Beat Wizard Question

[nmonkman]

Okay, perhaps I am just not doing something right, but based on everything that I have tried to date, the Beat Wizard does not work for me.

This is a link to a picture on my server so you can get a better look at everything.

http://www.planetmonkman.com/BeatWizard%20ScreenShot.jpg

(if that doesn't work try deleting the "%20" and just leave a space)

You will note in the photo that the alleged beat is nowhere even close to the actual beat, which are the green marks.

If i put it on "turn on every 1 beat" it just fills every cell all the way across. I have tried changing some of the other settings and nothing seems to work.

I was under the assumption that if I wanted a channel to turn on every beat it would do just that, not put a bunch of filled cells at whatever location it wants.

Am I doing something wrong or is this as good as it gets?

THanks,

Neil

[Philip]

Neil,

to make this easier do two other things first before running the beat wizard on top of an existing sequence. Click on the "TIMINGS" button at the top (right below the ON, OFF, and INTENSITY buttons. From here select "ADD A NEW FREE FORM GRID". Then give it a name and click "OK". You won't see anything happen and will presume that it didn't work, but wait.....

Now Click on the pull down menu next to the timings button and select and switch to the new freeform grid you just named. All of the timings will dissapear from the screen, but that's ok. Now run the beat wizard and the first time around run it to only place a timing with each single beat (don't do times 2 or halves) During this time you can also select to add that "turn on every beat option" Although, I would personally suggest that you turn on every other beat instead.

Now you can switch between these two timing grids at any time and place your lighting effects in line with a timing mark on either grid. When you switch back and forth the light effects will NOT move, but you will see variations in the grid that you can use depending on how you want to sequence a certain part of the song.



I also noticed from your image that you don't have the option selected to add a timing mark into the grid for each beat (just the on/off effect) that's why the effects that it is placing aren't lining up with the strait timings that you already have in there.



All of this was added with the 2.7 versions of LOR, but not really spoken much of.

[Philip]

the nice thing is you can have several timing grids across any sequence and can share them across multiple tracks which makes it easy to line up effects between tracks. Also if you are in a specific timing grid and subdivide a timing into more sections, any other track using this timing scheme will see the same subdivisions

[Cray Augsburg]

Two things to consider:

1) is your mp3 sampled at a constant bit rate (e.g., 128k bps)?

2) does your song change tempo? If it slows down or speeds up, Beat Wizard may not work. It looks at the total number of detected beats and divides this into the total time to determine cell size. It does not detect each individual beat separately and place an appropriately sized cell for that beat.

I tried Beat Wizard a couple of times, but because of tempo changes ended up going with the Tap Wizard.

Cray

[nmonkman]

Should there be any timings in the new freedom grid? It doesnt really give the option.

I followed the instructions above and it did seem to insert somewhat of an accurate beat, but because there are no timings if I turn any channel on it turns it on for the whole song when I switch back to fixed grid.

If I dont turn anything on in the freedom grid and switch back to the fixed grid it gives me the same thing in the picture.

[Shubb]

I haven't used the Beat Wizard much so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong...

That being said, doesn't it count the number of beats then average it out across the whole song? At least that was my experience. If there was a section with little or no beats the Wizard still placed a mark there.

I found it much more accurate to do small sections of a song that had the same tempo, and by the time I did that I could use the Tapper.

I'm interested to see if that is correct.

Scott

[Philip]

Shubb wrote:

I haven't used the Beat Wizard much so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong...

That being said, doesn't it count the number of beats then average it out across the whole song? At least that was my experience. If there was a section with little or no beats the Wizard still placed a mark there.

I found it much more accurate to do small sections of a song that had the same tempo, and by the time I did that I could use the Tapper.

I'm interested to see if that is correct.

Scott

Yes, this is very true of many songs, TSO and MS aside... The House on Christmas Street has distinct different tempos for the song, chorus and bridge, you can run the beat wizard mulitple times and tell it which area to detect and place timings. When you insert a start and stop time to run the wizard against, be sure you click the "UPDATE" button before placing the timings.

[Philip]

nmonkman wrote:

Should there be any timings in the new freedom grid? It doesnt really give the option.

I followed the instructions above and it did seem to insert somewhat of an accurate beat, but because there are no timings if I turn any channel on it turns it on for the whole song when I switch back to fixed grid.

If I dont turn anything on in the freedom grid and switch back to the fixed grid it gives me the same thing in the picture.

As I stated above... ""I also noticed from your image that you don't have the option selected to add a timing mark into the grid for each beat (just the on/off effect) that's why the effects that it is placing aren't lining up with the strait timings that you already have in there.""

This is an option at the bottom of the beat wizard window that you need to turn back on so that WILL get timing marks placed and not just the on/off effects

[Steven]

It may not have been perfectly clear, so here are the steps I recommend:

1. Launch the Beat Wizard
2. Click "New Freeform Grid". Name it "Basic Beat".
   
3. Check "Insert a timing into the timing grid for each beat."
4. Un-check "Turn on a channel every so many beats.
5. Click "Apply and Exit".

This will insert a timing (vertical line) on each beat in the "Basic Beat" timing grid . To turn your "BEAT" channel on each beat, do this.

1. Make sure you have the "Basic Beat" timing grid showing.
2. Click on a cell and "Edit" -> "Select" -> "Row(s)".
3. Then "Edit" -> "Timings" -> "Subdivide Timings". Enter 2, then OK.
4. Now turn the second cell in your BEAT channel.
5. Select that cell and the next.
6. Copy those two cells.
7. "Edit" -> "Paste Multiple", then "All the way to the end of the sequence"

Now you will have a channel that turns on every beat. If you switch back to your .04 timing, you will still see it, although I prefer to use the beat timings.

One other thing: You didn't say what song you are using. Some songs don't work well with the beat wizard.