Its hard to tell, but I think perhaps the video playback position resets itself to a completely different position out of sync with the audio. Its either that or it slows down too. The audio plays back without issues so its really obvious. And it always happens at the same point… unless I drag the video file to different points in the arrangement, then it goes out of sync at different completely non-sensical points in the video.
To test the bug further, I tried deleting all the other ebosuite tracks and plugins from the project to see if this eArrangement plugin and drum video would work on its own. No luck. Same playback results.
But interestingly, I´ve tried opening a blank ableton project and only loading up an eArrangement plugin and the video works flawlessly from start to finish. So its not a problem with the eArrangement.amxd file or with the video file.
It seems to only be a bug within my song project.
Have you experienced this before? Any ideas how I can fix it? At the moment I can´t get the project finished as the drum video is the most important part.
I´ve realised the bug happens when there´s an automated tempo change in the ableton project. The project tempo is messing with the video playback. I´ve worked out that the video plays back flawlessly if I place the video in a different part of the arrangement where there’s no tempo changes happening which is great… but not compatible with my song.
My song is 115bpm for the most part and then in the outro section it jumps to 128bpm and creeps up to 135bpm over the period of about 1 minute.
The song was recorded live in one take and was captured on video captured. So I am simply syncing the video to the performance.
Any ideas how to get eArrangement plugin to playback the video correctly without being affected by tempo changes in ableton?
Hi Nicks, thanks for your messages. Changing tempo might indeed be an issue with eArrangemtn. I will have time on monday to do a few tests and dive into it, I will get back to you then.
Btw, does it matter if warping is on or off? maybe you don’t need it to be warped for your specific situation.
Cheers
Timo
I’ve got my ableton project settings setup so when an audio clip is imported into the project warping is automatically disabled by default.
I’ve tried putting the clip in various different positions in the arrangement and then turning the warp button on. But not managed to get it to play in sync yet. I’d love to know how you get on with it.
For now I’ve managed to get the 115pm and the 135bpm sections in sync with the video. But not the 1min section where it jumps to 128 and accelerates slowly to 135.
If it helps to know, I just wanted to add that I´ve not had any sync issues with the video playing back through the ableton video player with this song. e.g if I just place the video onto an audio track in ableton and line it up with the recording, it plays fine in the ableton video player, unaffected by the tempo changes during the song.
It just doesn´t seem to want to play nicely in eArrangement.
hi Nick, this is indeed a big puzzle.
If the video itself is not warped then there is a fundamental issue where the history of the automated tempo changes determine the position of the video. But… this automation data is not exposed by Ableton, so this will never work properly. I will add a bug/feature request to our list to see if I can improve it or cache all tempo changes internally.
I think warped clips should in general behave better because it relies on beat positions and it uses the actual tempo. (Codec can also matter btw, hap should perform best).
Can you send me your set somehow? (e.g. via wetransfer to timo@ebosuite.com) Or maybe a simplified version of an audio track (which is hopefully warped) and the video recording that should sync.