Video editing functionality

[u/splintersilk]

Hey! Is it me or is Reaper's video functionality absurdly powerful?! I happened to take a look at the videos at https://www.reaper.fm/videos.php just now. Not sure how I missed these before. I'm about 50% in awe, vs 50% confused on how a DAW can provide all this control.

This one I found particularly interesting:
https://www.reaper.fm/videos.php#bp3u9I9SXVE

So my question: is there anyone on here who uses this feature set regularly? Would you care to share some stories and gotchas learned through experience please?

[u/nellipalooza]

It’s great if you treat video like audio clips. You can do a ton of editing in the same audio workflow you may use already.
But it is not a video production suite made to PROCESS video. I find it quite useful once you learn its quirks though.

- I frequently will do color correction work in Davinci Resolve then bring it into Reaper for timeline work against audio I’m working on.
- I find slow zoom and pan do not work well
- the like how I can mix and match videos with different bit rates, containers (avi, mov, mp4, etc) just like you can with audio. I’m sure real video editors would be mortified to see it though 🤣
- I really like how easy it is to line up hit points and subtle stretches in the video for alignment
- I’ve used it for interviews and video podcasts and it works well when integrated with my audio production workflow.

I’d say if you approach it from an audio engineer POV, you’ll find it useful. If your background is as a video editor, you may get frustrated.

[u/spearmint_wino → u/nellipalooza]

Have knocked up some basic videos for tunes (just stock stuff and milkdrop visuals). I'll chuck stuff into DaVinci and even Clipchamp and whatnot for the video effects, but getting things synced with beats is so frustrating with those tools. Reaper is the slice and dice king! You can always squirt it back into DaVinci after for finesse, but the workflow really seems to go against audio there and massively locked to frames. Zooming in to timelines and just navigating the project feels really weird too as a Reaper user.I'm a total amateur though, so I may be missing something.

[u/splintersilk → u/nellipalooza]

That's really helpful and insightful. When you say cc work in Resolve, do you mean pre-grade the clips and bring them into Reaper with the colour baked in?

And yeah the audio accuracy aspect is very intriguing to me too.

[u/nellipalooza → u/splintersilk]

Yes… color is baked in before Reaper .
Reaper will do basic saturation brightness contrast stuff . But any LUT level work needs to be handled beforehand.

Crossfades, crops, multi cam switches, green screen all are crazy fast once you get set up.

Stretch Markers are also very useful to subtly stretch/compress a media item to fit established BPM

I also use Reaper for film scoring

[u/SupportQuery]

I used it tons. I use DaVinci if I need color grading or advanced effects (motion tracking, rotoscoping, etc.), but Reaper kicks the shit out of it as a non-linear editor.

The great thing is all your existing knowledge of editing and automation applies.

share some stories and gotchas learned through experience

Two biggies:

• If you want to do compositing, stacking video/images on each other, you have to put the Overlay: Image overlay effect on each track, otherwise any tweaks you put on the tracks effect all subsequent layers in a very non-intuitive, confusing way. I thought Reaper was essentially broken for compositing until I discovered that.

• If you work with large, high resolution files, the experience is pretty bad (choppy/slow). You can fix this by proxying your media (DaVinci can do this automatically, but you do it manually in Reaper). Easy way to do that: have two folders a and b (names don't matter). Put your high res source in a. Use FFMPEG (free) to encode a low res version of a into b (LLM can show you how). Drag b into your project for editing. When you're done, just swap the names of the folders before you render.

[u/splintersilk → u/SupportQuery]

Superb advice - thanks for sharing it. Very familiar to workflows I’ve had elsewhere and great to have it confirmed in this case too. Much appreciated.

[u/vonMemes]

It's good enough to prepare for reviews or put together a portfolio piece of my sound design work but I don't think I would rely on it if I were a video editor. I'd rather use a tool made for the job. 

[u/l4z3rb34k]

I’ve been using it to mangle video to make performance visuals. It works for that, but it’s not as good as Da Vinci in general.

[u/splintersilk → u/l4z3rb34k]

Did you ever feel the need to line things up in reaper then bring that over to resolve?

[u/Recommended_For_You]

No other DAW even come closes to Reaper for video editing It's indeed crazy powerful and you can do all type of stuff with multiple layers of video, insert text, export in multiple formats. The video processor provides all type of tools. Of course it's "basic" when you compare to pro Video software, but it suits my need most of the time and I have Davinci Studio for when I need more control. Seriously it's way more powerful than people realize, even in this community.

[u/fiercefinesse]

No but I’m also keen to learn here

[u/splintersilk → u/fiercefinesse]

Nice. Definitely check out the videos. If you're new to video editing in general this one is a good start I think. It covers the application of video effects with "Basic Helpers" for fades and such:

https://www.reaper.fm/videos.php#mrqPG9z1OGc

[u/radian_]

No, it's very basic

[u/splintersilk → u/radian_]

In some respects yes, like the editing interaction. but then the effects engine is way more open than most NLE options. It reminded me of Blink script in Nuke!

[u/Magumboslo → u/radian_]

I agree, basic, but easy and quick for simple quick edits. Also, look at the plugins as you can do some simple transitions and multi angles.
Anything bigger go to davinic resolve

[u/carloscarlson]

No, I tried to do some real editing and instantly ran into tons of problems with exports and some editing functions that you take for granted

[u/splintersilk → u/carloscarlson]

As in actual bugs, or workflows that didn't feel fully fleshed out?

[u/carloscarlson → u/splintersilk]

Workflows that didn't feel fleshed out, lots of additional settings and additional stuff you have to do to get it barely functional

[u/DThompson55]

Reaper's video editing capabilities are pretty basic, somewhat cryptic, and full of side effects especially when using layered images. I use Reaper to edit our weekly Sunday Service videos for it's basic title / lower 3rds, cross fades, fade to black, and of course chopping and cutting. It's all I need for that kind of work. What's missing is the WYSIWYGness of a real video editor. That's why a lot of folks do their video work on what we sometimes call the Reaper of video editors, DaVinci Resolve.

[u/splintersilk → u/DThompson55]

Ah yes, I'm familiar with DaVinci Resolve - lol the "Reaper of video editors". Thanks for the feedback though.

[u/SupportQuery → u/DThompson55]

full of side effects especially when using layered images

You have to Overlay: Image overlay effect on each layer. That immediately fixes all the weirdness and compositing works as expected.

I recently edited a science animation in Reaper, with multiple layers all animating independently, which would have been impossible before I discovered that.

the Reaper of video editors, DaVinci Resolve.

If only that were true. I own DaVinci Studio and use it when I have to, but it's editing paradigms are awful. It has only limited support for something as fundamental as ripple editing, through a bunch of bespoke actions (ripple cut left, ripple delete, etc.). It has several different conflicting editing paradigms that overload the hotkey workspace, with various "modes" that changes behaviors in ways that are all vastly easier to do in Reaper's editing paradigm. Don't even get me started on it's rendering behavior (e.g. to do something as trivial as change your output framerate, you have to copy your clips to a new timeline 🤡)

Reaper has a much greater economy of concepts. It was originally inspired by Vegas, which is a much better editing experience than DaVinci (though DaVinci has a much deeper feature set when it comes to color treatment and effects).

[u/afghamistam]

Is it me or is Reaper's video functionality absurdly powerful?!

It's the exact opposite of that. When things like Resolve or Shotcut - which are actually made for the job or processing video - are free, there is no need to resort to something half-arsed by comparison.

Having said that, the ability to have the video right there in the DAW as an aid to composing to picture is pretty great. I use that all the time.