Reference Guide

182 Controlling playback
The Now time and how to use it
The Now time and how to use it
Every project has a current time, known as the “Now time” on page 2055, which keeps track of
where you are in a project. The Now time appears as a vertical line in the Track view and is
displayed in the Transport module in the Control Bar (see “Transport module” on page 547).
Figure 31. The Transport module in the Control Bar.
A. Current Now time (click to cycle through the available display formats) B. Position C. Meter
The Transport module can show the Now time in several formats. Click the time display to toggle
between the following time formats:
• MBT. Display time as Measure:Beat:Tick.
• HMSF. Display time as Hour:Minute:Second:Frame. This format is also referred to as SMPTE
time.
• Milliseconds. Display time in milliseconds.
• Samples. Display time in samples.
The measure, beat, and tick number (MBT) identifies the Now time in musical time units. Ticks are
subdivisions of quarter notes and indicate the timebase of the project. For more information about
the timebase, see “Setting the MIDI timing resolution” on page 276. Here are some examples of
times expressed in measure, beat, and tick (MBT) format:
The hours-minutes-seconds-frames format is commonly referred to as the SMPTE time. SMPTE is
the acronym for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. In this format, time is
measured in hours, minutes, seconds, and frames. It’s not necessary for a project to begin at time
zero in this format—any time can be used to represent the start of a project. If you are synchronizing
SONAR with an external device whose start time is not 0, you must offset SONAR to match the
Time What it means
1:01:000 First beat of the first measure
9:04:000 Fourth beat of the ninth measure
4:02:060 The 60th tick of the second beat of the fourth measure
Table 13.
A
B C