exporting BOTH midi and audio as quicktime

[mootzer]

I have been told that it is possible to export both midi data AND audio as a single quicktime file. Can this be done in Metro? The demo version has the save disabled and the manual is unclear if this is possible.

I don't need picture with the quicktime, just 2ch of audio and lots of midi continuous controller data embedded in the single QT file.

Urgent help needed on this... willing to throw money at the problem if necessary

[Jerm]

Yes, Metro can encode MIDI + audio file into a quicktime movie. It can also export with a separate encoded audio file such as a MP3. Note that the MIDI that is saved in the movie will be played back using the Quicktime synthesizer (most likely). I am not sure how continuous controller data will be used since Quicktime sends it to the MIDI synth.

[mootzer]

I'm actually wanting to use a Quicktime file to play the midi data out to external gear via midi interface (which is dtermined by the system settings) while the stereo audio portion plays through the audio card.

If you can imagine spoken word on the audio and an external synth module tasked with the music accompanyment all from one QT file, playing back from the QT player, not inside of Metro. Obviously, Metro would be used for authoring & exporting to this single QT file.

I have yet to find an app that can do this, hopefully Metro can. That would be very cool. If anyone can confirm? Thx very much.

[twaboom]

I'm having pretty much the same problem. I need to output a midi stream (all continuous controllers to run lights), stereo audio and 720 x 480 video at 29.9 fps. I wouldn't mind using Metro to drive it all but quicktime movies in metro seem to choke even when played at 1/2 size and smaller. I've tried mp4 video and that dosn't help. It's funny because Metro and Quciktime running at the same time seems to be perfectly smooth. This might be a solution but I need to have them synched. I'm using a G4 867 Powebook with maxed memory on 10.2 so I don't think the hardware is a problem. Any suggestions??

[Jerm]

Have you tried changing preferences to sync via rate or time? Which ever you are not using. What exactly does choke mean? stutter?

[twaboom]

Time is definitly better than rate (the movie stalls completely w/ rate checked) but there's still a lot of stutter and it takes about 3 or 4 seconds after hitting play before the movie actually starts.

[twaboom]

Actually, I take that back. I had TextEdit open and the graphic editor window visible. I'm not sure if that's what it was, but after closing those it's running pretty smoothly at full size (on the time setting). There is still a delay of a couple of seconds after hitting play and the very first second that it does play is not smooth but after that it seems to be good. I can work around those problems. Thanks for the help!

[Jerm]

Do you get the delay in QuickTime player too? If you have a sample movie that I can take a look at (FTP possibly), I would be glad to.

[twaboom]

Switching to the time preference seems to have fixed the problems with the stuttering. The delay I got after the switch may have been a slow drive/bad file issue...At any rate, it's working well now. Thanks.

There's still a problem I need to solve before I can do my video output with midi lights. I've gotten it working pretty well with a small test but I have to load in the video everytime I restart Metro. The file loads as if the video and audio had been saved but the video track wont appear in the movie window and I have to delete the old tracks and re-import the video (I'll need 35 minutes of it!)

I've tried saving in all the Quicktime formats but they seem to lose the midi data to my external midi interface. I've thought about running Quicktime and Metro at the same time but they need to be synched. Is there anyway Metro and Quicktime could share the same clock/synch? I thought the old OMS might have allowed that but my powerbook wont boot in Classic which rules that out. A last resort idea was to try and use Applescript to start both Quicktime and Metro but I'm not sure if this would fly or not. Any ideas?

[Jerm]

"There's still a problem I need to solve before I can do my video output with midi lights. I've gotten it working pretty well with a small test but I have to load in the video everytime I restart Metro. The file loads as if the video and audio had been saved but the video track wont appear in the movie window and I have to delete the old tracks and re-import the video (I'll need 35 minutes of it!)"

It is very important to record-disable any video tracks since the movie window will not show the movie but rather live input if any video tracks are record-enabled. Also make sure you are using 6.1.0.3 (or later). There was a bug that made it hard to get movies imported in earlier version. If this does not fix the problem, let me know because I would like to see the file then.

I've tried saving in all the Quicktime formats but they seem to lose the midi data to my external midi interface. I've thought about running Quicktime and Metro at the same time but they need to be synched. Is there anyway Metro and Quicktime could share the same clock/synch? I thought the old OMS might have allowed that but my powerbook wont boot in Classic which rules that out. A last resort idea was to try and use Applescript to start both Quicktime and Metro but I'm not sure if this would fly or

I am not sure what you are trying to do. You should be able to do everything you want within Metro. If not, we will work to fix it so that you can.

6.1.0.4 has some major improvements in this area. For one thing it will import the MIDI section of the movie (although there is a bug in the QuickTime MIDI exporter that sometimes loses data which I have filed with Apple).

[twaboom]

Thanks Jerm!

I had been using 6.0.8. The switch to 6.1.0.3 (and de-enabling record) fixed the missing video problem and it's working great.

There's one more thing that would be really nice (this is frosting on the cake!)...

I had parsed the 35 minute movie into 3 shorter movies. I put each one in it's own section which seemed to work fine, but when I tried to asssemble the sections in a sequence only the video from the first segment played. The video needs to appear as one big seamless movie so I'm guessing it has to happen in one Quicktime window.

I can do a mp4 conversion on the whole thing so I could end up with a manageable sized file even if it's one 35 minute movie, so the above would be very cool...but not necessary.

I've used Metro for a long time...it's a fantastic program (and it keeps getting better!) Thanks again Jerm.

[Jerm]

Video does not work with Subsections.

[twaboom]

Hi;

I used a mp4 compressed video with metro for a performance and it worked great although the video was lossy because of the compression. I'm now trying to find a way to get the best video in a reasonable file size. I tried Divx compression and it seems to do the best job but now I'm back to stuttering/frame loss problems. It's also very difficult to adjust anything because I keep getting the spinning ball with the graphic editor (I suspect it's trying to draw the video frames..I have them down to 16 and limited to 25...but it seems like it's constantly working. ) Is avi/dvix not a good format to work with? If not, any ideas on what would be a suitable codec?