[Farottone]

C3 Automation Tools (CAT)

 

Do you ever find yourself not wanting to do reductions because they’re tedious and long? Do you skip drums animations because you don’t know what to do with them? Do you look at those blindingly polished C3 charts and lust after those perfectly trimmed sustains, spot on lyrics capitalization and superbly positioned animation markers? Well, things are about to get interesting… ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif”>

 

We know that some authoring operations are incredibly tedious and time consuming (boy do we know that…), and in some cases prevent authors from cranking out more songs. For this reason we started working on a project that helps both new and experienced authors with these tasks. This project can cut down authoring times by literally hours per song in areas like reductions, animations, and testing. The C3 Automation Tools (CAT) can help you do things like automatic reductions (with chord translation) for all instruments, create animations for all instruments, fix sustain durations that violate RB standards, simplify double kick hits, fix lyrics capitalization, automatically create phrase markers from lyrics, and much much more.

 

Before you run off to try the program, here’s a simple FAQ for the project…

 

What is it?

It’s a collection of commands to automate a number of operations. Some of these commands work “blind” (meaning you don’t need to edit anything to achieve the desired effect), and some of them will require attention afterwards but will greatly simplify the task in question.

 

Some examples of CAT functions (which can be run individually or in large “supersets”):

• One-click reduction from sixteenth notes to eighth notes, eighth notes to quarter notes, etc. for 5-lane instruments
• Automatic, semi-intelligent reduction of gem colors from full GRYBO (Expert/Hard) to the Rock Band specs for Medium and Easy (GRYB or GRY with occasional O and B gems)
• One-click generation of [play]/[idle]/etc. markers for all instruments
• Automatic fixing of sustain lengths on all difficulties as per Rock Band specifications
• Removal of kick gems from a 2x Bass Pedal song to make a “1x Bass” song in a single click
• Automatic addition of #, ^, or $ (talkies and lyric hiders) to selected lyrics
• Automatically remove Magma-breaking MIDI markers from imported Internet MIDIs
• Literally dozens more time-saving functions

Who is it for?

This is for any author of Rock Band custom songs, regardless of their degree of commitment to their songs.

 

Does it work right out of the box?

It should. However, keep in mind that these are sophisticated scripts, Reaper programming language is easily breakable and there are countless scenarios for each author working on songs with unique features. For that reason, this is still in beta: we are collecting feedback to improve CAT and to make it as stable as possible (see submitting feedback a few paragraphs down.)

 

How automatic and effective is it?

All the commands do what they’re supposed to do, but it’s up to the author to use them wisely and not blanket-apply commands to cut corners. The more complex a song is (1/32nd triplets, 1/16th upbeats, syncopated betas, etc.), the more CAT will work as an aid. The less complex the song is, the more CAT will work autonomously. To be clear: do not expect CAT to perfectly do reductions for a 20+ minute Dream Theater song without touching a thing, that’s simply impossible, unfortunately. Also, it may be useful to work in reverse…

 

Working in reverse?

Some commands may actually change more than you need. That doesn’t mean they’re not the command you want: for example, if a command trims all sustains and there’s a few you don’t need trimmed, you can apply the command, have 99% of the notes done right, and then go back to fix the few instances that weren’t supposed to be changed.

 

Is this for experienced coders/Reaper users only?

You don’t need to know anything about Reaper scripting to use these commands. Some of them, like auto animation markers, auto drums animations, and the auto reduction superset, are actually perfect for people who are NOT yet very familiar with Reaper.

 

How safe is it?

All commands have been thoroughly tested. However, the way ReaScript works means that notes are not actually changed one by one, but rather completely deleted, changed, and then rewritten to the track. For that reason, always check the results and always save your project before running CAT commands, especially supersets. Also, make sure you don’t deselect a MIDI track between selecting the notes you want to change and actually launching a command. For example, if you want to fix sustains for guitar in a given section, select those notes and immediately launch the command. If you select the notes in the MIDI editor, then click on the main Reaper window and select a different track, even without opening it, the script will apply the changes to the new track instead.

 

What do I need?

– Reaper 4.x (Reaper 3.x will sometimes work, but all code has been tailored for 3.x)

– Python (2.x) (Python 3.x will sometimes work, but all code has been tailored for 2.x)

– C3 Template: It’s essential that tracks are correctly named in Reaper (PART DRUMS, HARM1, EVENTS, etc.). Our template takes care of that. CAT will not work if you change name of the tracks.

– These commands work better if you have an end event set in the EVENTS track and the end event is in the proper place. We suggest tempo mapping the song and then immediately placing the end event. Not having an end event will not break the scripts outright, but they will only work on notes before the last tempo change node.

 

Do I need to change my authoring habits?

No, provided that you:

– Use our templates (See “What do I need?”)

– Draw pro marker notes one per note and not one to cover a number of notes (for kick removal commands)

– Slightly change how you author lyrics if you want CAT to automatically generate phrase markers for you (see the manual for more info)

 

I know how to code, may I be of help?

You can help even you don’t know how to code! We encourage feedback and suggestions, but with the following disclaimer. This tool tries to emulate the natural authoring process, but recreating human decisions with code is very hard. Odds are good that we have considered the thing you want to suggest, tried to implement it, and it didn’t work out, so we omitted it or went with something else. For that reason, if you see something you believe can be made better and, this is extremely important, you know enough about authoring and general automation concepts to suggest something in a meaningful way (many skilled people worked on this project, if you think “this command is dumb”, chances are you haven’t thought it through), please submit your tips.

 

Who’s in charge of this project?

Farottone worked on most of the project with the help of all admins. All technical questions about the project should be directed to him.

 

WARNING!

THIS IS STILL A BETA, USE IN PRODUCTION AT YOUR OWN RISK

These scripts will rewrite every note in the selected track, even ones not affected by the command you used. We are still ironing out a few wrinkles, and while 95% of operations work fine, we have encountered very rare cases of missing notes after running a CAT function. The C3 admins are currently using these scripts in production (meaning on actual songs and not on test projects), but we ALWAYS check the whole project afterwards to make sure nothing is missing. Until we give the green light on this issue, you should always check your project very thoroughly after running a CAT script. (This is a good idea all the time, of course.) Again, you have already downloaded and played songs processed through CAT, so we’re confident about it, but DO check the results.

 

USER MANUAL

 

^ READ THIS BEFORE DOING ANYTHING WITH THESE TOOLS

 

FUNCTIONS REFERENCE

 

^ OPTIONAL READING

 

DOWNLOAD

 

If you encounter a problem with CAT, post in this thread or submit a bug report. Before posting or reporting a bug, check the following common issues:

 

– Did you install Python correctly? If not, CAT will not load at all

– Are you using Reaper 3.x and Python 2.x? If not, CAT may fail (ask in this thread about options for Reaper 4)

– Does your project have tracks with special characters in their name? If so, CAT will fail

– Did you use the C3 template to create your project? If not, CAT may fail

– Does your project have a tempo map? If not, CAT may fail

– Can you run CARV? If not, you have an issue with Reaper and/or Python, not CAT

– Did the command window close after you launch the command? If so, the command has operated correctly, make sure you understand the advertised effect before submitting a ticket

– Have you downloaded the latest version of CAT?

– Does your Reaper project have a BPM marker at M1.1.00? If not, add one and try again

[Farottone]

First of all, thanks A TON to pksage and Nemo. pksage cracked in like 20 minutes the text encoding that kept mu busy and scratching my head for days. For that reason we can edit any text event, lyrics included. Nemo helped me every single day when I was trying to make sense of MIDI format, tempo mapping, etc.

 

Then, documentation is not complete, the last two sections, Tips and Issues, are just placeholders and the Superset section only has reductions.

 

Finally, some comments on the commands themselves. I played with them a bit, beside strict functional testing, and I have to say there’s a lot of time that can be saved. Things like automatic animation markers, single kick, sustains fixing, etc. are very very useful. Reductions *at the moment* don’t address chords: we still need to see how to tackle those. However, those excluded, the rest is pretty nifty and versatile. Reductions are also the aspect of this project where we need more suggestions to make it better, because there are a lot of things to take into considerations.

 

Vocals functions are still to be finished but those look like can really cut down times.

[Farottone]

New version uploaded.

 

– Fixed a number of issues with tempo maps that made the commands fail

– Added the chords reduction and Medium and Easy fret remapping

– Added drums animations

– Improved single kick reduction from 2x bass pedal version (though triplets are still reduced too much)

 

PLEASE DELETE ALL THE FILES YOU PREVIOUSLY DOWNLOADED AND REPLACE THEM WITH THESE NEW FILES

 

Again, thanks for the feedback. As of now DTUK gave me a huge help mentioning a number of issues, Addy helped me with other things, but we need far more to fine tune these scipts. I can open a “beta program” for non C3 Authors if need be but I would much prefer to keep it in the family. I promise you, this WILL cut down authoring times by a lot, don’t be shy. ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_wink.gif”>

[Farottone]

First complete Beta uploaded.

 

– Fixed a number of issues that should stop the script from failing at startup

– All vocals commands implemented

– Added Edit by MBT commands and other 5-lane related functions

– 33 commands available from the main window, 5 supersets

– Edited documentation so that we have a simple user manual and a separate Functions Reference doc

 

Please, give this a spin and report any kind of trouble or general feedback: the amount of different features for each song, user’s behaviour, etc. makes it incredibly difficult to test by myself all functions, so I really appreciate any help.

 

Also, apparently Reaper, scripting and Mac OS don’t go well together, so if you’re using a Mac, chances are the commands won’t work. Well, the user interface won’t, which makes it effectively impossible to click and use CAT. You can still use all commands in function format, as explained in the docs.

[Farottone]

We are probably gonna open up this to the general C3 population next week. If you have anything to report, please do it so that we can fix anything not working before launch. Thanks!

[TrojanNemo]

Awesome! Excellent work on this man

[Farottone]

Awesome! Excellent work on this man

 

Let’s hold off on congratulations until it hits the genpop… ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_biggrin.gif”>

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