MediaBay and Media Rack V4 in Cubase 12

today we talk about

MediaBay and Media Rack V4  in Cubase 12

hello everybody andrew blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today we move on to our fourth video as we discuss the media bay and media rack in cubase 12. but before we start i want to remind you that there's a link below to the free content navigation guide which is an easy to navigate webpage with links to all the content on this channel and besides that in the near future i'm going to begin adding tips and other bits of information that will only be available there you know things like simple steps that will get you started and up and running quick things that are in the videos but are written down in simple steps that serve as quick reminders when you need information down the road if you're working with programs like wavelab or cubase plug-ins or the cable guys shaperbox2 and many many other projects that are in the works then i know you're going to find just like i have that this is an invaluable study aid and the other thing i want to make sure you understand is that this is not a simple pdf this is a constantly updated page that has any information that is new or anytime videos are changed really anything updated and once you have it you will always have the latest information constantly updated so if you haven't gotten it already go to the link below click on it and save it to your favorites it's my gift to you and it's absolutely free okay so let's get started so we've been discussing this media bay media rack for quite a few videos now we're on the fourth video all the previous videos and the navigation guide in that link below but we want to lead off this discussion we're going to talk about setting up the results in these columns so we have the media bay which again you can open just by hitting the f5 key on your keyboard and if you have a folder selected that has some kind of media files in it and you go up into this results area up here on top and make sure you have whatever kind of you know media files you're looking for i'm just going to leave it on all media types what happens is in this middle area here which is the results you'll have the results you'll get a list of all kinds of files that match that particular criteria it'll come out of the folder you've checked and it will match whatever kind of media you've checked but this is where it starts to get a little more refined in terms of what kind of information you can see and let's look at what kind of information we can see as we look at this list of all these different files here and some are drum patterns and some are symbols and about all kinds of stuff here if i look up at the top of this list i have different columns one is the name and then various things as i go to the right and just above at the corner of this window there's a little gear here that kind of sets up whatever the results are and if i click on that little gear you get this thing which you're going to see quite a bit when you're dealing with a media bay media rack type of thing it gives you all these different categories and subcategories that you can basically search you know through your files to find different things and depending on how well tagged your information is will depend on what shows up here but some of the basic things to understand you have some options here that say use the defaults if i hit the use the defaults this is going to put the categories back in place that basically were installed with cubase and that gives you a lot of basic information in this case it's telling me the sample rate and the bit depth and the date it was modified all kinds of things as i move along this list but i can also change that with this little gear and i can go to select none if i hit select none it gives me a little kind of a warning it's basically going to take everything out of this list except for the name so if i want a real simplified list with only the name i can choose that on the other hand there's an option here that says all the available and that's very interesting option let's choose all available at this point you get all the different columns that you could throw in there pretty much that somewhat relate to the kind of you know media files that you're looking at and you will get a real good um overview of basically what information is available on your files so like for example if you have you know some kind of sample pack in your you know folder list and you're looking for a way to easily you know go through those different samples when you choose this all available option you can kind of see what's already been tagged as i look along this list that i have it's telling me again it's telling me the bit depth and the data was modified and all these kind of things as i move along it also shows me the path where it is on my computer it also gives me some kind of information sometimes on how the sounds were actually created it'll give you like an you know a link to izotope or this sound grinder or different kind of things which is very interesting to look at potentially how the sounds were actually developed the key any a number of other things like that but anyway the thing you can get out of this is what what's missing and that to me is kind of the important part as you look through this list you can kind of see what they haven't put in here and you can decide if that's information you want to start adding to your files to help you you know organize and find them quicker especially if they're files that you use a lot now as we look over on the right we have this attribute window that's opened over here and as we go along we're not going to do it right now but as we go along we can start adding in various what they call attributes in this case it's showing what the name of the file is but i can also put in my ratings or categories or subcategories and i can fill this information in and it will allow me to find these files by different groupings which is great the way this window is set up right now you can't really change any of these things in this window in the results window itself when you click on it you can only choose these options but there's another option up here in the top in this media based settings this little down arrow if you click on that you have an option comes down here that says allow editing in the results list if you check that then as you start going through these things in the results list if things can be altered in any way for example if i click on this author area i have other options where i can actually change that to some other category so various things that are available to be modified right in the results list are now able to be modified and only if you have that thing checked that says allow the editing in the results list for now i'm going to leave that unchecked you have the option with these files to actually drag them into other folders so if i have some other folder that i'm setting up for organization i could take one of these files and drag it into that other folder you can take any of these columns and change their order by just dragging them around in different places and you also have the option to right click on any particular file and delete it do not do that because if you delete it it's gone forever it's not just removed from the program you've deleted it from your computer up back on the toolbar you have this shuffle button and if you're looking to you know just get something creative where you can move these results around hit the shuffle button and it will start to just move these files into different orders this is an option i have always thought was a great option anytime you get this one you can right click on files and you have the option to show in the explorer if i click on that it actually opens up the location where that file is whether i do anything to it or not i can actually see what folder it resides in and then like we said at the top here you have this filtering of the media types which you can turn everything off like if i want just audio files i can click that all right so before we wrap this up today i want to share with you um when i'm going to start calling my better weight tips i have this one today concerning this media bay which once i started to use this again it's just learning creative ways to use this stuff that i don't think is actually presented sometimes and when you learn to use it it just makes things so much better so for example in almost every song that i produce lately there's a couple of things that i typically bring in every time one is a certain folder set of transitions and another is particular reference tracks and i've saved these both as track archives which if you haven't seen that yet basically when you take a track you can take all the information on the track you know everything that's on it all the inserts all the information the audio files everything and then go up to your file and do what's called a export you can go down to selected tracks and when you do that you know whether it's one track or many tracks all the information on those tracks is saved which is just great because again when i need to bring a track in like reference tracks that i've set up maybe with you know particular edits on them the way i want them whatever you know things that are very specific to certain tracks things that took a long time to put together and i want to use it in my project and i don't want to redo it again so i save it as a track but now comes the day where i'm in my project and i want to bring those things back into the project okay so in order to bring a track that you've saved like that back into a project you kind of have to go the opposite way you have to go up to file and typically i used to go down to import and then i would go to my track archive and then would begin the arduous task of remembering where i saved that track you know i have specific folders that i save things in but i have specific folders that i save other things in and you know over time that it's just like passwords or anything else you start to get so many things that you're like okay i have this one thing here and i have this other thing there where is it you know so first of all let's continue with a typical typical example of what i'm talking about so i i've had this one folder that i use that i said usually contains my transitions i know it's on this b drive so i hit the b drive and then i usually remember that i've saved it in my cubase projects and then i remember typically i put it in this samples folder but because i call it transitions i know that at other points i've created other transition folders and pretty soon i'm like oh wait a minute did i put it in that last transition folder from three months ago you know it gets confusing and then ultimately it's like oh yeah i have like seven different folders with my transitions in it which one was it oh yeah right it was this one dated this and then finally here it is i've arrived at it so i can double click on it and now it'll open up in my project okay well you know many times by the time you go through that you're ready to close the project down and call it a day let alone the fact that i also want to bring in my reference track and my reference track is in a totally different folder so i would have to go back up to file import remember all of that what i just did but remember that it's in a different location and now i have to back out so you get the idea where i'm where i'm going here that it's a lot of stuff to recall and when you're in the you know process of being creative you want to get to this stuff you don't want to be having to think about where those things are whether they're sample packs or whatever it is that you use very regularly okay so enter the media bay so i'm going to hit my f5 key and now begins the challenge that the limitation of the media bay is that it does not save track archive so the very thing that i'm looking for that i want to be able to get to quick this media bay has no functionality to even save it so what's my point well my point is there's usually a creative way to accomplish things you know there's many paths sometimes the same goal so for example if i now take that same time i did a minute ago navigate through various folders subfolders and subfolders inside of those until i finally relocate that particular folder that i saved my transitions in which now i have right here i've highlighted it it has no option to find the track in it the track archive i've saved doesn't matter i can just by highlighting this folder i can now go up to the little favorites area hit the little stars up here in the favorites area say okay yes i do want to save this and before i'm done torturing myself i might as well go ahead and do the other one that i have to search for many times which is my reference track so i'm going to search through all these folders and files again go down to a specific folder that i know i've called reference tracks here again go up to my little star click on the stars save it now when i begin a project or i'm into the middle of what i'm doing and i got the creative thing going and i don't want to slow down or whatever i can simply open up my media bay i can just use this favorites drop down find the thing i'm looking for click on it it highlights it and i'm good to go now there's still some limitations because if i use this and i go to this show and explore option although it opens up to the file there's no direct way to just open this up into cubase so the best you can do at this point is highlight the address bar do a control copy then when you go back to your original import like you would have had to do in the first place go to track archive you would then go to the address bar and do a control paste control v which will take you right to the file then you can quickly import so if you're only doing one track and that's all you ever do it's probably easier just to do the old way of just you know doing the track archive import because it usually remembers the last location you had but the minute you start doing more than one if you start doing two and especially if you have three or four tracks you're trying to import this option is way way faster so once again the media bay rules and if you learn how to use these things maybe not even in the way they're designed but just you know creatively with a few twists and turns your ability to speed up what you do and the efficiency with what you do is just a whole other ball game all right so there you go that's it for today we still have a ways to go many more gems of information to find on this media bay media rack and we will continue to dig and search until we uncover them all as usual if you haven't grabbed your navigation guide be sure to grab that before you go because it has links to all this content ever growing free to use and it's there when you need it whether it's today or six months from the day when you've forgotten everything you learned today the media bay has so many great features and functions all you have to do is know how to use them and that's what we're going to keep working on until we figure it all out as always great to have you guys here see you on the next video you