Classical Helper Shortcuts V1

Hi All, After a few rants about the Reaper crossfade system, I've come up with my very own custom actions which allow me to get 95% of my classical work done with very little effort. It's still not quite as comforting and quick as the Sequoia crossfade editor but it comes mighty close. First import my custom actions (attached). I have "Color It!", "Whole Project View" and the piece de resistance, "Classical Crossfade". Color it! (C) -- Default reaper item colors are no good for precise editing so I created this action to color alternate items nice pastel colors. As a create new splits etc., I simply press 'C' again to re-color as necessary. Note that I choose to NOT color waveforms themselves but just the backgrounds with a tint strength of 2 (all set under preferences). Whole Project View (`) -- An easy way to see the whole project in one window (FYI, if the last track contains no items it will not be part of the whole view). Making a time selection by dragging with the mouse over the ruler then pressing the shortcut will zoom into that selection. For the final custom action you need SWS extensions installed. Classical Crossfade (X) -- After using "Color It!", disable auto-crossfades (permanently for classical work!). Drag the right item over the left and line up the waveforms. Move the left edge of the right item until it is exactly where you want the crossfade to end. Then hit X and voila...a short classical crossfade is created. The length is set by the SWS extensions parameters -- Seconds (edit cursor). I have it set at 0.015 which creates a 30ms crossfade. Combine these with the new Source-Destination actions created by Pelleke and we suddenly have a viable and stable environment for doing mission-critical classical recording, editing and mastering. I would still like a dedicated graphical crossfade editor for fine-tuning as using the content knob in Reaper's editor is a terribly clumsy way to work. I just wish I could drag the right item without increasing the set length of the crossfade. This needs to be a two-lane display so that I can easily line up waveforms. Anyhow, enjoy and hope they are helpful to all you classical editors out there.

Just for reference purposes: a link to my new I've never worked with region colours, I'm definitely going to give that a try. As to the crossfader, my actions do something similar during the edit. Apart from being out of the scope of the source/destination setup, is there any difference in how your actions make the crossfade? (They'd still be useful if they don't, in case you want to quickly fix something up in a project already edited, or to redo a crossfade made earlier in the process where you lost the source selection.)

I think they are probably very similar but I seem to work more with students in the regular mode rather than source/destination. The issue I still have with Reaper is the terrible crossfade editor. To my mind, the "editor" doesn't make it easier at all. I need a zoomed-in visual so I can precisely line up edits. Trying to fix rough source/destination edits is impossible. I have done some more work on my color and crossfade actions including shortcuts to make all vertical items in tracks grouped (for multi-mic classical setups) and also coloring so that it is easy to see where the takes come from after compiling an edit. I'll post soon.

I have used the wonderful Pyramix fade editor and I'm finding that the Reaper editor leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe we can get together to request a Sadie/Pyramix/Sequoia type crossfade editor in a future version of Reaper. Thank you very much for the shortcuts - great work. - Lucas

Pelleke & Bachstudies, Thank you so much for your work on this. I have used the wonderful Pyramix fade editor and I'm finding that the Reaper editor leaves a lot to be desired. I am evaluating it now and would have ditched it had I not found your shortcuts / video. Maybe we can get together to request a Sadie/Pyramix/Sequoia type crossfade editor in a future version of Reaper. - Lucas

Very interesting. Thanks for this - I'll try to research Mixbus / Ardour which I haven't heard of. Meanwhile, true confessions: I'm not an engineer, but rather a musician who has edited a few of his own projects. Several years ago I bought a license for Pyramix 5 and upgraded to 6, then stopped doing this for a few years. Now I'd like to start again, but don't want to pay for the upgrade. So I've spent the last couple of days getting Pyramix 6 to work on an old Windows Vista computer . . . all just for that wonderful fade editor. But I would still love to switch to a different software which has such an editor and which works on the Windows 10 laptop I tour with. Thank you again for your terrific posts. - Lucas Toronto, Canada

Long time since I saw Pyramix. Could someone post some video showing its crossfade editor in action? I take it you guys know about the REAPER crossfade editor? What is it missing? >

It may help to post a vote for a 4 point Source Destination Editing Feature Request here: I'm not quite sure how the voting thing works though...is it through sheer weight of vote numbers, or how long the issue has remained unresolved for ?

The issue system is deprecated. Explain your request in the first post of a thread you open in the feature request forum section. Keep that updated and let the discussion roll in that thread. I guess you saw the huge thing I posted a long time ago. Would you guys prefer a vertical layout (one arrangement view above a second arrangement view) or a horizontal (views next to each other) ? Oh and , the crossfade editor of Reaper is good for a lot of things. Is it good enough though ? If not, what details work less well for your workflows ? Be specific. A shot of a simple 1-track cut, but it can do grouped item cuts as well.

FYI: I made significant progress on my S/D editing shortcuts today: The one I'm most excited about is the single-window source-destination model.