# How do Reaper & Nuendo compare in terms of export functionality?



## SimonViklund (May 3, 2017)

I make a lot of music, sfx and voice editing for games, and love *Reaper's "region render matrix"* which allows me to create regions, name them and export them (the stems or the master mix) as separate sound files (named after the region names) with the push of a button. It's very powerful.

Now, I've heard such a function is available in Nuendo too - has anyone used both DAWs and can say *how the export functionality of Reaper and Nuendo compare?*


----------



## colony nofi (May 3, 2017)

I've only dabbled in reaper, but nuendo's exporting is very powerful.
You can choose multiple audio/instrument/group/fx/master tracks all at the same time (even with different channel counts). You can then also choose multiple loop markers to export (so different boundaries along the time line) - exporting 100's or 1000's of sounds all in one go. Named as you want. I *think* reaper can do very similar from memory - but not 100% sure. You'd know that more.

The winner for me and nuendo is the Game Audio Connect feature...
https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/nuendo_range/nuendo/game_audio.html

Reaper is cool - (I only really got into it for doing massively multichannel processing - for 3rd+ order ambisonics) but I would miss too many of the other post-production features in nuendo to embrace it 100%.


----------



## benatural (May 3, 2017)

Long time Nuendo user here as well. Markers plus tracks is a very powerful feature indeed, as is render in place. Both have their limitations as well. With render in place, you can select a number of tracks and bounce them down using a variety of signal path options. A big drawback is that filenames are not stored or associated with the each render 'batch' so if you need to re-export at some point after iterating on a sound, you have to retype the filename you want. Not a huge deal if you're only exporting a single sound in a session, but if you're exporting many and need that filename history, render in place isn't a good option. It's better suited for quickly rendering source for further manipulation, that's what I use it mostly for. 

Batch exporting with markers on the other hand is great at exporting many individual tracks at once, and you can use markers to store and recall filenames which solves the problem with render in place. That said, unlike render in place, the only way to export a group of channels as one file is to submix them into the same group channel (aux channel for the rest of the DAW world). When exporting many sounds from a single session, this is more trouble than it's worth, particularly in a deadline driven environment like the game industry. The alternative to batch plus markers is to simply just use markers which is fine if your sounds don't need to be exported as different layers. The only way to do that is to drag events over and add a new marker and export that, but then you've just broken the sound edit you just spent so long perfectly crafting. 

I'd love to see Steinberg take the best of both render in place and batch+marker exports and make a brand new exporting tool. An export process where you can define horizontal AND vertical markers would be perfect. I know it sounds like I'm complaining, and we'll, maybe I am... I guess when you've been using it as long as I have, it's easy to focus on what can be improved.

Game audio connect is a game changer in terms of efficiency. Their perforce integration is cool, but unfortunately doesn't take full advantage of perforce's features, and I've found its very easy to get it into a broken state if you don't follow some pretty rigid guidelines that aren't documented anywhere. That said, it's a great start, I hope they make that feature more robust.


----------



## samphony (May 3, 2017)

It will be interesting to see how game audio connect and exporting is improved in Nuendo 8


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen (May 3, 2017)

Although I'm not a Reaper user, I've seen that Reaper has some fantastic renaming tools that other DAWs don't have. When working on samples, I have to rely on the basic auto rename in PT. Haven't tried in Nuendo yet but I know that Reaper can do a lot more in that regard.


----------



## EvilDragon (May 4, 2017)

Yeah, Reaper's export/render options are extremely powerful... you can use wildcards to rename files and even create whole folder structures depending on, say, track names, etc. Plus, there's render queue, which can be very very helpful at times.


----------



## Rasmus Hartvig (May 4, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Although I'm not a Reaper user, I've seen that Reaper has some fantastic renaming tools that other DAWs don't have. When working on samples, I have to rely on the basic auto rename in PT. Haven't tried in Nuendo yet but I know that Reaper can do a lot more in that regard.



On top of this, Reaper saves it's project files in plain text - which means that you can do arbitrarily advanced renaming with a text editor. Sublime Text with regex and multiple-cursors have saved me tons of time in this regard.


----------



## benatural (May 4, 2017)

I've often wondered about reaper. I'd be tempted to switch if I knew I could recreate my template and all of my project logical editor/process logical editor scripts. The other thing I use a ton of in Nuendo is expression maps, I don't think I could live without those. But if I could replicate my workflow in Reaper, I'd consider switching.


----------



## Rasmus Hartvig (May 4, 2017)

I can't imagine anything you could set up in Cubendos Logic Editors that Reaper couldn't do at least equally well (and - if you're not afraid of a little light scripting - more ... eh ... logically 

Also, Reaper has articulation mapping on the way. Haven't seen much of what it will be like, but it sounds like it's going to be powerful.


----------



## benatural (May 4, 2017)

Scripting in the logical editor IS a bit archaic. Is there a press release for the articulation mapper? If they release one I might be persuaded to jump ship.


----------



## EvilDragon (May 4, 2017)

Cockos doesn't do "press releases". It will be there when it's ready.


----------



## benatural (May 4, 2017)

Ha, ok then. Fair enough. To ask another way; where did you read about it, and where can I find out more about their plans for it? I'm assuming this information is somewhere? I did a quick search and couldn't find anything.


----------



## EvilDragon (May 4, 2017)

It's been in some prereleases a few months ago. You'll find a sticky thread in prereleases subforum on Reaper forums. Cockos usually doesn't discuss plans/schedules out in the open, apart from a few tidbits posted there. So, bottom line is, nobody yet knows how will it turn out, but assumption is it's going to be more visual than what was presented in the prereleases (which was basically editing text files to create expression maps, then using those expressions in the CC lane part of the MIDI editor, or notation view).


----------



## samphony (May 4, 2017)

benatural said:


> I've often wondered about reaper. I'd be tempted to switch if I knew I could recreate my template and all of my project logical editor/process logical editor scripts. The other thing I use a ton of in Nuendo is expression maps, I don't think I could live without those. But if I could replicate my workflow in Reaper, I'd consider switching.


Regarding reaper this fellow has some cool stuff you can download. 

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=186999


----------



## benatural (May 4, 2017)

Thanks for the info guys.


----------



## samphony (May 10, 2017)

benatural said:


> I've often wondered about reaper. I'd be tempted to switch if I knew I could recreate my template and all of my project logical editor/process logical editor scripts. The other thing I use a ton of in Nuendo is expression maps, I don't think I could live without those. But if I could replicate my workflow in Reaper, I'd consider switching.


Do you also use folders and ruler tracks a lot? Maybe multiple marker tracks?


----------



## Kaan Guner (May 10, 2017)

I don't know if this will be useful but Samp/Seq has the same functionality too.


----------



## benatural (May 10, 2017)

samphony said:


> Do you also use folders and ruler tracks a lot? Maybe multiple marker tracks?


I do use them a lot, yes.


----------



## samphony (May 10, 2017)

benatural said:


> I do use them a lot, yes.


And I guess the edit mode as well for pro tools style editing.


----------



## benatural (May 10, 2017)

samphony said:


> And I guess the edit mode as well for pro tools style editing.


Especially that; also selecting tracks by clicking the background of a track and dropping the playhead wherever I click. Those three features would be difficult to live without. I'm also used to Nuendo's backwards scrolling.


----------



## samphony (May 10, 2017)

benatural said:


> Especially that; also selecting tracks by clicking the background of a track and dropping the playhead wherever I click. Those three features would be difficult to live without. I'm also used to Nuendo's backwards scrolling.


You mean centered playback?


----------



## benatural (May 11, 2017)

No, the scroll directionality of the horizontal and vertical scroll bars in Nuendo are inverted compared to all other software. It took me forever to get used to but now it's second nature to the point that I have difficulty going back to other DAWs.


----------



## EvilDragon (May 11, 2017)

So wait, you move the scrollbar head to the RIGHT, and it goes to the LEFT? That's so bizarre and illogical, if true.


----------



## benatural (May 11, 2017)

EvilDragon said:


> So wait, you move the scrollbar head to the RIGHT, and it goes to the LEFT? That's so bizarre and illogical, if true.


Yes :/ That's the default scrolling behavior for Nuendo, and you can't change it without a third party app. I really hated it initially tbh but it has beaten me into submission.

There are other oddities like middle C = C3 and not being able to display flats on the piano roll.


----------

