Build huge templates?

indiescore · March 29, 2014, 7:08pm

Wolfie2112:

indiescore:

Curious, How are you saving each cue without creating 100 instances of vepro? Also are you recording audio for each cue as you score it?

The template I choose gets loaded once…when I open the first project template. I have many Cubase templates ready to go ie: Horror, Action, Romantic, Classical, etc. Once I sequence the cue(s), I save it as a project. For instance, it might be called “cue 23 car chase”. Once I’m finished with that cue, I can either delete the tracks and rename it as the next cue, or close it completely and reopen the template. I typically just move onto the next section in the film and “save as” the next cue. The cool part is, all of the instruments remain loaded in VEPro (called the “preserve” function), and it only takes a few seconds to load each project. A film I’m working on right now has eight instances of VEPro loaded, with sixteen channels loaded in each (32 output channels). Each channel can contain up to sixteen instruments, but I usually only load about eight in each (this is the beauty of the VEPro VST3 version!). All of the sections in Cubase are divided into group folders, so I simply collapse the ones I’m not using which cleans up my screen real estate in the project window. And by having everything loaded on the slave PC, all of my Mac resources are dedicated to the DAW and not virtual instruments.

As far as recording (or rendering) the audio, this can be done at any time. Once the cues are 100% complete, I just export them. They can be exported as stems or as single audio files…whatever is required. Cubase is so damn easy for film scoring, best move I ever made! I came from using Cakewalk for twenty years.

ahh I see, I really like this workflow idea , process of yours, modular / cue approach… I have a VEpro license its two years old , I abandoned it so I will take a look at this in between projects. Are you getting zero, or low latency from slave to master? Given the large amount of tracks you can dump into the master project without the limitations of an ADAT audio card, how do you deal with Cubase limitations on internal outputs on the master sequencer ?

My slave right now is dedicated to brass and strings only, and its all on key-switches and routed into my template so I turn on the slave and dont need to tinker, nor have it take up monitor space, this leaves three monitors for my project views, the 4th monitor plays the video.

I actually work in MIDI for the entire score,( including rendering one stereo stem from midi for purposes of review ) until all revisions are made and approved, then I render all tracks, do a rough mix, and deliver to post house. Obviously the advantages are huge in flexibility to make changes, copy and paste parts across cues, add an octave to a string part or change the melody in the middle of a sequence on the fly all without audio tracks to deal with, or re-do, etc.