Labels (anchors, markers) to regions capability, and gapless playback

[TLMuse]

Hi Acon community-

A common audio editing task for me is breaking up a live concert recording into pieces for exporting as separate tracks with gapless playback. Back when I used to use the now-defunct BIAS Peak app for this, I could put markers (Acoustica's "labels") at the track boundaries, and then use a handy "Markers to regions" operation to automatically create regions between the markers, for subsequent processing and export. I've looked for a similar operation in Acoustica, but I can't find it. Is there some way to accomplish this that I've overlooked?

Also, is there anything special I should do to export the tracks (regions) to make sure they can play back gapless? I'm not totally clear on the workflow for this in Acoustica. I suppose any lossless export would play back fine, but can I do MP3 or AAC exporting from Acoustica in a way that supports gapless playback?

-Tom

[Tj Shredder]

Coming from Sounddesigner and then Peak, I want all Peak features as well...

[stian]

Hi Acon community-

A common audio editing task for me is breaking up a live concert recording into pieces for exporting as separate tracks with gapless playback. Back when I used to use the now-defunct BIAS Peak app for this, I could put markers (Acoustica's "labels") at the track boundaries, and then use a handy "Markers to regions" operation to automatically create regions between the markers, for subsequent processing and export. I've looked for a similar operation in Acoustica, but I can't find it. Is there some way to accomplish this that I've overlooked?

Unfortunately, that's currently not possible in Acoustica. I don't know BIAS Peak well. How did Peak know which regions to include and which to exclude? Did it simply alternate? Isn't it easier to select the track boundaries and press the "R" button to create a new region directly? If you want to create a region between two labels, you can simply double click between them to extend the selection to the nearest labels and press R to create the region.

Also, is there anything special I should do to export the tracks (regions) to make sure they can play back gapless? I'm not totally clear on the workflow for this in Acoustica. I suppose any lossless export would play back fine, but can I do MP3 or AAC exporting from Acoustica in a way that supports gapless playback?

I'm quite sure what you want to accomplish. Do you want to create one contiguous clip from all the regions? Currently, you can save the regions to separate files, but you cannot save them as a gapless sequence to one file. We could create a "Create clip from regions" command or something along those lines that could open a new clip editor with the concatenated regions.

Best,
Stian

[Paulo-Brazil]

Stian, you have said: "If you want to create a region between two labels, you can simply double click between them to extend the selection to the nearest labels and press R to create the region". This double-click way of creating a region between two labels doesn't seem to be documented in the Help files.

[Alan S]

I know this is an old thread. I have kept a separate computer around just to use Bias Peak. I believe I've been using it for almost 20 years. It was way ahead of it's time. I still will transfer files over to my 32 bit Mac since Peak is so much easier to use for me.

I would LOVE to have Acoustica add the feature that is mentioned in this thread. The question was asked how Peak knows which regions to make from the markers. You just highlight the ones you want. For me it's the entire file (concert with individual songs edited). In Peak you select "markers to regions". It uses the name of the marker and selects the next marker as the boundary ending and start of the following region. I get a pop up that allows me all of the export options including a prefix to use on the region name.

It's a very useful feature. I hope it could be added. I spent 4 different projects reading help searches to finally get how to drag regions in Acoustica. Because I want to go from anchor to anchor I was always dragging anchors instead of highlighting regions. When I did finally export regions they are unnamed and I have to go back and rename them when the anchors are already named from my Logic bounce. Thanks for anyone from ACON that can address this.

[iamyenz]

I have been looking at quite a few of the most popular audio editors specifically for this functionality, exporting as separate tracks as per Markers (called Labels in Acoustica) with gapless playback (absolutely essential for audio books!), and the only one I have found to have this functionality is WaveLab with its surprisingly comprehensive Auto Split tool. Working with audiobooks where recordings need to be split into separate audio files for each chapter, Acoustica's Auto Split functionality is unfortunately of no use. Adding this one functionality would likely open up a whole new market for Acoustica.

[stian]

I know this is an old thread. I have kept a separate computer around just to use Bias Peak. I believe I've been using it for almost 20 years. It was way ahead of it's time. I still will transfer files over to my 32 bit Mac since Peak is so much easier to use for me.

I would LOVE to have Acoustica add the feature that is mentioned in this thread. The question was asked how Peak knows which regions to make from the markers. You just highlight the ones you want. For me it's the entire file (concert with individual songs edited). In Peak you select "markers to regions". It uses the name of the marker and selects the next marker as the boundary ending and start of the following region. I get a pop up that allows me all of the export options including a prefix to use on the region name.

It's a very useful feature. I hope it could be added. I spent 4 different projects reading help searches to finally get how to drag regions in Acoustica. Because I want to go from anchor to anchor I was always dragging anchors instead of highlighting regions. When I did finally export regions they are unnamed and I have to go back and rename them when the anchors are already named from my Logic bounce. Thanks for anyone from ACON that can address this.

I have been looking at quite a few of the most popular audio editors specifically for this functionality, exporting as separate tracks as per Markers (called Labels in Acoustica) with gapless playback (absolutely essential for audio books!), and the only one I have found to have this functionality is WaveLab with its surprisingly comprehensive Auto Split tool. Working with audiobooks where recordings need to be split into separate audio files for each chapter, Acoustica's Auto Split functionality is unfortunately of no use. Adding this one functionality would likely open up a whole new market for Acoustica.

Thanks for the input! So adding a "Convert Labels to Region Markers" in Acoustica would solve both demands? Acoustica would then add a region marker from start of the recording up to till the first label, then follow with a new region marker for each consecutive pair of labels, and add a final region marker from the last label till the end of the recording, right?

Best,
Stian

[iamyenz]

Yes, exactly!