REAPER Automation Modes Explained

[Music] hello and welcome to another Reaper blog tutorial in this video we're going to be taking a close look at the different automation modes available to us in Reaper on every single track or the entire project globally so we're just going to be focusing on this guitar bus track and let's zoom in here a little bit so on this track we see this button it's a little three points with a line between this is our envelope or envelope if you want to call it that an able button and then we have the current automation mode so it's set to trim actually trim read we click this button with a left-click it brings up this menu which gives us all the available parameters that we can automate quickly what is automation Automation is anything in the project that we want to change from one point to another be an instantaneous change or overtime there are different ways we can do that we can do it with drawing it in with a mouse we can do it by moving a control in the software with the mouse we can do it by moving a control on an external control surface or a midi controller then there's different automation modes that behave differently and respond to your input in different ways so an example of something that we can automate is the track volume so we can click on this to enable that it will show the track envelope lane and this has controls for manipulating the automation on this Lane an example of this would be to go from the default value of 0 DB down to minus 6 in the verse and then bring it back up to the original value a little bit later in trim read mode this envelope Lane augments whatever that control was at so if we're talking about volume if this track is at is that minus 1 point 7 right now but if we bump this up by 2 dB let's just go like that like plus 2 so now this is minus 1 point 7 plus 2 point 1 6 in trim read mode these are relative values not absolute values so when we have our envelope panel opened up on the track we have various different buttons and things so we have this arm for recording button and that when we're in specific modes this will help Reaper which automation controls that we're adjusting to actually record there are times when we need to adjust something that already has automation written we don't want to overwrite that because the automation mode is for the entire track let's say we're adjusting any any cue and the track volume but we only want to write to the EQ that's when you would use this button beside that it says what the actual automation is going to so volume if we open up a plug-in so frequency a low shelf and we see that there we can hide show and hide that as needed then we have a trim knob we don't have a selection it will scale the entire envelope up and down if we have a time selection that we'll just do the time selection and that's a really great quick way of working if you don't want to record the automation in real time just selection based it works really really well so I'm going to hit undo a couple times to bring it back to default if there's nothing written on this envelope we click this button just like a power button it will clear the envelope it will take it away so let's bring up the envelope again we can command drag or control drag on the PC to draw in envelope points as we move the mouse if we click this it will just bypass it so it will not read that information but if we have it on then the track fader will follow or the track volume will follow this move the thing with trim Reed automation is that it doesn't show the parameters moving or at least not for volume which is the most common parameter that you're going to be using trim read mode for so if we look at the track fader here the volume knob on this track you're not going to see it move as it plays back [Music] so the automation is there we're hearing the volume change it's going up a little bit going down a little bit let's just make this more extreme so we can be sure that that is actually reading the automation [Music] right so it's reading the automation but it's not showing us either on the track control panel volume or in the mixer we look at the mixer for that selected track that was for this guitar bus track [Music] we see it disappear it's not showing the fader moving so to change that we need to be in the read mode not trim read but before we go into that other automation mode let's have one more look at what's on the automation panel and that's hide envelope move to media Lane and clear envelope so if we want to delete all the automation on this Lane you can click on that will ask us to confirm and we'll say yes and then it will remove that envelope as well and do that again quickly draw something in we can move to media Lane and that will move it up to the actual track lane and if there was audio there it would just be overlapping if we want to bring that back you right-click on the envelope and show envelope in Lane and we'll bring it back to the bottom and we can hide the envelope which will keep it active but just not show us it so we go back into our automation panel to bring it back we just click on visible if we left click that button that I showed you it brings up this panel but we can right-click it and we have a simplified list of options here and if we look at the track automation modes it actually gives us a little description of each type so in trim Reed envelopes are active but faders are all for trim which means again that's augmenting whatever is whatever the original parameter was so whatever you set the fader to let's say minus 6 and then you have your envelope at +6 it's going to come to 0 so that's just a really simplified example of of that it's really easy once you start working with it as a default automation mode it may be a little confusing next there is the read mode which plays faders with armed envelopes and in read mode you can't make changes so read mode is when you are finished automation and you want it to just play it back and you don't want any other changes to happen then that's the mode for you so let's go into mode so right click she's read mode this knob here it's turned green to show that it has read mode automation on we don't see any other parameters with green highlighted because this is the only one that's there we can bypass this envelope and then it comes out of read mode if we try to use the trim knob on the envelope that doesn't work because the automations is all already written there is now going to use that as the track volume we can still draw in the automation with the mouse just by command dragging to freehand draw that if I move a hardware control surfaces just going to snap back to the written value here and we can also see on the the volume knob on the track or in the mixer I can see it's moved down so let's play that back and we can see what happens in read mode [Music] so I think that mode is pretty easy to understand after you've written automation in any of the modes you put it to read mode and then you're not making any other changes either accidentally or on purpose and then you move on to the next task it also moves your external control surface to match the changes that you've written on the track so let's clear this automation and just a quick tip you can double click on the track envelope to select all the points and just hit delete and that will clear the envelope without hiding the envelope unlike this option here clear envelope okay so let's go into touch mode and this is a mode for real-time manipulation of envelopes and to use this with a external control surface you need touch sensitive faders or encoders to do this and actually every parameter in every plug-in is now in automation ready mode so it's waiting for an input from us and as soon as we touch any parameter on a plug-in or the track fader or any of the track controls it will then start writing automation for that if I just touch on the gain knob here it's going to bring up the automation envelope for this track now and and it's written in a point already we're not in a playback mode yet we can actually write automation in touch mode without starting playback so I can change this and it's going to it's going to begin writing the current value to that point and because there are no other points further on in the track it's just going to ramp and have a flat line between so I can move the cursor make another point and it's going to make a change like that and I can grab the peak reduction knob that's going to bring up another envelope here and it's just going to start writing let's delete those envelope points and let's start playing the song just adjusting these things as an example of what touch mode actually does [Music] and I think this is where it's most useful this is the major difference between touch mode and latch mode which is coming up so in touch mode as soon as we let go of the parameter as soon as we let go of this knob the peak reduction knob it's going to jump back to the previously written automation or control level and you can see that happening as soon as I let go of the knob it was jumping back to the previous level that was there so this is a good mode if you want to make quick changes to something as it's playing back often people will use a little control surface with a single fader that's touch sensitive and as the vocal plays back they're just touching and giving small changes to the to the vocal level or send levels and things like that as the track plays back is just jumping between the default value and where their fader is just by touching the fader with a fingertip it's writing an automation it's pretty neat before we get much further into this we should probably look at automation settings and so let's open up the Preferences and go to editing behavior and automation automation returns B is is the time that it takes for our the touched envelope to return back to its default value or the previous value when you are recording this point is where I let go of the parameter it returns back to its default value and then five milliseconds later it ends the the automation recording so it doesn't draw in points that are not changing action transition time is what you use when you're triggering automation right commands such as right from current position to start right from current position to end right current value to time selection these things are really useful when you are in latch preview mode and we'll get to that in a bit then there are these other options automatically add envelopes when tweaking parameters in automation write modes make sense display read automation feedback from hidden envelopes let's say you hide your volume envelope but you want to see it happening make sense to keep this turned on allow writing automation to hand in envelopes this is great if you want to hide all those envelope lanes and keep writing automation without having to show them without having to see it actually happening reduce envelope point data when recording or drawing automation that's just going to put in the minimum amount of automation points that are needed as you're writing when recording automation and stopped there are three different options here at additional point before at a position do not add additional points add points before and after at a position this is really personal preference I like do not add additional points I find that that works for me but please give this a try and see what you like the best when adding envelope or pan envelopes apply trim to envelope and reset trim I have this set to never I don't remember what the default value is but you can have it set so that when you adjust the trim knob on the track envelope it will apply that to the volume and then reset I find that kind of weird but so that's why I have it set to never after recording automation in write mode on repeat or seek or stop switch to trim read mode you can have this set to remain in write mode switch to touch mode switch to latch mode or switch to read mode and for me either this one or switch to read mode makes the most sense and then reset latch date when looping I have that turned off because often I am working in latch preview mode and as that the song section loops around I'm still automating I might be automating all the tracks at once as it loops around a few times I'm changing EQ I'm changing volume on changing panning track width compression settings all these things I want to keep those active but they're only writing when I'm moving them it's a reset latch date essentially it that's that's this button here so when you're in a latch mode you can have that set to turn off after you've written something or not so those are my automation preferences that I use this action transition time I have it set to 500 milliseconds when I'm editing videos and I usually have it set to like 25 maybe a hundred milliseconds when I'm mixing music so let's let's actually change that to 25 milliseconds click apply and ok and we can close that so we looked at trim read and we looked at read and we looked at touch mode next let's look at latch mode which records fader movements after first movement okay so this track is in latch mode and let's see what happens when we move the the trim knob or the track fader while playback is stopped let's see what happens and move the track fader it has not created any additional points before or after this point that I'm moving but it is ramping from the previous value there so if we move the cursor again and notice that this is red that means that the envelope is latched that means that it's going to continue writing that value move the cursor and it's just ramping between these values so let's switch over to the mixer view and let's look at what happens when we play back there is automation written on this track and we are in latch mode so let's just see what happens here [Music] at any point we can grab this fader and start writing as well all right and we switch back to the arranged view and there you can see all the envelope points as I was dragging that fader around so it's still in latch mode we're going to hit play again I'm gonna grab the track fader and start drawing automation and it's just moved over that that previous position there if we delete this envelope point and move the cursor to a place where there's so there's no more automation points ahead of it let's see what happens then [Music] there it's it's kept the previous automation level so that's something that this setting will affect so experiment with that and see what you prefer that setting also depends on this here so if we change this to 500 milliseconds so let's let's see what happens there we are in latch mode and we're going to hit play and we're going to move the fader so now we have this 500 milliseconds to return to the previous value instead of 5 milliseconds so this is 5 milliseconds here and this is 500 let's set that back to 5 so now let's look at latch preview mode so latch preview mode will read back any envelopes that are not latched so currently these are yellow they're armed for recording but they are not latched they're not turned and they have not turned red so if we hit play here it's going to play back this volume change here right makes sense but let's just go in here and loop this a couple times and grab the fader so let's say we want it at that automation level now we need to use an action so quickly bring up the action list I have this I have an action I've signed to the letter L write current values for actively writing envelopes to time selection this knob is red that means it's actively writing you know what let's bring up that let's bring up that compressor and also adjust the gain right there so we can hear that change but we don't see it written until we hit this button automation rate current values - time selection there are other ones here right to start right to end things like that I'm going to set that I'm going to run that and there we go it's made that 25 millisecond transition time between points here and here here and here beginning and end of the time selection and we can also change our time selection move our cursor and run that action again and I have that set to the letter L it can keep writing it as long as these envelopes are latched so let's say this section here what I'm going to unlatch the compressor by just clicking this now this is unlatched it's grayed out and if I hit the letter L to write my current value to the active envelopes at the time selection it's only going to do this one track envelope I hope that makes sense it's really quick to work with once you're used to it so for example I can select all this click that so this is my value that I want and press L and that's made of flat change all the way through there I can make this track fader let's go to plus 9.3 press L and it jumps up or I can set that to the entire envelope I can set it to just the time selection but we need to make a change before it'll work on the time selection actually let's go here and go to the start of the project and there we go so this is super flexible but it does rely on combination of time selections moving the parameters and then committing the automation with the action list so as I said this is something that is really fast once you are used to it I have a video on automating a song with last preview mode so I encourage you to check that out for a little more in-depth explanation of that finally we have writes mode and this will write the fader positions or any parameters as the song plays back and the key here is that unlike latch mode or touch mode it's not going to read what's on the track as it plays back all the automation envelopes are automatically armed the red here as soon as I hit play it's going to start writing so these gain changes here on this knob is not going to read that back it's going to overwrite it it's just flattened it out we can't move things as well [Music] now remember that preference it's gone back to trim read mode so we just mean to set that to right and let's move this gain knob and some other things as it's playing back [Music] all right so the difference there between latch mode and write mode in write mode it's going to just stay in write mode and until you stop playback with latch mode it's going to wait a certain amount of time and then go back into reading the automation that's there and in touch mode a touch mode is much quicker and it's just going to it's going to stop inputting automation as soon as you let go to the controller so write mode if there's stuff on the track already it's going to overwrite it that's why you need to be a little bit careful with that automation mode and that's why it jumps back to trim read mode or read mode as soon as you hit stop or as soon as the cycle loops around and that is a quick explanation of the automation modes in Reaper Reaper is a fantastic dah when it comes to automation you can automate anything and everything and there's so many different ways to do it there's no one way that you're always going to be working with automation it's good to know a bunch of different ways to do things so I hope you've learned something thanks a lot for watching please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already follow me on Facebook and Twitter support the reaper blog with patreon and visit the reaper blog dinette for a lot more tutorials you [Music]

Channel: The REAPER Blog

Views: 21,417

Keywords: the reaper blog, reaperblog, reaper blog, reaper tutorial, jon tidey, cockos reaper, reaper mixing tutorial, reaper editing tutorial, automation modes explained, reaper automation, trim/read mode, latch preview automation, preview automation in reaper

Id: 4csw2GIT76Q

Length: 24min 46sec (1486 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Capt_Gingerbeard]

I don't know if I would have gotten as far in REAPER as I have without your videos. Thanks for all your hard work!

[u/g33kboy]

I can't thank you enough for all the work you do on your tutorials. They are phenomenal!!!!!!!