BUG: Bounce selection always about a bar late

sonnykeyes

Logician
This has been going on since L7; I thought maybe it was just me, but it happens on my work rig and my home rig, and I also saw it on my friend's rig, so I'm pretty sure it's universal.

Select some regions in your Logic song, for example, starting at 1 1 1 1 and ending at 8 1 1 1. Select "Bounce" from the File menu. Now look at the "Start" and "End" positions in the dialogue window. Why are they several beats late? I have a waltz up now, and the Start position is 2 3 1 1 and the End position is 10 3 1 1!!?? Now, I can fix them manually, but I do a lot of bounces, and it seems like such a silly waste of time and effort to have to do this every time.

Please let me know if your Logic Pro behaves differently than the three systems I work on. Thanks!

Sonny Keyes
Ricochet Audio
Toronto

G5 2x2GB OS10.4.11 L8.02
 
I don't think the bounce range is meant to be set merely by the act of selecting a region in the Arrange Window before hitting the bounce button. They _will_ be set however by setting a cycle in the Arrange Window first. I do this all the time and it works perfectly. You can do a select all command (command A) and then set locators by regions (control =) and then engage the cycle (/). Things are set in three key strokes, and you're ready to bounce with the positions properly set.

Of course there are times when this isn't what's needed - like when there's automation at the end of the song for a fade out for example. I usually fine tune the cycle boundaries at that point before engaging bounce.

But the bottom line is - I personally find it very useful setting the locators and cycle as a means of establishing the bounce range. Because more often than not, once I start a bounce I abort it because I hear some little thing I want to change before committing the mix to posterity :) And so, things remains set and ready to be bounced again after the change is made. Happily now in L8, the bounce dialogue box even remembers the name you had set previously. So you don't even have to retype that. It makes the decision to make small last minute changes easier by making them less of a chore.

But that doesn't quite answer your question about why the unusual bounce range is being preset like that. All I can tell you is that _just_ selecting the region isn't enough (AFAIK) to set the bounce range. So, some other criteria must be affecting it.
 
Thanks Eli, for a great workaround! As you say, bouncing at my station tends to be aborted several times before I'm happy with the mix, and manually entering the start and end points time after time was really annoying.

That said, it is counterintuitive for the selection to dictate a bounce range a few beats late every time, and I have to believe this is an unintentional oversight on the part of the programmers, so I have submitted a report to Apple. Sincerely hope it doesn't become the "Wait For Note" of the Pro series!
 
I just did a quick test and sure enough, just having the regions selected (ie: no cycle on or locators set) did seem to set the bounce range properly. I tried several different variations and I think I found the source of your problem.

Do your projects start right at bar 1? When I set the song start to earlier than bar 1, sure enough it threw off the relationship between the selection boundaries and the automatically set bounce range.

So, if your song start position is anything other that 1 1 1 , try setting it back to this default and see if the bounce range behaves properly.
 
So, if your song start position is anything other that 1 1 1 , try setting it back to this default and see if the bounce range behaves properly.

Unfortunately, this is not an option. I do all my work on TV commercials, so I want 1 1 1 1 to be the beginning of the song and my locked-to-SMPTE 2-beep sounding two seconds before that, so the project start marker is always dragged earlier by at least 2 seconds. Yes, I know I could build workarounds with the song starting at bar 2 or 3 etc., but for now your other workaround is quicker and more intuitive, so thanks again!

Logic has other examples of this kind of 'relativism,' for example, using the Quantize Tool in Piano Roll view, all the notes will quantize relative to the region start rather than to the grid. I can see how that might be useful. The bounce range being relative to the project start offset from 1 1 1 1 makes less sense to me.
 
So, if your song start position is anything other that 1 1 1 , try setting it back to this default and see if the bounce range behaves properly.

Unfortunately, this is not an option. I do all my work on TV commercials, so I want 1 1 1 1 to be the beginning of the song and my locked-to-SMPTE 2-beep sounding two seconds before that, so the project start marker is always dragged earlier by at least 2 seconds. Yes, I know I could build workarounds with the song starting at bar 2 or 3 etc., but for now your other workaround is quicker and more intuitive, so thanks again!

Logic has other examples of this kind of 'relativism,' for example, using the Quantize Tool in Piano Roll view, all the notes will quantize relative to the region start rather than to the grid. I can see how that might be useful. The bounce range being relative to the project start offset from 1 1 1 1 makes less sense to me.

As far as the 2 pop happening before the song start - I know it's a workaround - but there is a relatively elegant way to handle it. I have my template set so that the smpte time reads 01:00:00:00 at bar 3. So it is easy to position a 2 beep before there while still leaving the song marker in it's default place.

As far as the other "relativism" in the editors - yeah it's kind of a mixed blessing. Potentially useful, but usually just a nuisacne - at least in my case ;)
 
Just a quick clarification to how the bounce function works: (assuming you've not moved the start marker earlier than 1 1 1 1 )

If no regions are selected, and cycle mode is not engaged, song is bounced from start to end marker.

If region(s) are selected (they can be non-contiguous), they define bounce area. Cycle mode must not be engaged.

If cycle mode is active, its locators define bounce area. It trumps region selection.

I use region selection to define bounces all the time - I've never had a problem with it. But as sonnykeyes points out, it appears problematic with the start marker moved. I'm also in Eli's camp - I never move the start marker to earlier than 1 1 1 1 because of potential weird behaviour in Logic.
 
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