Pre-Processing MIDI Files

Note: This option is not necessary when working with cue playback in Streamers.

One of the more tedious aspects of preparing a sequence for use with Streamers (or with any hardware streamer box, for that matter) is timing the streamer events. Since streamers last a fixed length of time (2 seconds, 2.67 seconds, or 3.33 seconds), the MIDI triggers need to occur a certain number of seconds before the sync point in question.

Some sequencers make this extremely easy. Say you need 3' streamers into bars 13 and 17. In Digital Performer, you need only place MIDI notes at bars 13 and 17, select the whole MIDI track, and select the Shift command. From there you can tell DP to shift all selected events earlier by 2 seconds, and the streamers will be perfectly synchronized.

Other sequencers make the process far more of a pain. Logic, for example, cannot shift multiple MIDI events by a time in seconds. You can calculate the number of bars and beats to nudge a MIDI region, but if there are any tempo changes in the middle of that region, later streamers will be out of sync. (Individual MIDI events can be shifted one at a time, but this quickly becomes impractical for larger projects.)

To make life easier for users of the latter category of sequencer, Streamers 3 includes a built-in utility to pre-process MIDI files. Place MIDI events for your streamers at the desired end points (e.g. bars 13 and 17), export a standard MIDI file, and open the SMF in Streamers by selecting Streamers->Process MIDI Files... Streamers will look for a track named "Streamers", and shift all MIDI events that correspond to streamers. Then choose a location to save the processed MIDI file, which can then be loaded into the sequencer.

Requirements

Please note that there are a few requirements in order to make the pre-processing work correctly:

Streamer events must be placed on a track named "Streamers".
MIDI notes will be interpreted according to Streamers's default MIDI mapping (C3-B3 = 3' streamers, C4-B4 = 4' streamers, C5-B5 = 5' streamers).
There must be sufficient time before the earliest streamer event (e.g. 3' streamers must be placed at least 2 seconds into the sequence).

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