Play Region target

[DLongoni]

For Live purposes a common use case for Control Surfaces is to determine which region is currently played/looped. In other software they may be clips or scenes, but for my experience the most straightforward thing to do in reaper is to work with regions. It would be great to have a trigger that goes like "go to region x when cursor reaches the next region marker". I have currently implemented this using a custom action that combines sws and standard reaper actions, and I correctly trigger the actions using a midi surface. The big issue is feedback, which is fundamental, because while I'm playing live I'd like to know which one of the regions is being played. This can be achieved by lighting it with another color (or maybe flashing, or whatever, but let's say lit with another color).

I have no clue about how much a hassle can it be to implement this, I just want to mention that maybe a combination of custom actions + a check on whether the cursor in inside the region can be a cheaper way to do this.. Maybe (=

Thank you very much

[helgoboss]

The "go to region x" part sounds like a candidate for a new ReaLearn target. Doing it via an action doesn't give you feedback, but if there would be a dedicated target for this, feedback would be possible. That's not so difficult to implement.

The "when cursor reaches the next region marker" parts sounds more like a source - an incoming event to trigger a target change. That could be implemented but would require some more thought because it would be the first non-MIDI source. It's very different in nature.

[DLongoni]

Implementing "go to region" as a trigger instead of an action was exactly my thought in order to allow midi feedback.

As for the "when cursor reaches the next region marker", I was thinking about it as part of the trigger itself, instead of an additional source. I think that sources for ReaLearn are fine as midi events only and adding this kind of non-midi source could make things a ton more complicated.

What I did as a custom action to make this work is

• Regions: go to region 01 after current region finishes playing
• Time Selection: copy loop points to time selection
• (optional) SWS: set transport repeat state

So I was thinking that this two or three actions could be a target as a whole. But I have no clue if the first part can be difficult to implement.

Does this make sense to you?

[helgoboss]

I renamed this to "Play region target" because there's no such term "trigger" in ReaLearn's wording (at least not as a noun).

I'm not sure if ReaLearn is suitable or should be suitable for a use case like that. Making "when cursor reaches the next region marker" a part of the target itself sounds too specialized. Doesn't really fit into ReaLearn's philosophy (which is to have generic sources that emit events which trigger something and generic targets that change a parameter within REAPER). Wouldn't it be possible to have this "when cursor reaches ..." logic outside of ReaLearn and just let ReaLearn deal with delivering the correct feedback value for the currently playing region?

[DLongoni]

Sorry for the "trigger", I just got confused with terms.

It definitely makes sense to me. If "feedback based on current region" is possible to implement then I think that there would be everything one needs, at least for the use cases I am thinking about.

[helgoboss]

I'm thinking about 2 targets:

• One to jump to a specific region (e.g. for use with a single button) - identified by its ID, independent from its position. Feedback would be ON if REAPER is currently playing this region, otherwise OFF.
• Another one to navigate between all available regions (e.g. for use with encoders, faders, prev/next buttons): Feedback value would correspond to the position within the project. This could turn any motor fader into a seek slider.

[DLongoni]

Having the first one available would be huge.

As for the second, I'm having a hard time figuring out how the feedback could be used except if you have a display on your device that can show the actual region number. Controlling and "reading/interpreting" a fader this way would be kinda tough IMO. The target could be very useful anyway.

A delicate thing to take into account would be also the jump timing. There are a few possibilities:

• jump when triggered (immediately)
• jump "when current region finishes playing
• jump with smooth seek (next bar)

Imo the first of the the three is useless, the second is ideal, the third is usable but only barely.

Thank you for looking into this

[helgoboss]

This will be fun :) Works already, just needs a bit polishing.

[DLongoni]

Great news, can't wait to test it!