User Manual

54
Time Shifting Overview
As mentioned back in Chapter 2, in order to do
its time shifting magic, Auto-Tune 8 must first
create a copy of any audio you wish to edit. As
you might imagine, these audio files can be
quite large. Unlike the pitch data generated by
the traditional Track Pitch function, which is
always stored with the instances of Auto-Tune
in your session, the audio recorded for time
shifting by the Track Pitch + Time function is
saved as one or more separate files elsewhere
on your computer.
You will find detailed information about these
files in the Tracked Data Management section
below, but here are some basic guidelines to
keep in mind:
•
If you always work on one computer and
never transfer your projects to other
computers, you don’t really have to worry
about this. Everything will typically take
care of itself.
The one exception is that’s it’s wise to delete
any tracked audio files once you no longer
need them (after bouncing or freezing a
processed track, for example), as they will
otherwise end up sitting on your computer
forever, just taking up space. See below for
details.
•
If you do transfer your sessions to other
computers, any tracked audio files must
be transferred with them. Again, see the
Tracked Data Management section below
for instructions.
•
If you know from the beginning that you
won’t be doing time shifting on a track, use
the Track Pitch function. There’s no point in
recording large files you’ll never need.
•
If you will be doing time shifting in only a
small region of your track, use Track Pitch
+ Time only in that region. You can do a
separate Track Pitch pass for any other
regions that only require pitch correction.
•
Auto-Tune 8’s time shifting is completely
nondestructive. Since Auto-Tune 8 works
on a copy of your audio, time editing always
leaves your original audio intact. At any
point you can simply switch o the Time
Control Enable button to instantly return to
your track’s original timing.
Time Shifting Limits
For both of the time editing tools described
below, the total amount of time compression
or expansion that can be applied to a range of
audio is limited to a 10:1 ratio. That is, a range
can be expanded up to 10 times its original
length or compressed down to 1/10th of its
original length. Once that limit is reached,
further compression or expansion (depending,
of course on which limit we’re talking about) is
not possible.
NOTE: The compression and
expansion limits are cumulative.
So, if you find yourself unable to
make a small time shift, it will almost certainly
be because the region you are editing has
previously been shifted to (or near) its limit.
Data File Status Indicator
The Data File Status indicator
lights whenever Auto-Tune 8 is
accessing a tracked audio data
file. If all is well, the indicator
lights green. If Auto-Tune 8 is,
for some reason, unable to read the file in the
time available, the indicator lights red. See the
next section for suggestions on how to deal
with any such situations.
Computer Power and the Data File
Status Indicator
In addition to the limits described above,
there are a two other related issues that can
aect the useful range of time compression:
computer speed and session complexity.