REAPER 5 Explained - 20. Stretch Markers Video Lecture | A Complete Course: Reaper Tutorial - Video & Sound Editing

okay next we're going to check out
stretch markers in Reaper
now stretch markers will allow us to
stretch a media items or audio either
longer or shorter to adjust the timing
or even the pitch this can be used for
many different things from matching up
performances to the grid or matching up
performances to other tracks so they
line up better say a background vocal to
match the lead vocal for timing reasons
and it could also be used for fixing
small sections or even very large ones
section by section so let's see how to
do it we have a guitar track here and in
the first section it's a bit at a time
let's hear it notice how it's rushing
it's a bit early compared to the drums
let's hear it again
so let's fix it with stretch mockers to
create stretch markers we'll just zoom
in
click the area where you want to put one
and then right click and go down here to
stretch markers and we can choose add
stretch marker at cursor all you do with
the keystroke shift W
just choose this and a stretch marker is
created right here and we can grab it to
stretch our audio
now if we just create one watch what
happens but zoom out
while the audio stretches together in
most cases we don't want that behavior
so it's a good idea to create a few or
at least three before we start app for
example let's say we're trying to just
fix this OneNote
we put a stretch marker here
another one right here
when we adjust this one it's not going
to affect anything outside these markers
so if we zoom out
everything on this side of this marker
and this started this marker isn't being
affected so we can stretch it and only
affects the timing or the pitch of this
note so it's a good idea to create safe
areas that won't be adjusted
so let's fix the timing for this whole
section over here to match with our
drums that are on the grid to clear all
this just select this right click go to
stretch markers
go to stretch markers and selected items
and just remove them and that removes
our stretch markers in that item now
this is important because this function
is non-destructive anything we do to it
can be undone at any point so we're not
committing to it now there's another way
of creating stretch markers it's a
little bit faster using a modifier
let's put one over here and it said
hitting shift W on the PC hold down ctrl
and alt and on the Mac hold down command
an option and just click and it creates
a stretch marker now let's put another
one right over here
so everything to the right of this
marker isn't gonna be adjusted I
consider them safe sections
now to fix the timing of these
transients let's zoom in
put one right here and then stretch it
so that the transient is right on the
grid now right now we have snapping
turned on so it's going to snap to the
grid
we could turn it off
and it doesn't snap so he could place it
more freely but for this purpose I'm
gonna be snapping on
let's do the same thing to this
transient place one in and drag it to
the nearest grid
you
so the each transient
is now on a grid and everything over
here is not adjusted so if we move this
this area stays safe
so the other sounds
now it's in time but the pitch changes
because by default when we stretch our
items
we're also stretching their pitch which
can be useful if you want that
you want to stretch the pitch to be
higher or lower we can use this but for
this purpose we want to preserve the
pitch so we'll double-click the item
which opens up a media item properties
which we'll go through in a bit but for
now we can just turn this option on
preserve pitch when changing rate
and if that's chosen
when we just have stretch markers the
pitch isn't going to change just the
timing now it's here that sounds a lot
better now there's another way we could
do this instead of doing it by hand and
manually placing them on the grid let's
start again select it right-click it and
go to stretch markers
and go to stretch markers in selected
items
and remove them now we're starting older
so again this first section over here is
a bit too rushed
but this section over here sounds pretty
good so again we'll create some safe
areas hold on the modifier
Edward here
everyone at the beginning to create
another safe area and now it's placed
them at the beginning of each transient
put one here
another one here here here here
and leave this one alone
so now we're going to select from here
to here ignoring our safe markers this
one here and this one here they're not
in the selection now we're going to
right click go to stretch markers and go
down here stretch markers in selected
items within time selection so it's just
going to affect the ones in our time
selection we go over here
snap to grid
Wise's although stretch markers now it's
here again much better and a little
quicker as it puts them on the grid for
us now we could also adjust the length
of our notes right now these two notes
here and these two notes are kind of
short but let's say we wanted to make
them even shorter we could do that with
stretch markers just put one right here
and drag it over to make this note sound
shorter so the same with this one
just make it a little shorter and now it
sounds like this the crate somewhat
staccato effect
let's do the same thing with these two
and now to you that
creates a very different effect before
and after we can go the opposite way we
could lengthen our notes just by
dragging them the other way
put this over here and this one over
here
let's do the same with this one
now these notes are even longer
pretty cool now the sound quality this
is based on the algorithm that we choose
so if we double click again to go to our
properties right over here we can change
the algorithm for our time stretching or
our stretch markers it's set to the
default right now which is set up in our
project settings
right over here the default is less teak
three Pro
but we can change it based on our item
right over here we could choose any of
these algorithms and you're gonna want
to choose it based on what you're doing
each song or source is gonna be
different and we can also choose over
here to optimize for tonal content but
again you have to try this out and see
which way sounds best it's going to
differ based on our source
now we're done and we're sure we want to
commit to this just right-click it and
go to glue
and that'll create a whole new audio
file that commits to a time stretching
but like I said earlier you don't have
to do this this will happens in real
time so you could always change it later
and if you decide you don't like it just
right-click it again
and remove it
so now we're back to where we started so
that stretch markers in Reaper let's
move on