User guide

Tracktion 4 Reference Manual
180
Freezing Tracks
If you nd that your edits require more processing power than your computer can provide, and up-
grading is not an option, freezing may just be the the answer to your needs.
The freeze function works to free up CPU usage by bouncing frozen tracks into a single audio le. In
many ways it is similar to rendering, but is typically easier to use, and can can be less demanding on
hard drives.
To “freeze” a track:
• Select the track, or tracks you wish to freeze.
• Click the
freeze track button in the properties panel.
Freezing causes Tracktion to render the selected track(s), along with their lters, down to a single
temporary le on your hard-drive. A progress bar will be shown whilst the tracks are being frozen. After
a few moments, the freeze operation will complete. The frozen tracks will be shown with their height at
the smallest size. Any lters used by the tracks will be disabled (Fig. 8.4.2).
By combining all frozen tracks into one single le, Tracktion makes it possible to play as many tracks
as you need. Even laptop computers, usually hindered by slower hard-drives than their desktop coun-
terparts, will be able to handle the demands of large projects, making work on the road a real possibility.
There is a cost to this seemingly unlimited power though. Freezing and unfreezing tracks can take
a long while, as the time taken to freeze or unfreeze will grow longer with every extra frozen track. It is
also not possible to make any changes to a frozen track. Whether it be editing MIDI, audio, or chang-
ing the volume or pan settings, if you need to change some aspect of a track you will need to unfreeze
it. Unfreezing tracks is simply a case of displaying the track properties as normal and clicking the un-
freeze button. Once unfrozen, your tracks will return to normal size, with all lters and settings just as
you left them.
Freeze can be very useful when making audio recordings in edits that already have lots of audio
tracks. With these audio tracks already placing a high load on your hard-drive, recording takes may be
spoilt by drop-outs. Freezing the existing audio tracks will help to ensure that the audio recordings are
not marred by hard-drive performance issues.
When mixing projects that rely on freeze, you may be able to reduce time spent waiting for tracks to
freeze and unfreeze by working on the mix in sections. For example, perhaps you can get away with
freezing only the bass and percussion, leaving you free to mix the vocals and lead instruments. When
you are ready to move on, you could simply unfreeze the edit, and freeze everything that will not be al-
tered during the next mixing section.
If you nd that you need to tweak levels and effects constantly on some tracks, you may want to con-
sider using track rendering instead.
Figure 8.4.2