Topic: Reaper - Newbie question - placing track markers?

[achalsey]

I'm trying to transition away from Audacity since Reaper is so much faster on my computer, but it seems slightly less intuitive so I'm having trouble.

How to I break up a single track into individual songs and what setting to I use to render each section individually? 

Do I put 'markers' down to designate 'tracks?'

[page]

I recommend rendering the entire set in Reaper (including dither/resampling) and track it elsewhere. Ironically, I actually track it out in Audacity. You may not like this answer, but it's honestly the easiest gapless way to do it. I tried doing their render markers and I was never happy with the workflow and consistency of Reaper, but it does everything else I need really well.

[achalsey]

Dang.  Okay.  Well, I guess that's good and bad news.  Sometimes Audacity crawls to a halt when I try to use it, which stinks, but when it works smoothly I can make pretty fast work of the UI, so thats nice.  I like the way its set up, but it just seems terribly optimized.  Reaper works smooth as butter all the time, yet Audacity, the seemingly 'smaller' program often has trouble. :shrugs:

[Gutbucket]

Mac OS?
If Win it hard to beat CDWav for tracking.

[achalsey]

Yeah, on a macbook.  I do have windows 7 installed too though.  I supposed I could try CDwav, but the hassle of switching over just to use one program is kind of annoying.  Also I just really don't like windows.

[voltronic]

Welcome to the land of appropriately-priced DAW programs!    Yes, it's not super-intuitive at first but once you learn a few basics you'll be working very quickly.

To insert a marker in Reaper, just hit "M".  You can double-click on said marker to name it, or if you hit "Shift+M" when creating it you'll get the option of naming it straight away.

One thing I've started doing over the past couple years is always splitting at zero crossings.  Normally in Reaper, if you hit "S" it will split wherever the cursor is.  Instead, "Alt+Z" splits at the nearest zero-crossing to the left of the cursor.   If you have snap to grid enabled, you may have to zoom in pretty far to select the split point it creates and then select that split point.  You can play around with toggling the grid on and off (but leaving snapping on) to select that split point if you want to create your track marker at exactly that point, otherwise it will only be near it. 

I agree with Page that rendering using markers is a PITA, but there's a much easier way to render tracks using your split points as described above.  Once you've done all of your splits, click on one of your split tracks to select it, then File > Render and choose "Selected media items" under the first drop-down.  That will automatically select the region defined by your split points.  Put in your track title and resampling etc. if necessary.  You can then hit "Render 1 file", but I prefer to use "Add to render queue" and then repeat said procedure with all tracks, then File > Render > Open Render Queue and let it go to down rendering / resampling / dithering / whatever on all of my tracks one right after the other.  This process actually goes very fast once you're used to it, as fast as tracking in CDWav for me personally.  Track markers are NOT necessary at all doing it this way, but I still drop them in for convenience and organization while working on a project.

Here's more stuff that might be helpful:
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=104206

Edit: Just saw you're on a Mac: http://user.cockos.com/~glazfolk/ReaperKeyboardShortcutsOSX.pdf

[achalsey]

Interesting.  Thanks.  That does seem pretty easy. 

Is there a way to freely put splits down wherever I want as opposed to just snapping to whatever those vertical lines represent?  I fix sector boundary errors when I convert to FLAC anyway, so if that's the only issue it would be nice to not have such strict places where I can drop a split down.

[voltronic]

Interesting.  Thanks.  That does seem pretty easy. 

Is there a way to freely put splits down wherever I want as opposed to just snapping to whatever those vertical lines represent?  I fix sector boundary errors when I convert to FLAC anyway, so if that's the only issue it would be nice to not have such strict places where I can drop a split down.

Yes, just toggle the grid off in the toolbar like I was saying.  You could also turn off snapping (the magnet icon) if you're having trouble selecting a certain point.  One thing I forgot to mention before is that when Reaper creates a "regular" split (S) it makes a very fast fade out / fade in at the end of the first item / beginning of the second item respectively.  I think they do this to avoid the chance of pops when splits are at non-zero crossings.  I use this when I'm doing tracks where I am going to extend those fades anyway.  If, however, you use the Alt+Z split as I suggested, there are no fades inserted at the split point and it is truly seamless at a zero crossing.  This will give you a "gapless" sound when playing back track-to-track if that's what you're going for.

[2manyrocks]

Although this is going beyond your immediate question of how to burn tracks, Reaper has a zillion features buried beneath the surface.  I think it's worth the money to get this training video because it shows you how to change the default settings in ways that will save you a lot of time.  http://www.groove3.com/str/reaper-4-explained.html

You can turn off the snap to grid and you can change your mouse settings from default so that it becomes much more easy to do your edits. 

I brought the Reaper manual, but found this video much more helpful.