Question about tempo (BPM)

[Cartman1337]

Is it possible to treat BPM the same in .MPTM format as in .MID?

To clarify; when opening a .MID file most of them will default to 120BPM (or is it 125?), and will have 128 lines in the editor.

But an .MPTM (or .IT or whatever other format) will open at 64 lines at 120BPM. When expanding the pattern to make room for a copy of the 128 line .MID file it will play at half the tempo that the .MID file does when played back by itself, so I have to double the BPM to 240 to keep the same tempo. However this has its drawback with VST instruments that can generate and export their own MIDI, because it detects the BPM setting (240) and plays suggested patterns at twice the speed as the exported audio will be, so I have to switch back and forth with the BPM setting to test, and then can't test with other audio in there, since that then will play at half the intended speed.

In .IT it was possible to change the "ticks/row" setting from 6 to 3, however MIDI instruments still read that as double of what the BPM said, and the .IT format has timing issues that you've made me aware of before, so I switched to .MPTM to have precise timings.

The issue also goes further, because when exporting a track TO .MID it will make two patterns out of each pattern in the .MPTM file and actually play it at double speed, which complicates things if collaborating with other producers who don't use OpenMPT.

So, is there a setting I've missed here too, that can treat tempo the same between these two formats? That would be really helpful!

Thanks!

[Saga Musix]

MIDI files are imported using MPTM's modern tempo mode. Please read about tempo modes here: https://wiki.openmpt.org/Manual:_Song_Properties#Tempo_Mode

The key difference between MPTM's modern tempo mode and IT is the number of ticks per row does not affect the tempo, instead if you want to increase the number of rows per beat, you need to do exactly that: Set the correct number of rows per beat to 8 instead of 4. You can either do this for the entire song in the Song Properties dialog, or change it for individual patterns in the Pattern Properties dialog.
This is exactly what MIDI import does: By default, it sets the rows per beat to 8, so more details can be captured, but you can change this by changing the "quantize" options in the MIDI File Import settings. 1/16th resolution would be equivalent to 4 rows per beat, for example.