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Fedde

I've encountered a problem with using the 'get_current_smpte_song_time' m4l function in combination with an automated tempo change in Ableton.

It seems to me that ableton doest take the previous tempo(s) into account when it outputs the next smpte. By instance if the tempo increases the time goes in reverse. Does this mean that the pointer doesn't refer to an actual smpte time stamp but instead is a derived from the beat counter:

(60000 / tempo) * the current beat position

Am I missing something here? Because I really need this for synchronising my arrangement to a singer, video artist, light technician etc...

I've encountered a problem with using the 'get_current_smpte_song_time' m4l function in combination with an automated tempo change in Ableton.
It seems to me that ableton doest take the previous tempo(s) into account when it outputs the next smpte. By instance if the tempo increases the time goes in reverse. Does this mean that the pointer doesn't refer to an actual smpte time stamp but instead is a derived from the beat counter:
(60000 / tempo) * the current beat position

Am I missing something here? Because I really need this for synchronising my arrangement to a singer, video artist, light technician etc... 

get_current_smpte_song_time

Confirmed. I suppose that Ableton Live doesn't have an internal smpte counter. Probably for the same reason output of Midi Time Code (MTC) is not supported.

If your arrangement is played non-stop from start to end, you could use a simple workaround by building a smpte counter with [clocker] and [translate].


Thanks for your reply. I thought of a thing that indexes the tempo structure of the arrangement. I find it a bit annoying to go back to start every time I'm rehearsing a single part.


I've been running into the same problem. I've built a device that exports the time for every locator that starts with a hastag to a JSON file for usage in After Effects; only to find out the get_current_smpte_song_time() doesn't take into account any tempo changes. 

So, has anybody found a workaround or has anyone found a theorical concept on how to get an accurate reading of the actual song time with regard to tempo changes?

Alright, I've figured out how to solve it - in theory. Warning; this is going to be a long read, but for those of you who'd be willing to go to great lengths for their project I'll try to be as detailed as possible. If you're looking for an easy fix; I'm afraid there is none. Within Max/Ableton there simply isn't a function that'll allow you to grab the time visible in arrangement view as far as I can find in the official / unofficial docs - JS or otherwise.

Why / what I'm trying to accomplish
(Optional read, just for context)
I'm using Live (amongst a lot of other things) for my podcast. I've already created a device that'll read out the position of every locator with a name starting with a hashtag and dump it as a comma seperated value file. I need 3 versions of every episode and I'm looking for a way to do this in only one export and let my computer do all the grunt work. Since I'm using a metric ton of plugins and tracks, the export process takes up quite a lot of time and I'm trying to avoid that. 

01. Mix, with intro and a bit of talk. For my podcast feed.
02. Syndication mix, without intro or talk. For radioshows who just want the mix.
03. Preview mix, 4 beats of every drop. For a preview movie to announce the episode on socials.

With the locators in a CSV file and only one export; I've got ffmpeg on a seperate commandline script neatly chopping that one export into 3 versions. Works like a charm until.. the master tempo changes. Hence, this whole ordeal.

Tools
(Optional read, just for context)
Ableton Live 10 suite, Max for Live 8, JS in Max, JSON, CSV, XML, PHP, bash/shell scripting (MacOS / POSIX), Homebrew, ffmpeg and JQ.

What is and isn't possible with Max for Live
get_current_smpte_song_time 0; will give the time in HHH:MM:SS:[msec] - but does not take into account the change in song tempo. In fact, it's going backwards once you automate the tempo property. Pretty much the root of the problem.

get_current_beats_song_time; will give you the bars/beats etc but that doesn't tell anything in regard to tempo and is also pretty useless.

The Max device "Max Api Song.amdx" will give you a hint on the inner workings of Ableton in the last row of the first column of the "Properties1" popup. "live.property current_song_time @observe 1" wrongfully shows the value as "ms". In fact, this value represents the amount of beats, starting from the start of the liveset. This value is very interesting; I'll call it "BEATS" from now on.

Commandline voodoo
An Ableton Live Set file (.als) is in fact nothing more than a gzipped .XML file. So, after a rename and an gunzip, you'll have a file without extension that's just pain 'ol human readable XML. Walking down the XML tree you'll find "Ableton > LiveSet > MasterTrack > AutomationEnvelopes > Envelopes > AutomationEnvelope > EnvelopeTarget > PointeeId" with a value of 8 which at current seems to represent the tempo - but this could be variable. Not sure at this point. Either way, it contains the info about the automation points with a Value (=bpm) and a Time which hold that BEATS value we've seen before.

Math magic
With the knowledge of where in the project tempo changes, I should be able to make some sort of map file that correlates every beat with the tempo at that time and incrementing on every previous value by calculating the time every beat takes up. Given the fact I only use linear changes, that is. I'm still figuring out the best way to do this, but I should end up with an accurate JSON file that'll tell me the exact start time of every beat in the song. From that point on it's just a matter of extracting the BEAT value of every locator with a hashtag from the XML and Bob's my uncle.

Update: Some pretty weird stuff is going on. It seems the BPM value in the user interface is not telling you the actual BPM during a tempo transition. It simply shows what it theoretically should be; but the actual timing as shown in the timeline bar in arrangement view is quite different.

For instance, when automating a tempo from 60 BPM to 120 BPM in 24 beats, it would increase the tempo linear by 2,5 BPM per beat. So far, everything is as linear as you'd expect. Yet, if you'd calculate every beat by taking the previous total time and adding 60/[current bpm] seconds; you'll end up with something that roughly follows the reality - but Ableton makes smaller changes at the beginning of the curve and larger ones towards the end of the transition as opposed to the linear way the BPM itself moves.

I've tested the timeline bar's values against an export of the project with super short notes at every kick; the timeline values add up perfectly with what a final render would give; so the time is correct - the BPM value is not.

Still trying to figure out the underlying math, weather or not it's some polynomial or inverse logarithmical stuff going on.

Last update: After digging through an endless pile of Python, using Bit Slicer to pillage Live memory banks and checking out pretty much every file in Live's entire scope with hex editors; it pretty much ends with a mission impossible to get the absolute values correctly; due to the faulty implementation of Live's get_current_smpte_song_time - even the Python version for MIDI remote scripting is borked up.

Internally Live is using a C# function/method called Chrono to keep things in check in regard to latency, buffers, OS and many other things. The only possibility I haven't tried, mainly because I suck at C#/cMode, is using Ableton's own Link libraries on GitHub - as the Chrono function is implemented there.

But; I've found a solution. Instead of using locators, I'm now using a MIDI channel with an operator that outputs an extremely (1 ms) short sound at all four oscillators at +6 dB with pretty much every volume option on full blast, as to be sure the audio clips. The audio is routed to an unused audio channel of my soundcard - so I won't go deaf during production. This has the advantage of not having the locators' line all over the project and being a whole lot easier to copy and paste. Instead of rendering the master, I render the master ánd this channel in one go. After this; it's just a matter of using Apple's afclip CLI tool to get a reading of the exact time in 6 decimal points. Soooo.. Bob's sort of my uncle after all.

An Ableton Live Set file (.als) is in fact nothing more than a gzipped .XML file. So, after a rename and an gunzip, you'll have a file without extension that's just pain 'ol human readable XML. Walking down the XML tree you'll find "Ableton > LiveSet > MasterTrack > AutomationEnvelopes > Envelopes > AutomationEnvelope > EnvelopeTarget > PointeeId" with a value of 8 which at current seems to represent the tempo - but this could be variable. Not sure at this point. Either way, it contains the info about the automation points with a Value (=bpm) and a Time which hold that BEATS value we've seen before.

Continuing with this, if you get the XML like this:

Continuing with this, if you get the xml like this:

And get the Time and Value and put all together in arrays like this (ignoring the first row for obvious reasons):

X=[0,4,6.5,10.1,12,14.72,16]
Y=[126,169,110,148,95.9,149,178]

You only need to inverse the Y, interpolate the points and make an integration for get the time series in minutes. It´s can be made easily with python:

from scipy.interpolate import InterpolatedUnivariateSpline
import numpy as np

X=[0,4,6.5,10.1,12,14.72,16]
Y=[126,169,110,148,95.9,149,178]

X=np.array(X)
Y=np.array(Y)

# Y comes in beats per minute (BPM). You must reverse their values to get minutes x beat.
Y=1/Y

# here we interpolate the points
f = InterpolatedUnivariateSpline(X, Y, k=1)

for a in range(0,16,1):
    minutes=f.integral(0, a)
    seconds=minutes*60
    time=str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=seconds))
    print("Beat ",a," => seconds" ,seconds, " => time ", time )

Beat  0  => seconds 0.0  => time  0:00:00
Beat  1  => seconds 0.4610453648915187  => time  0:00:00.461045
Beat  2  => seconds 0.8918005071851225  => time  0:00:00.891801
Beat  3  => seconds 1.2922654268808114  => time  0:00:01.292265
Beat  4  => seconds 1.6624401239785853  => time  0:00:01.662440
Beat  5  => seconds 2.055554701708548  => time  0:00:02.055555
Beat  6  => seconds 2.524839263300801  => time  0:00:02.524839
Beat  7  => seconds 3.0559097434097433  => time  0:00:03.055910
Beat  8  => seconds 3.56246174996175  => time  0:00:03.562462
Beat  9  => seconds 4.030111217611218  => time  0:00:04.030111
Beat  10  => seconds 4.458858146358145  => time  0:00:04.458858
Beat  11  => seconds 4.911405305316177  => time  0:00:04.911405
Beat  12  => seconds 5.479097469243455  => time  0:00:05.479097
Beat  13  => seconds 6.063762580082774  => time  0:00:06.063763
Beat  14  => seconds 6.56645447151627  => time  0:00:06.566454
Beat  15  => seconds 6.988377312687413  => time  0:00:06.988377

The problem is that for music of very long duration (more than 30 minutes), there may be a small error in the time it accumulates. I guess this happens because LIVE does a rounding on the BPM calculations.

After having done some tests, I realize that it is impossible to have perfect precision with this method, because from what I have seen, the tempo changes in ableton are not continuous.

The best solution is put a sampler with a click every beat, or half or quarter beat, depending of the precision than you need, and export the audio. With this, you can sincronice anything without problems. 

Stirring Desert

My device essentially makes a midi note of choice when a button is pressed. I'd like to be able to play different instruments on different tracks with only a single instance of my device.

The send/recieve solution works but it's not the workflow I want for this device.

This has been discussed before, but most of the threads on issue are from 10 years ago, saying that Live merges MIDI into a single channel and there's nothing that can be done about it.

Did nothing change? Is there really no other solution?

The send/recieve solution works but it's not the workflow I want for this device.

This has been discussed before, but most of the threads on issue are from 10 years ago, saying that Live merges MIDI into a single channel and there's nothing that can be done about it.

My device essentially makes a midi note of choice when a button is pressed. 

-noteout-to-multiple-midi-tracks-or-midi-channels

I am assuming you mean the send and receive objects in Max? What if you did something like this directly in Ableton? This is sending keyboard midi from the MaxDevice channel to the other two instruments on different tracks. Ignore that Operator is armed for recording, it works regardless of that.

@Trevor that's the workflow I'd like to achieve, but this only works for a single channel. I'd like to essentially have different buttons send different midi to different tracks.

I've actually found an interesting solution for "sending midi" to other tracks inside the new Building Max Devices official ableton pack. There's an audio device called Midi Routing Output which uses LOM to let the user choose to which track the [noteout] midi will go. However, as far as I can tell right now, this is global for all the [noteout] objects you might have in a patch, so I can't send different MIDI to several tracks at once.

yeah. you only get a single routing output with the Midi routing stuff in audio devices.

@Tyler same with Instrument devices, right? :(

Yah.  I feel like I relearn this hard truth once every year or two. :-/

[noteout] to multiple MIDI tracks (or MIDI channels?)

jirc

I am trying to find out if it is possible to observe which bank of tracks a Mackie Controller (Behringer X-Touch in my case) is currently controlling.

Greetings,

I am trying to find out if it is possible to observe which bank of tracks a Mackie Controller (Behringer X-Touch in my case) is...

how-to-observe-which-bank-of-tracks-a-mackie-controller-is-currently-controlling

How to observe which bank of tracks a Mackie Controller is currently controlling?

Manus Sweeney

I cam across an m4l device FM Techre  released about 15 years ago and although there is a webpage to purchase, I have received no feedback from the seller.

FM TECHRE - Autechre style FM drum synth - Max For Live Patch

Just wondering if anyone knows of a similar device (i am aware of Fors Opal)?

Hi,

I cam across an m4l device FM Techre  released about 15 years ago and although there is a webpage to purchase, I have received no...

old-m4l-device-fm-techre

Old M4L Device - FM Techre

ergo erdori

I'm trying to create a M4L device with a button that, when pressed, sets the output routing of the selected track (the track containing this device) to a custom track named "MASTER" . In my project template, this custom "MASTER" track is always the first track (ID 0).

I’ve tried various methods, including using 

 to capture the routing option for "MASTER" and attempting 

, but I’m running into issues with getting it to reliably set to this target track.

Is there a straightforward way in M4L to set the output routing of a track to a specific target track?

Max For Live Forum