Le And Long Duration Recording Problem, Qs on the "end of song" marker Options

[seneca]

Greetings all,

I have a G4 PowerBook 1.5Ghz with 1.25GB of RAM and I use Logic Express with a Presonus Firepod, and I've been very happy with the results. Last night, one of my bands (www.shrug.com < shameless plug) attempted to record a live show for the first time. We've done very nice demos at our rehearsal space, but wanted to capture an entire show. We are a pretty simple four-piece and we were able to do just fine with the Firepod's 8 ins. Everything was running smoothly until the recording just stopped about 55 mins into the show. It may have been related to something I did, and that's why I'm asking the community here:

While setting up for the night, I dragged the "end of song" marker to the right for quite some time (to ~2500 "bars") while I was trying to remember how to give myself more than the default 15 mins of record time. Then I remembered the "maximum record time" setting in the "set audio path" settings window. So, I went into that area and changed it to 120 mins (more than enough for our sets), and thought everything would be fine. In listening back today, however, it appears that the recording stopped at where I had left the "end of song" marker (which ended up being around 55 mins). So here's my question (finally): Will the EOS marker stop a recording even if the "maximum recording time" is long enough to handle it? If so, how does one work around that? Is it right to just drag the EOS marker to the right for several thousand "bars" just to be safe? Seems kinda ridiculous to me, but I am fairly "newb" at all of this.

On a related (slightly) note, is there a way to change the format of the time bar across the top of the main arrange window? I don't use midi and such, and rarely do we need a click track, so the idea of "bars" as a measuring tool is kind of useless to me. I'd much rather see time, actual minutes and seconds, etc. Then, even if sliding the EOS marker IS the right way to do it, I could easily tell how far I'd gone.

Ok, sorry this was so long winded, but I wanted to be clear. Thanks in advance.

This post has been edited by seneca: Sun 5 Mar 2006, 22:03

[formatj]

The maximun song length in Logic is 2158 bars. N.B. you can also set this in the bottom right corner of the transport bar.
So the lower your song tempo the more audio recording time you have.
e.g. setting your song tempo at:
155bpm gives you about 55 minutes record time
120bpm gives you about 71 minutes record time
30 bpm gives you about 285 minutes record time

you were correct in setting your maximum record time in "set audio record path" window.

To view minutes and seconds in the Bar Ruler/time line in the arrange window choose "View>SMPTE time ruler" in the local menus of the arrange window. (not sure if this is available in Logic Express).

This post has been edited by formatj: Sun 5 Mar 2006, 23:52

[seneca]

Thanks for the quick reply. I should have known about the setting in the transport window, but I hardly ever have that window open since my PB is just a 12" and screen real estate is scarce. As for the SMPTE setting, I can't find it, so it's probably not available in Express. Odd thing, though: The Logc Express Reference PDF that comes with the software says that I should be able to do it, but it's not in any menu they mention either. Weird.

Thanks again.