Advanced Guide to DDReam Studio 1.50+

Topics:

Comprehending the 3 different time formats
Beat Nudging vs. Beat Growing
How to use "Grow Region" to set multiple regions, each with a different constant BPM
How to use "Grow Region" to "smooth out" beats that you tapped using the B key
How to sync music with noisy waveforms (e.g., heavy metal)
How to use the wave filter
How to work with sub-beats
How to make the beat color solid/white/turquoise?
Why does the BPM alternate between two values/why is the BPM 'off' by a few thousanths?
How to FORCE the BPM to ONE (average) VALUE
Manual vs. Autofill syncing tradeoffs
How to use an automatic BPM calculator along with ddream.
List of Commands

Back to Pocket Guide (Beginners)
Back to DDReam Home
Back to DDR Place



Comprehending the 3 different time formats

Press "T" to cycle through the 3 time formats. This will change the format of the time display on the status bar, and on the grid lines if you enabled them.
SECONDS - default format. It is written with a decimal point "." e.g. 1.234 seconds.
BEATS - Press T once. It is written with a colon ":" e.g., 8:24 means beat 8, tick 24. There are 48 "ticks" per beat to enable quantization of all the notes up to 192nd, except for 128th notes. NOTE: DDReam starts at beat 1 in the editor, but that corresponds to beat ZERO in the SM file itself. Be Careful when editing the text files!
AUDIO SAMPLES - Press T twice. This is written as a plain number. e.g., 1004033 means sample 1004033 of the file. You can think of samples as the "pixels" of a sound file. DDReam allows you to edit at sample resolution if you zoom all the way in.

Note: Why are there no measure lines/time signatures, etc? You can emulate measure lines by changing the color of the beats, and you can emulate time signature changes the same way. Back To Top



Beat Nudging vs. Beat Growing

The Nudge and Grow tools allow you to edit several beats at the same time, so you don't have to edit each beat individually.
Beat Nudging
Beat Growing
Before:
Before: The markers are more or less correctly spaced but are globally shifted offsync by the same amount. This is more commonly known as an “offset, “gap,” or a phase problem.
Before: The markers are initially on-sync, but slowly drift offsync. This is more commonly known as a BPM problem.
After:
Beat Nudge fixes the above problem.
Beat Growing fixes the above problem.
How to do it: 1. Enable Sync Mode (Level Manager, click “Sync Mode” button)
2. Click on the song before the first “bad” marker, then Shift + MWHEEL to nudge all beats from the “bad” marker to the end of the song up/down a few pixels at a time.
1. Enable Sync Mode (Level Manager, click “Sync Mode” button).
2. Click on the song before the first “bad” marker, then Ctrl + MWHEEL to grow a few tenths of a BPM at a time (one click of the wheel may barely make any difference).
More Advanced Options: *Zoom in to achieve a more precise nudge.
*Select any one beat marker to start nudging from that point onwards.
*Select any beat marker to grow all beats from that marker to the end of the song.
* Select multiple beat markers to grow all beats between the selected markers
* Press G to specify an exact average Grow BPM.
You can mix/match nudge and grow as you see fit until you fix your problem.
Back To Top


How to use "Grow Region" to set multiple regions, each with a different constant BPM


In this example, we'll assume your song has two BPM's -- the first BPM (first half of song) is 144.8, and the second BPM (second half of song) is 130.0.

1. Autofill the first BPM (144.8) using the basic Autofill tool from the Pocket guide.
2. Move to the place where the BPM changes to the other value.
3. Use the "Grow Region" tool seen above (hit "G") and type the new value (130.000) and press Enter.
4. Voila! - now you have a new BPM of (130) starting at that location.
5. Repeat 2-4 as necessary.
Back To Top



How to use "Grow Region" to "smooth out" beats that you tapped using the B key

1. Select the beats that you want smoothed.


2. Press G to open the "Grow Region" tool. (average BPM of grow region is provided by default)


3. Press OK.



Back To Top


How to sync music with noisy waveforms (e.g., heavy metal)


Tips:
1. Open the song, and go to the Filter (press I, then OK). Most of the time the filter will give you pretty good looking beats (see above - pink wave). Work with those, in addition to the original yellow waveform.
2. When you place beats, always use the beat assist. Zoom, slow down to 30% or so, and playback your song carefully until the music lines up with the assist tick and/or the waveform.
3. Learn the Speed Edit controls from the Pocket Guide so you can get more done in less time.
4. Most rock and heavy metal music have a traditional drumline, follow that with your ears and the Filtered waveform and put in beats accordingly.
5. Most rock/heavy metal is also pretty steady. For the steady parts, you may want to use the "Autofill beats between other beats" tutorial from the Pocket Guide.
6. Sync the song in sections, and skip the parts you can't get, come back to it later. This is the power of ddream.
7. SAVE, SAVE, SAVE! (Ctrl+S)
Back To Top



How to use the wave filter.


Press "I" to open the Filter options.
"Enable Wave Filter" = Enable or disable. Self Explanatory.
"Filter Type - high-pass" = Display treble sounds (high hats, cymbals, some snares, other high pitched sounds)
"Filter Type - low pass" = Display bass sounds (bass drums, maybe some snares)
"Impulse Response - Infinite" = Gives you better peaks, usually
"Impulse Response - Finite" = Use it if the Infinite option fails (rarely).
"Filter Strength" = self explanatory. Adjust so you can see the peaks more clearly.
"Show filtered/original together" = Self explanatory. Disable this if your FPS is too low with both waves enabled.
"Rescale" = Maximize wave peaks after processing (if you disable, you may get a teeny filtered wave you can't see).

Back To Top



How to work with sub-beats

You are already used to the normal beats in DDReam. They are synced to quarter notes (red 4th notes), if you haven't noticed already.
A subbeat is a sync point on a note other than a quarter note.

How to do it:
1. Insert a subbeat (Shift+B or Shift+Middle Mouse Button)
2. Highlight the subbeat.
3. Press "F" to open the subbeat fraction dialog.
4. Type a number from 1-47 to specify the fraction (this is out of 48).
So if you want to sync that subbeat to an 8th note, you'd type '24' ,because 24 is halfway to 48 (8th notes are halfway between quarter notes)
Similarly, 12th notes are '16' and '32'.
Back To Top



How to make the beat color solid/white/turquoise?

This feature is useful if you want to distinguish your beats from one another.
Just an example, you might want a white beat at every measure,
and a solid beat to remind you of where you left off.
Choose the color scheme that works for you.

You need to be in Sync Mode. To change the beat(s), highlight it (them) with your mouse, and
press Ctrl+1 for white, Ctrl+2 for turquoise, and Ctrl+3 for solid.
For solid white, press Ctrl+1, then Ctrl+3.
The solid color will also lock the beat and prevent accidental editing.
Beat colors are not saved if you save to SM 3.9 format,
because the SM file has no tag for beat color.
That's why you should work in DS format until you are ready to finalize.
Back To Top



Why does the BPM alternate between two values/why is the BPM 'off' by a few thousanths?

The program operates with audio samples (i.e., the individual bytes of the song), like an audio editor, and "back-converts" to BPM
for display and SM file compatibility.

So, due to the conversion, it sometimes displays/alternates the BPM back and forth a few thousandths and writes additional BPM changes to the SM file,
BUT in return you gain pixel-level editing and on the fly controls.

This should NOT affect the sync while you are playing the game.

If you are still bothered by the (converted) BPM doing that, see the tutorial below on forcing to a single value.
Back To Top



How to FORCE the BPM to ONE (average) VALUE

Some people do not want "excessive" BPM changes in the SM file itself,
so here's how to FORCE the BPM to ONE (average) VALUE:

1. From a completed file in DDream, go to File->save As.
2. Choose the file type: "SM File Single BPM (*.sm)".
3. Save.

DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK! Remember to RELOAD and TEST your WHOLE SONG *IN SM* carefully to make sure that your song actually works with a single BPM.
Back To Top



Manual vs. Autofill syncing tradeoffs

Do I really have to manually sync/beat marker every little thing? Or can I use Autofill/Grow? Or Both? It's really up to you.
Syncing every little thing will take a lot longer, and
the sync may be better, but probably not THAT much better than
syncing using Autofill/Grow and your good judgment.
However, in the rare event that the song speeds/up slows down noticeably,
you may want to sync every beat in that area of the song.
Back To Top



How to use an automatic BPM calculator along with ddream.

Answer: There are many auto-BPM calculators available on the Internet.
The good news is that you can use those calculators to help you in DDReam.
1. Run the calculator, and let it tell you the BPM.
Tip from soulscream: I would also like to recommend using WínBPM.... I think MixMeister is useless for getting accurate BPMs for more advanced songs....
2. Place the first beat in ddream to get the Offset.
3. Auto-fill that BPM using ddream.
4. Listen (F3), look, and zoom, edit (or grow/nudge/re-autofill with a slightly different BPM) any beats that are wrong (most of the time, it's perfect already, but for the times it's not perfect, ddream is helpful). If the auto BPM value is really wrong, you may consider starting from scratch, but you don't have to. SAMPLE IMAGES BELOW ONLY FOR ILLUSTRATION.

In this example, a simple grow, or just re-autofilling with a value a little bit lower than the given BPM, will fix the problem:

Back To Top