Render Vs Export

[BernieBass]

Is there a difference?
I was trying to convert all of my song tracks into stems, 1: to cut down on cpu load and 2: so I could mix down and master the complete song.
I started with the Drum Sampler cowbell which was on its own track triggered by step clips. I highlighted all the clips and used the render command to convert to a wav file.
The resultant Wav file was missing the initial attack of the first cowbell hit. No big deal but, when rendering the only options you have is Render selected clips or Render the marked region of the selected clips. Either way it misses part of the first hit.
The other method is to Set the loop markers a bar before and at the end of the step clips and then Export as a Wav file. This way you get a few seconds of silence. The problem here is that by the end of the song the cowbell was noticably behind the beat. I looked at the loop properties and the Tempo of the exported track had drifted and was slightly out.
My work around was to use the first option "Render the marked clips" but I had to put some empty step clips before and after the ones I wanted to render.
Has anyone else has problems with Exporting/Rendering?
Also how do you repair an out of sync wav file?

[Watchful]

Rendering can sometimes be goofy. Indeed, I experienced it an hour ago: render a clip, and sometimes it fails to render the first half-second of audio. I have plenty of RAM and space, so it's a bit of a glitch. I just re-render the clip and it always seems to fix it.

A third option is to bounce a clip: create a new track, set its input to be the output of the clip track, set your markers, and arm the new track to record. Record away! It will record the audio off the clip. Works every time.

[talby]

I was trying to convert all of my song tracks into stems, 1: to cut down on cpu load and 2: so I could mix down and master the complete song.

That's what the 'freeze' function is for.
Somewhere in the settings you can select, if the freezing of a track shall be applied before or after the final volume plugin by default found on all tracks. Freezing before the volume plugin is what you want.

Freezing will generate an interim WAV of the part selected for freezing. Then, only the interim WAV is used by the DAW for the replay of that frozen part, instead of fully processing all its clips, FX and modifiers over and over again.
As you can freeze parts of your Edit only, like freezing only the one or the other track, this gives you fine grained control on the currently required CPU load. You can, for instance, consider to freeze all tracks, which you are currently not editing, but keep only the track which you are editing unfrozen.
You can anytime unfreeze any frozen part, which discards its generated interim WAV, and continue to interfere with its detailed settings and processing, freeze it again and continue with mixing at low CPU load.

For the mixing task, your final faders of the track have not been frozen, if configured this in the settings of Waveform correctly.

[talby]

sometimes it fails to render the first half-second of audio

This is for sure worth a bug report to the developers!

[BernieBass]

Thanks "Watchful" and "Talby" for the replies.
I think bouncing to another track is a good idea, as its done in "Real time" and you can position the in and out markers to catch reverb tails.

I've never understood "Freezing" I'll have to dive into the settings and shortcut menus and give it a try. Thanks Guys!

[Watchful]

I think bouncing to another track is a good idea, as its done in "Real time" and you can position the in and out markers to catch reverb tails.

Exactly right! I got into the habit of bouncing tracks a long time ago. It seems to bypass all the weirdness around rendering and exporting. I use it to "disable" complex tracks--once I get a track where I like it, I'll bounce it if it has a ton of processing or complex routings. That way I can disable the plugins and save some hassle. If I need to change anything later, it's super-easy to re-enable those plugins, make the change, and go.

At the end of every project, I bounce the whole thing. I send the output of every active track to a track called "Bounce Track," and then I've got the entire project done as a .wave file in my project's rendered folder that I can use. So much easier.

This is for sure worth a bug report to the developers!

I've discussed with dRowAudio with a few other audio problems I was having in v12. He fixed all of them but, it seems, just that one. I didn't bother following up because it doesn't often happen and, when it does, it's a two-second fix to re-render the clip. For me, the problem goes away that way every time.

[fde101]

I got into the habit of bouncing tracks a long time ago. It seems to bypass all the weirdness around rendering and exporting. I use it to "disable" complex tracks--once I get a track where I like it, I'll bounce it if it has a ton of processing or complex routings. That way I can disable the plugins and save some hassle. If I need to change anything later, it's super-easy to re-enable those plugins, make the change, and go.

This is exactly what freezing does, but it does it in one step, and without the need to create extra tracks.

In Waveform, freezing a track is done the same way as inserting a plugin: just insert the "Freeze Point" plugin at the point in the track where you want it to be frozen. Everything to the left of the freeze point is rendered in place and disabled, and everything to the right continues to function - typically you would place it just to the left of the pan/volume control.

Simply delete the freeze point plugin if you need to make changes to things to the left, then add it again to re-freeze the track.

[Watchful]

I do use freezing on occasion, but bouncing allows you to do so much more; for example, I can record a mix of live parts into one track without cutting off reverb tails, etc. Freezing a track is ideal if you're dealing with memory issues, such as a large composition with individual orchestral parts.