Automatically place Markers on music beats

Gary James wrote on 3/8/2014, 11:42 PM

We had a discussion a few days ago about Vegas projects that produce rapid fire slide-shows timed to the beat of an accompanying audio track. http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=886136&Replies=21[See here][/link]

This got me thinking about the Scope of the task of Automatically Generating markers at music beat locations. And that lead me to challenge myself to see if I could do it ..... WELL I DID!

I recently created a utility program called Playlist Tools for doing wonderful things with Audio Playlist files; so this seemed like a good place to host the beat detection functionality. I took my Playlist Tools program and added two new menu items. The first menu selection lets the user configure the analyzer settings for Bandwidth, Center Frequency, and Release Time; the second starts the beat detection analyzer on the selected file in the Playlist, to export all the beat locations to a text file as values in seconds.

Lastly I created a script DLL that imports and creates Markers from the locations written in the text file created by Playlist Tools. The Playlist Tools utility and Vegas DLL have been added to the Playlist Tools Setup program that can be downloaded from https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63993628/SonyVegas/SetupPlaylistTools104.exe?dl=1[here][/link]. Run the Setup program and it installs Playlist Tools and places the ImportMarkers script DLL in the ...\Documents\Vegas Script Menu folder. The script appears under the Vegas Tools / Scripting menu.

Keep in mind that this setup does not yet contain an update to the Playlist Tools Help file to include the Beat Detection capability. As such you'll have to fly the analyzers Beat detection settings by the seat of your pants. However, the default settings work very well for a variety of audio files that have distinctive sounding beats over the music. As the beats become more subtle, you'll have to tweak the configuration settings to find what works.

Finally, for full disclosure I've built this functionality using the BASS Audio Library which can be used for free in non-commercial products - which pretty much describes all the software I've written lately.

Enjoy ...

Back to post

Comments

Gary James wrote on 4/3/2014, 2:30 PM

Can you copy a few lines of your exported Markers file and paste them here. I'd like to see specifically how the file is formatted. Make sure you get lines with both Labels and no labels included.

FocusOnVegas wrote on 4/3/2014, 3:50 PM

Example of 2 markers. The first without a name and the second with a name.

Vegas ruler format = "Time", Timeline tools marker format = "Timecode"
00:00:49,120;
00:01:20,440; Marker 2

Vegas ruler format = "Seconds", Timeline tools marker format = "Timecode"
49,120;
80,440; Marker 2

The last combination doesn't work (load).

Gary James wrote on 4/3/2014, 9:15 PM

Because I'm not seeing this problem on my PC here in the States, I'm thinking this may have something to do with my utilization of International locale settings for list and decimal separator characters. I designed the code to use local culture settings, but maybe there in bug in there somewhere. When I set Vegas Ruler to Seconds, and export Timecode, I see the values formatted using U.S. Culture settings - a period "." for decimal point, and comma "," for list separator.

Where you see:
49,120;
80,440; Marker 2

I would see:
49.120,
80.440, Marker 2

I'll change my locale settings to match your countries default settings, and run some tests. What country are you located in?

NickHope wrote on 4/3/2014, 9:49 PM

Gary, your link to SetupPlaylistTools104.exe is now returning a 404 error. Any chance of restoring it, or updating to that version on your main page?

Gary James wrote on 4/3/2014, 10:18 PM

Nick, I removed the link because it wasn't an "official" release of the program. I temporarily added the Beat detection code to Playlist Tools as a quick way to host the functionality before I included it in Timeline Tools. I don't plan on making it a permanent part of Playlist Tools.

The Timeline Tools solution is a much better implementation, with everything needed in a single utility. No need to Import anything. Just run an analysis, then Align Events to Markers. And there is a Timeline Tools release available for download that has all these features.

FocusOnVegas wrote on 4/3/2014, 11:54 PM

Gary,

I think your analyses about international locale settings are right.

I live in the Netherlands ( I am Dutch).

If I choose another country and time format of my PC (US settings), the time display in Sony Vegas changes as well : with ruler format "time" the msec seperator of the time display changes from "," to "." .

Gary James wrote on 4/4/2014, 7:34 AM

I've placed a new version of the Timeline Tools Installer that you can download here.

This contains a couple bug fixes that should take care of the problems you've seen importing Markers. This may require that you regenerate your original Markers from your file that were exported as Frames, then re-export them using the Timecode format.

FocusOnVegas wrote on 4/5/2014, 4:24 AM

Gary,

Thank you for updating Timeline Tools.

I can confirm that with my PC settings (Netherlands) it is possible to save and load markers with different ruler / marker format settings. However I noticed a slightly different file syntax for the Timeline Tools marker file format "Time". First I thought this is only important for people who want to make their own tools and want to export or import markers from / to Timeline Tools (like me), but I think it is causing some other trouble.

The Timeline Tools file syntax for exported markers in "Time" format used to be:
HH:MM:SS.xxx (US) or HH:MM:SS,xxx (xxx = msec).
It now seems to be HH:MM:SSxxx (without a seperator between the seconds and msec). The new version seems to load the marker files with the " prevoius" format "Time" as well.

Here is the output for different combinations (they all save and load).
1. Vegas ruler format "Seconds", TT marker format "Time"
00:00:08640;
00:01:11360; Marker 71,360

2. Vegas ruler format "Seconds", TT marker format "Timecode"
8,640;
71,360; Marker 71,360

3. Vegas ruler format "Time", TT marker format "Time"
00:00:08040;
00:01:11060; Marker 71,360
Remark : Is 1:11,060 correct? Should be 1:11,360?

4. Vegas ruler format "Time", TT marker format "Timecode"
00:00:08,040;
00:01:11,060; Marker 71,360
Remark : Is 1:11,060 correct? Should be 1:11,360?

Please, can you confirm that the file output (syntax) above is as intended and "stable" (will not change in the near future)?

Can you explain that a marker on time 1:11,360 is written in the marker file by Timeline Tools as 1:11,060? It seems not to be a rounding error.
My suggestion is that the missing / omitted seperator between the seconds and the msec is causing the difference.

Gary James wrote on 4/5/2014, 4:51 AM

Thanks for the feedback on this. If a change occurred in the export of "Time" format, it wasn't intentional. I spent the last couple of days getting the International locale code to work. And I ran through various scenarios for Export / Import for both Markers and Regions. However, I did not look at the Time format. There must be some small section of common code that changed. I'll take a look at this.

I'd go with the old format while I look at what changed in the Time related code. The Export / Import code tries to interpret which Ruler format was used when the Markers / Regions were exported, rather than making the user have to experiment on what the format was when the file was written.

If you are making a decision to use a certain Export format over another, I'd suggest using Frames, as it's more accurate for Video - being essentially the equivalent of Quantize To Frames.

FocusOnVegas wrote on 4/5/2014, 5:26 AM

Gary,

I see you responded while I was editing my reply and that the "format change" is not intended.

About the preferred export / import marker / ruler format.
My first thought for importing markers, converted from another program / tool, in Timeline Tools, used to be (is still) the "Time" format
HH:MM:SS.xxx or HH:MM:SS,xxx (xxx in msec).
If I want to import markers that are bound at absolute time values (seconds) of audio media and if I have to convert these absolute time values to video frame values / format, I have to know the video frame format of the Vegas Project. Most of my projects are 25 fps (PAL, Europe), but I thinlk for you it is 29,97 fps (NTSC). Other frame rates are common as well. So when I choose the "frame format" my conversion tool should know the Vegas video frame rate to "deliver" the right marker positions for the audio media?

Gary James wrote on 4/5/2014, 7:58 AM

You are correct about having to "know the local standard" for video frame rates. When I use Frame rate for exporting Markers, it's understood this value is in local NTSC units. This works because any other software I'm using that imports these Marker positions is also using local NTSC units. However, if I were to export a Marker file and email it to you for import, then there would be a synchronization problem in regenerating Markers in your Vegas Timeline.

If, however, you create both NTSC and PAL projects, I'd suggest you export your Markers using NTSC or PAL in the file name. Vegas will import the marker positions using whatever frame-rate corresponds to the current Vegas Project settings. The Vegas code that converts a number to a Marker position, relies on the Project settings to make it's time conversion.

Gary James wrote on 4/5/2014, 10:27 AM

A further update. I just found out the .Net Framework 2.0 implementation of the C# TimeSpan Class, that I'm using to export Markers in Time format, does not implement localization; that wasn't added until a later version of the Framework. It was always creating a time string formatted using the U.S. decimal separator (a period ".") instead of the local culture comma "," that you use in Dutch (Netherlands). That's why my other fix broke this.

I'll run further tests using a work-around for the defective .Net 2.0 TimeSpan Class, and then I'll update the download link to the newest version.

FocusOnVegas wrote on 4/5/2014, 12:35 PM

Thanks for investigating the issue further.

I made my converter tool with the Time marker file format of the previous version of Timeline Tools.

I hope you make your fix for the new version backwards compatible.
If you ignore some seperators when loading a marker file in Time marker file format it is possible.

For the previous version of Timeline Tools the marker "Time" file format used to be:
00:00:01.520;
00:00:33.760; Marker 2

or (US)
00:00:14.600,
00:01:23.800, Marker 2

So only the seperators after the "time" are different.

Gary James wrote on 4/5/2014, 2:04 PM

The "Time" Export option was only recently added. All future versions will have the proper localized decimal separators used in exported formats. So what you see now (that was caused by the bug in the TimeSpan Class):

00:00:01.520;
00:00:33.760; Marker 2

Will change to use a comma "," for localized Dutch (Netherlands) between the HH:MM:SS and Milliseconds fields will change and look like this.

00:00:01,520;
00:00:33,760; Marker 2

Gary James wrote on 4/6/2014, 10:14 PM

Here is a link to the latest version of TLT that will be the released version unless something else is found.

I need to make another pass looking at the on-line user guide and release notes before making this the official release.

Gary James wrote on 4/8/2014, 10:49 AM

I've placed v1.0.56, the latest release of Timeline Tools on the web site. This contains a bug fix for the Export / Import Markers, and enabling optional checkboxes in the Track Tools & Options tab. It also has a couple new features in the Audio Tools Tab to quicken the interactive process of analyzing your sound track, then delete Markers and make adjustments to analyzer to try again.

alex-h wrote on 10/30/2016, 5:21 PM

Is there an updated download link? It doesn't seem to be working.

NickHope wrote on 10/31/2016, 2:23 AM

This works for me: http://www.nfatoys.com/moasoftwarellc/ (no support for VP14, as explained on that page)

Gary James wrote on 11/2/2016, 7:56 AM

Nick, even though Timeline Tools doesn't work with Magix Vegas Pro, the programs beat detection capability is still available in my stand-alone Playlist Tools program. Playlist Tools will export a text file containing the detected beat locations as offsets in seconds. This is not nearly as seamless and convenient as having the capability built-in to Timeline Tools, especially when it comes to adjusting the optimum settings, but it is a work around if needed.

Grifon903 wrote on 5/10/2017, 10:04 AM

Error (404)

We can't find the page you're looking for.

phonkist wrote on 3/10/2021, 12:08 PM

Do you have a new download link lol

vkmast wrote on 3/10/2021, 12:18 PM

If you mean the Playlist Tools program, the download link is still available. See Gary's link.