Reaper’s Project Settings and Save Dialog

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In this episode I take a look into some of the project settings and the save dialog. I show how to set a project such that when you move by bar, or measure, you will move by a minute, and when you move by beat, you’ll move by a given number of seconds. This is a useful way of navigating projects which are not musical in nature, since there is no native keystrokes for this.

If you set the tempo to 60, and the time signature to 60/4, each measure will be a minute long, and each beat will be a second. If you keep the tempo at the same value as the first number in the time signature, you will move by a minute each measure. Reducing these two numbers will increase the length of a beat. So 30, 30/4 will give 1 min per measure and 2 seconds per beat, and 15, 15/4 will give 4 seconds per beat and keep the bar at a minute. Changing the ratio of the tempo to the first number of the time signature will adjust the length of a measure. 60, 30/4 will give 30 second measures and 1 second beats. Once you understand the maths, you will be able to set this up however you like, or just have a play and find something that works for you.

I also show how to set up your project so that any files recorded into the project are conveniently placed into a sub folder in the project folder. This is done by accessing the media tab and providing a folder name in the path to save media files.

Within the project settings, you can also set the default recording format for files recorded into that project.

Prior to looking at the save dialog, I show how to optionally import a collection of files either consecutively on one track or such that the files all start at the same time on individual tracks.

Also covered briefly is the process of rearranging the order of your tracks within a project.

Looking at the save dialog, along with the standard settings of location and name, I cover the options that specify the creation of a sub folder, and the options available for moving the actual files associated with a project into that folder. On Windows, you will need to use your screen reader’s, screen review mode to make these selections. On the Mac, the check boxes are presented to VoiceOver.

Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Option+Enter File: Project settings…
  • Command+S File: Save project
  • Command+Option+S File: Save project as…

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Letter To Tim Cook

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This is Audio Pizza’s open letter to Tim Cook podcast where we discuss the accessibility issues of MacOS, iOS, and the Apple Watch, and ask Tim to listen and react to the unique problems faced by the VoiceOver community.

Dear Tim,

Thank you, as a company, for realy being a pioneer in accessibility, but we would like you to bump it up a notch and make quality a high priority for the accessibility team.

So we had four issues we wanted you to take a look at under the mac. First, there’s the HTML5 rendering engine that we demonstrated in the MacOS app store where the navigation flow is completely broken, which is as if your mouse just jumped randomly all over the screen instead of where you moved it. Second, there is the responsiveness of the action item with the VO-spacebar to trigger buttons, which is as if your mouse button only worked some of the time.. Third, there’s the audio ducking where we loose the VO text to speech volume , which is as if your screen brightness just randomly went dim all day long. And fourth there is the drag and drop / finder issue
where VO is reporting the wrong item under the VO cursor, which is as if your selection in the finder was the item next to the one you wanted.

Taken individually these bugs are serious. Taken together as a whole, they are critical. They have a direct impact on our productivity. We need these fixed. Please, Tim, make it so.

Under iOS we think you are doing a great job with accessibility. But some of the hardware choices you are making affect us more than you may think. There are bluetooth issues where we cannot control VoiceOver reliably with our keyboards. The lack of a headphone jack and the lag we see with your wireless solution fails us.. It’s as if every key you type takes seconds to appear on the screen.
It affects our productivity to the point of making the device unusable. Please try this yourself, it’s easy to understand once you experience it. And finally under iOS consider taking the next step to being an advocate for accessibility. Require your developers to do the bare minimum to their apps if they want to be in the app store by requiring them to use Xcode’s accessibility tools to remove all warnings and properly label standard UI controls. It’s a small price to pay and it makes Apple look really really good as a leader of universal access. Not to mention, quality of the apps in the app store will improve as you educate developers. Since you will happily kill 32- bit apps, how about killing the poorly coded non-accessible apps as well.

And with WatchOS, we are just looking for improvements over time. We thank you for making nit accessible out of the box. We look forward to its future as improvements with both tactical feedback and text to speech evolve. We are very excited about the direction you are taking the Apple Watch.

We respect Apple as a company; we respect you as a person. You are both leaders in universal access and accessibility. We hope you listen to this podcast and reflect upon the management and design decisions you make and how they impact all your users.

Thank you Tim, and I’ll be happy to demonstrate that walking chocolate tour using voiceover for you anytime.

Sincerely,
Scott, Shaun and Garth

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WWDC 2017 Rumours

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With WWDC 2017 just a couple of days away, the Audio Pizza team get together to discuss the various rumours regarding what may be announced at Apples much anticipated event. Shauns lack of funds underlie his disintrest in anything Macbook, while Garth declares a fetish for function keys. Will Apple give a glimpse at the iPhone 8s new design if the much rumoured 10.5" iPad is revealed at WWDC?

Finally just how bad is Siri and can it be improved if given it’s own new shiny home in the form of the Siri Speaker? Garth seems to think it can’t be much worse then what he’s heard of the Amazon Echo.

This post first appeared on Audio Pizza Subscribe on iTunes or by RSS

Picking a Source and Recording in Reaper

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This Reaper Tutorial looks at picking the default recording input from your interface. How to select a different input, and of course how to record.

Keyboard Shortcuts

  • F7 Track: Toggle record arming for current (last touched) track
  • F8 Track: Cycle track record monitor
  • R Transport: Record

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Item and Ripple Editing in Reaper

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In this episode I cover the basics of editing using items, and the three different ripple modes. A number of other actions are briefly covered as well, such as cut copy and paste, adjusting track pan, soloing a track, and duplicating a track.

Keystrokes

  • A Custom: Select and split item under edit or play cursor
  • Command+C Edit: Copy items/tracks/envelope points (depending on * focus) ignoring time selection
  • Command+X Edit: Cut items/tracks/envelope points (depending on focus) ignoring time selection
  • Command+V Item: Paste items/tracks
  • D Track: Duplicate tracks
  • Option+Left or Right Arrows Track: Nudge track pan left or right
  • F6 Track: Solo/unsolo tracks
  • F5 Track: Mute/unmute tracks
  • Option+P Options: Cycle ripple editing mode
  • Option+Shift+P OSARA: Report ripple editing mode

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Audio Editing with Time Selections in Reaper

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if you’re following these tutorials along on the Mac, make sure you get the latest build of OSARA and update your key map.

In this third of a series of beginner tutorials, we finally get a bit of editing done using time selections. The context sensitive nature of Reaper is discussed along with some further navigational and editing techniques. These include selecting and moving between items, scrubbing, moving by beats or measures, making and refining time selections, previewing your edit and the implications of your zoom factor.

Keyboard Shortcuts Mentioned

  • Left Arrow View: Move cursor left one pixel
  • Right Arrow View: Move cursor right one pixel
  • Command+Left Arrow Item navigation: Select and move to previous item
  • Command+Right Arrow Item navigation: Select and move to next item
  • Page Up Move edit cursor back one measure
  • Page Down Move edit cursor forward one measure
  • Command+Page Up Move edit cursor back one beat
  • Command+Page Down Move edit cursor forward one beat
  • Delete OSARA: Remove items/tracks/contents of time selection/markers/envelope points (depending on focus)
  • [ Time selection: Set start point
  • ] Time selection: Set end point
  • Option+[ Time selection: Nudge left edge left
  • Option+] Time selection: Nudge left edge right
  • Command+[ Time selection: Nudge right edge left
  • Command+] Time selection: Nudge right edge right
  • Option+Space Transport: Play (skip time selection)
  • Shift+Home Custom: Select from cursor to start of project
  • Shift+End Custom: Select from cursor to end of project
  • Option+Shift+- or NumPad- View: Zoom out horizontal
  • Option+Shift+= or NumPad +View: Zoom in horizontal

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Reaper Basics, Tracks, Media and OSARA Configuration

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This tutorial gives a basic overview of the conversion between the windows key map and the Mac key map. It covers the hierarchy of a Reaper project. How to add a track, and insert an audio file on it. There’s also a quick run down of the OSARA configuration dialog. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions for things to cover in future tutorials.

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Keyboard Shortcuts

  • CmD+Opt+Shift+P or Cmd+F12 Open OSARA Preferences
  • CMD+T insert and name track
  • Cmd+I Insert media files…
  • Space Play/Stop
  • Ctrl+Space Play/Pause
  • Cmd+Shift+J Report edit/play cursor position Measures and Beats
  • Cmd+Shift+J, J Report edit/play cursor position Time
  • Cmd+Home Go to start of project
  • Cmd+End Go to end of project

Online Security. Keeping All Parts Private.

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Join Garth in his very early morning coffee as he hosts this latest episode of Audio Pizza. Kayakker returns to give us his opinions, advice and tips on online security issues. Oh, and Shaun gets shot in the first 30 seconds.

First up for discussion is Trumps repeal of U S Broadband privacy rules, meaning that your internet provider is again free to sell your details, such as browsing history, to other companies. This story has been big news everywhere but is there really anything to worry about? Kayakker then goes on to tell us just how secure http and VPN can help.

Next, we discuss phishing and password best practice. How do you know if that email from your bank, Paypal or Amazon etc is real or fake and should you ever click on the link they send? Short answer to the latter is No. Kayakker shares his story on how easy it is to get fooled.

To finish up this episode full of great sensible advice, we admit that, like lots of other people, we tend not to follow our own advice when it comes to passwords. Using the same password for multiple sites or not changing passwords regularly are things we are all guilty off. Hey, we never said we were perfect…

KNFB Reader for Windows 10 Review

 

KNFB Reader on mobile devices has proven itself to be one of the most reliable and convenient ways of reading printed text.  With a easy to use user interface specifically designed for use by the visually impaired and fast document processing, the promise of truely  useful Optical Character Recognition was finally delivered.

Now, KNFB Reader has come to Windows 10 but with Windows 10s shaky start when it comes to accessibility can KNFB Reader stand proud with it’s iOS and Android cousins?  Lets find out.

This audio was originally created for the RNIB Tech Talk show on RNIB Connect Radio.  If you enjoy it why not check out the Tech Talk show.  Search for RNIB Tech Talk in your favourite podcast app.

Episode Links:
KNFB Reader
RNIB Tech Talk  Audioboom Page[podcast

Installing Reaper with OSARA and SWS on the Mac

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In this Episode I’d like to give you a very brief introduction to the DAW, Reaper. It is an extremely powerful multi track audio editor that is cross platform, working on Mac and Windows. I will be concentrating on the Mac version however most of what is covered is also applicable to Windows.
You can find download links at the end of this post for Reaper and OSARA. Reaper is the application and OSARA is a plugin created by NVAccess which makes it more accessible – OSARA: Open Source Accessibility for the REAPER Application. I would also recommend installing an additional plugin called SWS which expands the functionality and usability of Reaper, link also below.

Whether you are on Windows or Mac, you will want to install all three, Reaper, OSARA, and SWS. To quickly check you have OSARA installed, hit the up or down arrow once you’ve opened Reaper, if VO reports “No Tracks” then your good to go.

Okay, so all installed? Cool, lets go. You can use VoiceOver to explore the interface, however almost everything you’ll need is available with keyboard shortcuts.

When you start Reaper for the first time, it will prompt you to set an audio device, go ahead and do this. If you don’t do this initially, you can access the preferences by pressing Cmd+P, and going to Devices in the tree view. Whilst in Preferences, I’d recommend going into Paths and setting a location for peak files to be saved.

Shortcut Help

F12 will toggle on and off keyboard shortcut help. This is an invaluable tool both when your new to Reaper or even when you’ve been using it for a while. When toggled on, Voice Over will report the action that is bound to whatever key/s you press. I recommend making liberal use of it.

The Actions List

Pressing F4 will bring up the Actions List. You’ll be placed into a search field that lets you filter the thousands of actions down to the one you’re looking for. Once you’ve done this, you can see the shortcut, or shortcuts that are assigned to it. If there’s not currently an action assigned, you can also add the shortcut from this dialog. The Import/Export button will allow you to import a another key map over your existing one, or save your own key map for a back up, or to share with others.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Command+P Preferences
F12 Shortcut Help
F4 Show Action List
Shift+F1 Help: Mouse modifier keys and action shortcuts

Downloads

Reaper

NVAccess OSARA

SWS Extension

CAVI Training

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