: What is it ?

The Zoom MRS Data Editor is a windows application which handles the editing of Zoom MRS project data.

: What is a Zoom MRS ?

If you don’t know the answer to that question yet then you won’t need this application, but feel free to look here for the answer.

: Why is it ?

The Zoom MRS units have some (minimal) track editing capability built in, but :-

1. Its a pain to use.
2. It Only works on 1 track and 1 v-take at a time.

I found myself wanting to do things such as :-

1. Pruning a few minutes of ‘false start’ from every track and v-take in a project to reclaim the space wasted.

2. Remove a section from all tracks middle of a live recording to reduce the time bouncing each track through an effect takes (and to save space again)

3. Remove all the unused bits of a track after the finish to save space before the track is archived.

I couldn’t find a way of doing any of this .. so I wrote this application to do it.

: Can’t you just export all the tracks to PC as .wav files, edit them using an old wave editor, then reimport them to Zoom ?

That is indeed possible, but would quickly get to be a right pain as the number of tracks and v-takes increases, as each take of a track needs to be exported, trimmed, then imported separately.

Also, if you get the trimming of one track even slightly wrong, it will no longer be in sync with the rest of the tracks, and becomes useless.

Life is too short.

: I’m a Zoom MRS user and want the application. What do I need to do ?

Firstly, the application runs on a windows PC, so you need one of them. The application is written as a ‘.net’ application which is Microsoft’s latest and greatest way of writing windows applications.

What this means is that the application should run fine of Windows 98 / ME / 2K/ and XP(home or pro), but you may have to install a lump of extra code from Microsoft’s web-site if you have not run any .net. applications before.

If you are running Windows 95 then you are probably stuffed .. sorry.

Secondly you need a member of the MRS series kitted out with the USB interface in order to let the PC carry out the editing of the MRS data.

With the ZOOM unit connected to the PC, the application can edit data directly on the MRS hard-drive in exactly the same way as it can edit a copy of the MRS data on its local hard-drive.

: How do I use it ?

Firstly, to install the program, unzip the files in the distribution to a folder somewhere. (Something like ‘C:\program files\zoom_data_editor’ would be logical.)

Secondly (if you want to make life easy) set up a shortcut or start menu item to point to the file mrsdataeditor.exe you unzipped in the previous step.

To run the application, double click on the .exe or the shortcut (if you set one up), or select the program from the start menu (if you set one up).

: Then what ?

Select the project file for the project you want to edit by selecting file-> open -) etc. in time honoured windows style. The project can be on the MRS itself if you have it connected by USB and USB mode active, or a local hard disk copy.

You can then select your edit choices from the edit menu.

: ..and the bad news is ... ?

Until Zoom let me know the details of their file formats, (or until I have some time to do some detective work), the editing happens ‘behind the back’ of the MRS. The result of this is that removing the start or middle of a project will screw up any scene changes, mark points, or system drum/bass machine stuff which happens after the edit point.

If you use the built in drum machine and bass , then this will be a show stopper - but then again you will have recorded everything with a click or drum track on and won’t have any false starts/gaps anyway.

If (like me) you want to do editing to remove problems caused by human error in a live band set-up, then this isn’t (probably) a problem)

The other bad news is that this is a very new version of the software and consequently not as tested as it should be. While I’m pretty confident it can’t do any major harm, please don’t trust any valuable unbacked-up date to it. I don’t want be responsible for anyone losing anything valuable

F.A.Q.

: Where do I get it ?

Here
 

: How much is it?

Its free.

: It’s great/ it doesn’t work/ it’s rubbish. What do I do ?

Tell me about it to zoomdataeditor@howagent.co.uk

: When I try and run it i just get an error message.

The software program is written to use .Net .. Microsofts latest framework. It does unfortunately throw up a horrible message if you have not installed .Net on you PC.

You might see :-

‘Unable to Locate DLL - The Dynamic Link Library mscoree.dll could not be found in the specified path.’

or

‘Please set registry keyHKLM\Software\Microsoft\.NETFramework\ InstallRoot to point to the .NET Framework install location. ‘

or

‘The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135).‘

I was hoping most machines would have this, as windows update tries to download it automatically given any excuse whatsoever .. but this obviously hasn’t worked for you.:-(

To run the Zoom data editor you’ll have to instal .net framework I’m afraid. You can get it here .. but its a big download I’m afraid.

Microsoft recommend you download the .NET Framework 1.1 from Microsoft Windows Update,

but for full details see

http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/downloads/howtoget.asp

: What features are supported.

Currently supported functions of v1.1 are :-

1. Remove start from all v-takes

2. Remove end from all v-takes

3. Remove start and end from all v-takes

4. Remove middle from all v-takes

5. Export all v-takes to mono .wav files.

6. Display/print project settings, including eq, levels, v-takes, insert effects, chorus/delay, reverb, markers, drum selection, sampler selection, project name, st-link, and sub-mix settings.

: How do I remove the start of the audio files..

First, start up the editor and select ‘open Zoom project’.

Select a Zoom project file on you PC , or on your Zom if you have the USB link fired up.

The editor will then repot back on how many v-takes it find :-

tSelect ‘remove start’ from the Edit menu.

Then select the length of time you want removed :-

You will then see a confirmation dialogue :-

Hit ‘OK’ and the eidtor will start processing your project :-

When the processing is complete , you will see a notification box ;-

Hit ‘OK’ to get rid of it.

The edit is now complete.