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The people I know who love working with Reaper the most are audio professionals who have days jobs kinda like mine as a programmer. They have a ton of repetitiv

The people I know who love working with Reaper the most are audio professionals who have days jobs kinda like mine as a programmer. They have a ton of repetitive tasks which can be automated to a great extent but which still require some human cognitive input. Reaper stands out in the same way as vim or emacs, in that things are customizable and scriptable in a manner that is accessible to people who aren't programming wizards. I think maybe Reaper is the Lotus/Excel of the audio world, where instead of crunching numbers, the user is doing things like spotting and removing all the instances of "umm" and "uhh" in an hour long podcast. Machines can do a pretty good job of removing mouth clicks and noises, but today some human editing still works pretty well, and a tool like Reaper in the hands of a good operator takes a lot of agony out of that process.

neves 5y ago
Can you reference an efficient process to remove"umm"s and "uhh" of audio? I just edited a video and this audio microediting was really laborious.
- ioseph 5y ago
  Not a reaper user but I imagine you'd need to run it through a text to speech plugin then mark times with either those words or a duration without dictionary words.
- naikrovek 5y ago
  why are you editing them out? they're natural things, people don't really hear them unless they're trying to.
  - mkaic 5y ago
    They waste time and lower information density, and also, for the few people who do notice them, they get very irritating. Getting rid of filler words where natural is pretty standard practice for longer-form videos.
    - Jedd 5y ago
      If you're using a video to obtain information, you're already resolved to a low information density. Jumpcut editing - popular amongst some of the youtube crowd - can be way more frustrating for some consumers than hearing a person periodically pause with an uhm / ahh, or insert the word 'like' several times a sentence, or start every sentence with 'So...'.
    - sloshnmosh 5y ago
      I’ve been receiving scam voicemails that use some AI to try and sound like a human that adds umms and uhg’s to try and sound more lifelike.
  - gooseyard 5y ago
    Often when people are aware they're being recorded, especially for some kind of production like a podcast that they're accustomed to hearing with edits, they'll make far more umms and ahhs than they would in an ordinary conversation. I think maybe its because they're concentrating on the continuity of their speech? Whatever the reason, I usually just try to get the number of these tics down to a level that sounds like casual conversation. I don't think most listeners notice when the tics are edited out, but a significant number seem to find them annoying enough that some judicious editing improves overall happiness with the production :)
  - neves 5y ago
    because in my audios I look (hear?) smarter without it :-)
- lstamour 5y ago
  descript.com works pretty well, but it's not free. Under the hood, it uses Google Speech-to-Text, so if you were creative enough, you could probably build something similar. I find it easier to pay descript.com when I need it. :) You can export tracks back out to video and audio multi-track editing apps with the Pro plan.
- tnzm 5y ago
  Not sure if you're looking for an automated solution (I'm looking for that too!) but as far as manual edits go the following Reaper features will make your life easier: * Ripple editing (Alt-P, once to enable for one track, twice to enable for all tracks - keeps stuff in sync, prevents gaps) * Auto crossfade (enabled by default; just split a clip with by hitting "S" and drag one part on top of the other to create a smoothly editable fade) * Jump to transient (Tab/Shift-Tab for next/previous, Ctrl-Tab for nearest) * Peaks: Toggle spectrogram and peaks (this one doesn't have a shortcut, but you can find it in the actions palette that opens when you hit "?")
- gooseyard 5y ago
  hah I wish I could! I've only done it a handful of times myself, but enough times to realize that if it looks like there'll be more of it in my future, I'll either hire it out or get someone to show me a faster workflow. That being said though, I have learned a few things which might be helpful. First, during your recording session, record a track with no performance at all, just the mic in the location that you'll be recording, with no noise gate. I usually record about 5 minutes of that and then loop it to create a track. Having this room sound in the background of the track means that if you split out a word or sound from the performance track, there won't be a discontinuity in the ambient room sound. I also use the Markers feature in Reaper heavily- the first time I listen back to the performance, I'll add markers wherever I hear a mouth noise, click, or an umm/uhh which sounds awkward. If nothing else, I can look at the markers and get an idea of how much work there is to do, and having the markers makes it easy to move the cursor to the next edit. For the actual edits, I typically just zoom in on the region around the sound, use the keyboard split shortcut to split the region, and then hit the shortcut for toggle item mute for the item with the word. Reaper has an option to automatically crossfade items on split, which I have enabled, and I can drag the volume envelope to keep the previous word from getting chopped too sharply. I've been using the Izotope Declick/Denoise plugin, which is inexpensive and seems to work pretty well. I suspect that there are some things I could be doing to dramatically speed up the process I mentioned above- fortunately youtube is loaded with Reaper tutorials for this sort of thing, and I look forward to learning some new tricks!

neves 5y ago

Can you reference an efficient process to remove"umm"s and "uhh" of audio? I just edited a video and this audio microediting was really laborious.

ioseph 5y ago
Not a reaper user but I imagine you'd need to run it through a text to speech plugin then mark times with either those words or a duration without dictionary words.
naikrovek 5y ago
why are you editing them out? they're natural things, people don't really hear them unless they're trying to.
- mkaic 5y ago
  They waste time and lower information density, and also, for the few people who do notice them, they get very irritating. Getting rid of filler words where natural is pretty standard practice for longer-form videos.
  - Jedd 5y ago
    If you're using a video to obtain information, you're already resolved to a low information density. Jumpcut editing - popular amongst some of the youtube crowd - can be way more frustrating for some consumers than hearing a person periodically pause with an uhm / ahh, or insert the word 'like' several times a sentence, or start every sentence with 'So...'.
  - sloshnmosh 5y ago
    I’ve been receiving scam voicemails that use some AI to try and sound like a human that adds umms and uhg’s to try and sound more lifelike.
- gooseyard 5y ago
  Often when people are aware they're being recorded, especially for some kind of production like a podcast that they're accustomed to hearing with edits, they'll make far more umms and ahhs than they would in an ordinary conversation. I think maybe its because they're concentrating on the continuity of their speech? Whatever the reason, I usually just try to get the number of these tics down to a level that sounds like casual conversation. I don't think most listeners notice when the tics are edited out, but a significant number seem to find them annoying enough that some judicious editing improves overall happiness with the production :)
- neves 5y ago
  because in my audios I look (hear?) smarter without it :-)
lstamour 5y ago
descript.com works pretty well, but it's not free. Under the hood, it uses Google Speech-to-Text, so if you were creative enough, you could probably build something similar. I find it easier to pay descript.com when I need it. :) You can export tracks back out to video and audio multi-track editing apps with the Pro plan.
tnzm 5y ago
Not sure if you're looking for an automated solution (I'm looking for that too!) but as far as manual edits go the following Reaper features will make your life easier: * Ripple editing (Alt-P, once to enable for one track, twice to enable for all tracks - keeps stuff in sync, prevents gaps) * Auto crossfade (enabled by default; just split a clip with by hitting "S" and drag one part on top of the other to create a smoothly editable fade) * Jump to transient (Tab/Shift-Tab for next/previous, Ctrl-Tab for nearest) * Peaks: Toggle spectrogram and peaks (this one doesn't have a shortcut, but you can find it in the actions palette that opens when you hit "?")
gooseyard 5y ago
hah I wish I could! I've only done it a handful of times myself, but enough times to realize that if it looks like there'll be more of it in my future, I'll either hire it out or get someone to show me a faster workflow. That being said though, I have learned a few things which might be helpful. First, during your recording session, record a track with no performance at all, just the mic in the location that you'll be recording, with no noise gate. I usually record about 5 minutes of that and then loop it to create a track. Having this room sound in the background of the track means that if you split out a word or sound from the performance track, there won't be a discontinuity in the ambient room sound. I also use the Markers feature in Reaper heavily- the first time I listen back to the performance, I'll add markers wherever I hear a mouth noise, click, or an umm/uhh which sounds awkward. If nothing else, I can look at the markers and get an idea of how much work there is to do, and having the markers makes it easy to move the cursor to the next edit. For the actual edits, I typically just zoom in on the region around the sound, use the keyboard split shortcut to split the region, and then hit the shortcut for toggle item mute for the item with the word. Reaper has an option to automatically crossfade items on split, which I have enabled, and I can drag the volume envelope to keep the previous word from getting chopped too sharply. I've been using the Izotope Declick/Denoise plugin, which is inexpensive and seems to work pretty well. I suspect that there are some things I could be doing to dramatically speed up the process I mentioned above- fortunately youtube is loaded with Reaper tutorials for this sort of thing, and I look forward to learning some new tricks!