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I am trying to understand what is meant by "utility tracks" and I suspect that already answers my question but I still wanted to ask it.

Can the new editable utility tracks handle RealTracks or are they only for audio and MIDI?

I read somewhere that you could move audio from a RealTrack to one of these tracks. How does that work?

Can I generate and then copy certain bars from a RealTrack to a utility track? If yes, will it automatically place it in the right position of the song or do I have to figure out where to move it to?

Once I have done this if I then regenerate what happens to the editable utility tracks? Does anything on there regenerate or are they always just static containers for audio and MIDI?

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My understanding is that yes, you can move a RealTrack (a whole one) to a Utility Track. There you can edit it. No, it will not regenerate.


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<< I read somewhere that you could move audio from a RealTrack to one of these tracks. How does that work? >>
The Copy/Move command has been enhanced to handle audio as well as MIDI.
Edit\Copy Special\Copy/Move Tracks...


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I posted this in your other post:

Further.. with the new Utility tracks you simply highlight a section you like in the Audio Edit of the selected RealTrack/Drum/Midi and paste it in a Utility track, just have Snap checked !

These are just extra audio/midi tracks that are selected in the Audio Edit and Piano Roll.
You will be able to generate directly in the Utility track in a future release, this will be audio or midi.

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This is just a simple example copy a section of a RT to a Utility track,
you can also copy the Midi RealChart section also:

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BB-Copy-RT-Sections.gif (328.18 KB, 270 downloads)
Last edited by Pipeline; 11/28/20 12:01 PM.
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This is doing the midi also


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Originally Posted By: JohnJohnJohn
I am trying to understand what is meant by "utility tracks" and I suspect that already answers my question but I still wanted to ask it.

Can the new editable utility tracks handle RealTracks or are they only for audio and MIDI?

My understanding is that yes, but by a process of copying all or part of a generated RealTrack from an existing RealTrack track. But not natively, meaning you cannot select a RealTrack to be placed directly onto a Utility Track and then generate it.


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Thanks everyone! In answer to my question about putting RealTracks on new Editable Utility Tracks I got two qualified "yes" answers. Based on what I am learning I think the more accurate answer is "no", you cannot put RealTracks on these new tracks. They are for audio and MIDI only and will not regenerate anything when you regen nor can you assign a RealTrack to them. After you have generated a RealTrack you can copy/paste that generated audio but that is actually no longer a RealTrack.

Last edited by JohnJohnJohn; 11/28/20 04:12 PM.
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I agree, looks to me to be Audio and Midi only. But that is just based on discussion here in the forum up to this point.


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I am not sure what you mean by that last sentence, "but it is no longer a RealTrack". As I said, you can copy a RealTrack to a Utility Track, you can edit it there, and it is not regenerated. So is that, or is that not, still a RealTrack? If you know what you can do, what is the purpose of trying to puzzle over the definition?


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When you copy a RealTrack to the Audio track it takes it out of RAM and is now a wav file Utility #1.wav Utility #2.wav or whatever name you name the track My Life #4.wav
But if you only want your tracks saved inside the SGU as data and have no audio files attached to the song.SGU then it won't.

The way to do all of this would be as suggested here
https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=625839#Post625839

and here https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=624010

This way it will all be instant and play direct from the source files,
and all the track information is saved as data with a small file size like an SGU.


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Originally Posted By: Matt Finley
I am not sure what you mean by that last sentence, "but it is no longer a RealTrack". As I said, you can copy a RealTrack to a Utility Track, you can edit it there, and it is not regenerated. So is that, or is that not, still a RealTrack? If you know what you can do, what is the purpose of trying to puzzle over the definition?

Because it is a misrepresentation to call it a RealTrack once it has been generated as audio and moved to a utility track. It will no longer regenerate like a RealTrack. And, I am guessing, it would not change key or tempo or song length or anything else I can do with a RealTrack. Am I wrong about this? (I hope so!)

One of the amazing benefits of RealTracks is I can always come in and change major parameters and still get a new audio track generated. If these new tracks worked with RealTracks that would be a lot better in my opinion. Because they do not does not mean they are not useful but what they contain is audio or MIDI and not RealTracks.

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and .. if you have a RT that is not Direct Input but the playing is frozen as it is what you want but you want to add another guitar FX to it, you can change it to Direct Input and do that.
This is done by changing folders though it should be something Biab could do by changing the source path of the RT itself.

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Originally Posted By: JohnJohnJohn

Because it is a misrepresentation to call it a RealTrack once it has been generated as audio and moved to a utility track. It will no longer regenerate like a RealTrack. And, I am guessing, it would not change key or tempo or song length or anything else I can do with a RealTrack. Am I wrong about this? (I hope so!)

One of the amazing benefits of RealTracks is I can always come in and change major parameters and still get a new audio track generated. If these new tracks worked with RealTracks that would be a lot better in my opinion. Because they do not does not mean they are not useful but what they contain is audio or MIDI and not RealTracks.

My experimentation showed that the tempo of the audio on the Utility Track can be changed but the key cannot without regenerating and copying the track to the Utility Track again. This was the workflow I used:

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2020-11-29_16-36-34.jpg (48.99 KB, 221 downloads)

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Purse out, I was looking forward to 2021 but this isnt what I personally wanted.
Whats the point of it for User Mrs Average?To me its another Videos thing - they were pointless too.
I would have loved an extra (just a) few more RT tracks in the BB mixer that responded to changes,not this.
Another triumph for the Techies? If you want to mess with an RT do it your beloved RB!
Money kept in purse - for now.
Wendy mad


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OK, here's a simple example.

One thing I've been doing is regenerating until I get a RealTrack I like, then moving that to a Utility Track. Then I replace the original RealTrack with another instrument.

In this way, suppose I want a jazz group with piano AND vibes AND guitar all comping. Bass also of course. I still want the string track for strings, and I've already used the melody and soloist tracks. Now I can have that added comping track easily in one song without leaving BIAB. And I can still regenerate any of the other tracks or continue to refine the melody or harmony.

The only condition I've found is that the song form, tempo and key must be finalized first, because the Utility Track will not regenerate or respond to adding or deleting measures etc.

Perhaps in the future they will expand these to function fully like RealTracks. It's still a great feature, much requested.


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Quote:
Currently Band-in-a-Box will run on just about anything - pretty sure it'll run on a potato. If we program BB to render everything in realtime, then our users who are still running some very old computers will need a faster CPU, more Ram, faster hard drive, etc.

I think that is the mindset of PG, it's like sacrificing development for modern hardware users because of older hardware users ??
If you can have 2 instances of Biab running at the same time there's 14 RealTracks running in RAM.

To try it I opened 2 instances of Biab with 5 tracks each, 120bpm, 192 bars, using 480meg RAM each and 7% CPU each, with i52320 @ 3.0GHz 16GB RAM.
So I don't know, whats the solution ? Biab and Biab Deluxe ???? Look Ma More RealTracks.

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Originally Posted By: Matt Finley
OK, here's a simple example.

One thing I've been doing is regenerating until I get a RealTrack I like, then moving that to a Utility Track. Then I replace the original RealTrack with another instrument.

In this way, suppose I want a jazz group with piano AND vibes AND guitar all comping. Bass also of course. I still want the string track for strings, and I've already used the melody and soloist tracks. Now I can have that added comping track easily in one song without leaving BIAB. And I can still regenerate any of the other tracks or continue to refine the melody or harmony.

The only condition I've found is that the song form, tempo and key must be finalized first, because the Utility Track will not regenerate or respond to adding or deleting measures etc.

Perhaps in the future they will expand these to function fully like RealTracks. It's still a great feature, much requested.


Now THIS I like! I get it now. It'll train me into making sure I've finished fiddling about with the arrangement before I move anyyhing into Utility.
Wendy


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<< I think that is the mindset of PG, it's like sacrificing development for modern hardware users because of older hardware users ?? >>

And also the mindset of most hardware stand alone multi track digital recorder manufacturers. It seems to be the popular price configuration for both hardware and stable software. The most popular models settle on 8 inputs to create extremely stable units. 8 also seems to be the standard on audio interfaces for physical pre-amps. Tracks have never been the issue even back to analog 4 track recorders.


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Originally Posted By: Pipeline
To try it I opened 2 instances of Biab with 5 tracks each, 120bpm, 192 bars, using 480meg RAM each and 7% CPU each, with i52320 @ 3.0GHz 16GB RAM.
So I don't know, whats the solution ? Biab and Biab Deluxe ???? Look Ma More RealTracks.

I don't believe that inadequate resources is any reason not to have these features, because you can do most of that (more RealTracks etc) in RealBand now.


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