The possibility to specify that beat 1.1 starts some time after 0:00; either in seconds or in beats.
What problem(s) would this feature resolve?
If the user has “pre-roll” material in a track that may not be an integer number of bars in length, they will often put “bar 1” on arranger bar 4, 8, or later to keep the track material in time. This results in the actual sounds starting at odd times, say, 2.3.2.45. When rendering the track, setting this point as the start instead of 1.1 becomes tedious.
How does this feature fit in Bitwig as a product?
It helps better make it a tool of choice for experimental electronic music production.
Is there already an alternative way to achieve this on Bitwig?
No
Could it be implemented using Bitwig components or APIs, without Bitwig team’s support?
No
Could it be provided by a VST or something else reasonably integrated with Bitwig?
No
Are there other products that offer this feature?
Reaper offers “Change Project Start Measure”, which gets really close
This limitation also bothers me, but why start on 2.3.2.45 when you can start at, say, 5.0.0 and keep the 4x4 basically untouched, just all moved one bar to the right?
so for example, the piece I’m working on right now has 3.0.2 bars of “pre-roll” stuff. I have the main beat start at 5.1.1 so that the grid treats me kinda right, and a cue marker at 1.4.3 where the sound starts. According to the transport clock that cue is at 0:02.432 seconds. This is inconvenient in several ways:
if I’m trying to estimate my piece’s length so far I have to mentally subtract that gap before the material starts.
As you zoom out, bar display for the grid emphasizes first odd bars, then multiples of 4 +1 (1,5,9,13 with extra emphasis on 17) then multiples of 8 +1 (1,9,17,25 with extra emphasis on 32), but I’m out of phase with that.
Export Audio > Arrangement Length starts at 1.1.1.0 no matter what, and when I make the piece longer or shorter and want to adjust to the new length, I have to manually adjust the start time
Wish promoted to Features. @mattly you can (and are expected to) vote on your own wishes. Everyone gets 10 votes. And remember, nothing like sending an email to Bitwig support.
If this is important, you could have one clip from beginning to end, empty, that you could use to quickly check the length/time. Also to quickly define a loop region taking the entirety of the track (see below).
Yes, this is what bothers me the most. Not that I aim to fit my trackes religiously in a 4x4 grid, but it is always convenient to have that reference.
In these situations, I use the Loop Region option instead of arrangement.
Someone gave me a good tip on Polarity’s Discord: use a time signature change for the pre-roll
yeah, I’ve thought about doing this, or tempo changes, but it involves more math than I really want to do; also sometimes the pre-roll stuff has rhythmic elements that benefit from having the same beat/bar grid as the stuff after the point that I think of as 1.1.1.0
In these situations, I use the Loop Region option instead of arrangement.
Is it possible to save/recall loop regions? The export concern is something I mostly deal with after the writing is done and I’m working on mixing, and I move the loop region around a lot while doing that.
Actually poking at it now, I see the context menu for a clip in the arranger view has an entry to “Loop Selected Region”, which in combination with an empty clip spanning the duration of the track could work to alleviate most of the other problems. It’s a bit of a kludge but what isn’t?
