Introduction

Few years ago, I released my first Items Grouping premium scripts pack. It has become one of my most popular REAPER related sets, showcased on reaperblog, and used by various video games studios and library makers around the world for Sound FX editing. Over the years, it has got various updates and new content, included now more than 10 scripts, which makes it one of my biggest premium pack.

Even if these scripts saved a tons of time and effort and allowed to make region based editing quite more powerful, having to deal with text items on a dedicated tracks to handle regions can be a bit annoying: adding new items to a group requires to update the text length, the track can be far above the assets you are actually editing; all these requires quite of variety of actions, which isn’t very straightforward for new comers… Minor flaws, which can become quite annoying over time for people doing this kind of work everyday.

Could we make this more efficient?

The answer is yes. It’s time for a new items groups based workflow.

Content

Details

Create regions from items groups (background)

This script is the core concept of my new sound effects editing workflow.

Thanks to complex performance oriented coding, the script is extremely efficient and can perform on thousands of items in real time.

Main features:

• Updates in real-time (new items in groups, new groups, delete items, delete groups, ungroup items, change in group edges positions etc…)
• Association of existing regions at group pos and end without recreating new ones
• Ability to edit create regions (changing name and color)
• Compatible with Region Render Matrix
• It uses first item of group for group name (using either take name, or item notes if no take) and visible color at region creation
• Backward compatible with the text items based group workflow
• Create an Undo Point at first launch (so if you have any expected behavior at script start, just close and CTRL+Z)
• Deleting all items of a group or ungrouping all of them remove the associated region.
• Works with complex edge cases (like several regions/groups at same position)
• No GUI needed (But it is advices to put the action on a toolbar, so you can see it’s on/off state !)

Limitations

• Native Copy Paste actions create new groups instead of preserving the existing ones. If you rely on this a lot for moving your groups, consider using a text item as first item in group to handle the region name and color.

Add selected items to first selected group or create a new one

The native Group Items functions create a new group ID each time you use it, and updating an existing group requires all items of the group to be selected, which can be overkill.

Use this action to create group, or to update an existing one.

Create regions from selected items groups

A simple one click version of Create regions from items groups (background), but which works on selected items only, and which creates regions for each items not in groups.

Create markers from selected items groups (NEW: 2022-12-12)

This script add markers at each selected items groups start. Useful to add markers at start position of a layered sound effects!

Unselect items (not) in groups

Just few extra actions which can be useful in custom actions, for example, with the script above.

Normalize selected items by groups with true peaks

This script is very handy to set up the volume of your future “sausages files”, audio files made of several split items.

This works at items level (not track).

As an extra feature, items not groups are considered as being part of a same group, so you can use this script on a bunch of ungrouped items.

Normalize selected items by groups (peaks RMS loudness)

Just lilke the script above but with more features, like a target dB value and different volume analysis modes. Here are the available ones:

"maxpeaks", "truepeaks" or "tp", "lufs", "rms", "shortterm", "momentary"

Note: due to the nature of loudness related modes calculation, running this on several items may not give the same results as running them with these several items glued together. Though, it give pretty satisfying results so it is it quite handy anyway.

Group selected items individually – one group if overlapping (New: 2020-09-24)

This can be an efficient way to create regions if you use the Create regions from group scripts.

Move to and select next/previous item with same group as first selected item (cycle) – (New: 2021-03-15)

Move to and select next/previous items column with same group as first selected item (cycle) – (New: 2021-03-15)

Group selected items if close enough

Two version exists, one which works per track, the other which works multi tracks.

Useful for grouping adjacent items, overlapping items, or items which are close to each others.

Group selected items per track (New: 2023-01-11)

This can be handy if sound design editing process.

Set selected items as reference for their group (New: 2024-06-25)

This script add help make an item as reference / leader for the group, instead of considering the first selected one.

Currently, this feature is supported by Set item position and order script.

Video Tutorial

Here is a tutorial about the usage of various of this script in context:

Installation

Feature Requests

Miss a function? Let me know!

Links

• Items Editing (various) – Cockos Corporated Forum

Notes

By buying this product, you are supporting my free scripting. Thanks!

Also, notes that my previous Items Grouping scripts pack isn’t obsolete as it still has lots of valuable scripts in it!

Purchase