Custom Development Concept

You use REAPER DAW, and there is a feature that will really improved your workflow. Problem : it doesn’t exists. Yet?

Indeed, REAPER provides a variety of tools to create your own actions. Extensions, custom effects and scripts. ReaScript is simply the name given for a script written for REAPER.

Not all features can be coded with ReaScripts, of course.

If you feature is about data manipulation (positions, value, color, name, notes etc… of any kind of objects – Markers, Regions, Items, Envelope, Envelope Points, Tracks etc…), then it can probably be satisfied with a script.

Example of feature that cannot be coded with a script :

  • Having Comparisonics waveforms in the arrange view
  • Odd number of channels on tracks
  • Negative Playrate for stretch markers
  • Automatically download REAPER updates
Exemples of actions coded thanks to scripts :

  • Quantize selected items to regions starts
  • Envelope smoother (delete all redundant points, and points too close to other points)
  • Export HTML/CSV tables from items in the project with their metadata
  • Analyse pitch of items on selected tracks and commit as item notes (script + JSFX combo)

If you want to more about ReaScript, I invite you to read my interview about ReaScript on The REAPER Blog : ReaScript Basics — Interview on REAPER blog / Part-1

There is a lot of reasons than can lead you to ask for a scripts by someone else:

  • You don’t know how to code and don’t want or can’t learn.
  • You know how to code but your feature is too complex
  • You can’t wait to have this feature, you need it now
  • You want to encourage my free scripting contributions

After having coded and shared more than 300 scripts for free the community (optional donation business model), I thought it would be a good idea to propose my coding skills as a service for individuals or businesses who needed custom REAPER actions. A way to put my experience in service to others, which could help me sustaining my free work!

Pricing

Rough Estimation

The price is generally at a regular developer price. Count 200€ the day-work. Of course, what you asked could take less than a day. Below is how the price can be evaluated.

Time Investment

Releasing a script is the results of a lot of steps:

  1. Research — Seeing if the future doesn’t already exist, or if it could be done with existing actions
  2. Documentation — Determining if the script could be made with available functions in REAPER ReaScript API.
  3. Conceptualization — Trying to determine what would be the best way to handle the feature, in a performance friendly way, keeping an eye on modularity, and evaluating what would be the simplest way to do it
  4. Coding — Writing the code
  5. Beta testing — Check if the scripts behave like expecting in every possible circumstances.
  6. Debugging — Correct bugs if any.
  7. Refactoring — Optimizing the source code for readability and maintainability.
  8. Sharing — Put the scripts online, sending messages, writing a forum post.

This may look like a simple list but there is in fact a lot of back and forth between the 2-7 first steps.

Speed

This is about how fast I can satisfy your request.

I tend to deliver scripts pretty quickly, according to the task of course. It could be somewhere between 5 minutes and 2 days. An estimation of this duration will be make before any price evaluation.

Product Value

A simple action can have an huge product value. Imagine you have 500 items and you need it to be quantized to regions start for example. And imagine you have to do that every day in your work. Then this script will save you a lot of time, effort, and money.

Despite product value is not that taken into account into pricing, it should be of course help you determine if it worth investing in scripts development.

Business Size

Price can be influenced by your business size.

If you are a student on an independent project, it is fair that you get a discount. And if you work for a triple AAA company on a 10000000 dollars project, I think that charging you a regular price would be appropriate.

Support

As my goal is that you could enjoy the script, I will give you support if you have trouble. Spending hours for a non-used scripts would be a bit frustrating, so don’t worry, we will make it work !

Offer

Well, money don’t grows on tree. So, maybe you can’t spend anything on script development.

Not bad, what do you have to offer ? Do you sell any digital product that I could use ? Or a service ?

If you think that you have something that could interested me, I am open to negotiation.

Users

How many people could take advantage of the scripts ? Is that something that help every REAPER users, or only sound designers ? Or maybe only you in one particular project ?

The more people could enjoy the scripts, the less the price could be, as more people could consider making a donation or buying the script you contributed to develop.

Script Sharing

The scripts are shared to you in open source, so that you can make any custom modifications if you want.

I reserve myself the right to share the scripts on my free script pack, or to sell it on my digital store (unless it is specific or “confidential” of course) if other users could find it useful.

You will not be allowed to redistributed the scripts or change its author name, but you have no usage restrictions. Use it on how many computers that you need.

You can be credited (name/pseudo + URL) in the script file and in the post announcing the release of the script as sponsor. A nice way to get a bit of visibility!

Contact

Interested in making your desired action a reality with Sponsored or Dedicated Development ?

Please join me on the Contact page, and we will discuss of your idea/project !

Thanks for your consideration !

Note : If you don’t consider sponsor or dedicated development (aka, if you don’t have any offer to make), post your feature request on ReaScript forum.