Dear Steinberg – Please consider this a formal feature request:
For film composers, the following feature could be very helpful: The ability to lock the start of a measure to a specific frame/timecode, with the option of the ability to lock the start position of a part to linear time, but have the part be in musical mode after its first tick. One variation of this potential feature would allow us to restart the grid to zero at a specific linear time so there can be multiple zero start points for locking multiple sub-cues to a film, for example, in a much larger project. In other words, the ability to have multiple locked sections/chucks/cues of MIDI and audio so we can compose/record/edit multiple cues inside one project, where the start of each cue can be locked to a specific frame/timecode.
For more information, the original thread started with the following query, which has now turned into a formal feature request:
I’m working on scoring a film with Cubase and I am looking for some tips to help me optimize my workflow. What I want to do is lock the beginning of a measure to a specific spot in the film – to a hit at a specific frame or absolute time.
[ Note - I’m currently on C5.5 waiting for my C6 to show up (this coming week) but my understanding is that nothing has changed with regard to timewarp, markers, tempo track, etc… so these questions apply equally to C5.5 as they do to C6. ]
The reason I need to do this is because as I’m composing, I’ll have numerous tempo changes and sub-cues within one larger composition that need to line up with specific frames/hits in the film.
As I compose/tweak/edit, particularly with tempo changes, things get messed up later on in the timeline for obvious reasons.
What I do now is simply use the timewarp tool, and create a new tempo event, which I then align with the frame/hit in question, etc… and everything is fine.
Then, as I edit the composition earlier on in the timeline and if I modify a tempo event earlier on, I simply have to use the timewarp tool again to re-align things later on. This can get tricky sometimes and can be a hassle, but it is more or less workable this way.
However, what I’ve never been able to figure out is how to lock the beginning of a measure to a specific frame/timecode. Again, if I’m working on another sub-cue earlier in the film segment that requires some tempo changes, everything later on in the project gets moved around.
Now, if I change subsequent tracks to linear time mode, I can obviously keep things locked up, but then the measures themselves are all messed up… so I need to leave everything in musical mode.
So every time I have a tempo change earlier on in the project (even within the same cue), I have to use the timewarp tool to line things up again.
What would be ideal is if I could lock a specific measure to a frame/timecode, for example, and any tempo changes I do to earlier sections of the music won’t affect the position/tempo map later on, up to the start marker of the section I want to lock in place.
In other words, if I want measure 25 to begin at 1:14:00, no matter what I do before measure 25, is there a way to do this without having to use the timewarp tool every time I make a change to the tempo prior to measure 25?
If something like this is possible, please let me know how to do it… and if it is NOT possible, do you have suggestions for a better way of doing it than the way I’m currently doing it?
Thanks for any help/ideas you can share.