User manual

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The Project window
Whether to use musical or linear time base depends on
the type of project and recording situation. You can always
change this setting individually for each track, by clicking
the musical/linear time base button in the Inspector or
Track list. Musical time base is indicated by a note symbol,
while linear time base is indicated by a clock symbol.
For more information about tempo changes, see “Back-
ground” on page 395.
Adding events to a track
There are a number of ways to add events to a track:
• By recording (see “Basic recording methods” on page
66).
This is possible for audio and MIDI tracks.
• By selecting “Audio File…” or “Video File…” from the
Import submenu on the File menu.
This opens a file dialog, allowing you to locate the file you wish to import.
When you import a file this way, a clip is created for the file and an event
that plays the whole clip is inserted on the selected track, at the position
of the project cursor.
You can also import MIDI files by using the Import submenu, but this
works in a slightly different way (see “Exporting and importing standard
MIDI files” on page 458).
• By grabbing audio CD tracks and converting them to au-
dio files (see “Importing audio CD tracks” on page 454).
• By importing only the audio portion of a video file and
converting it to an audio file (see “Extracting audio from a
video file” on page 443).
• By using Copy and Paste on the Edit menu.
This allows you to copy all kinds of events between projects. You can
also copy events within the project, from the Audio Part Editor or Sample
Editor.
• By drawing.
Some types of events (markers and automation events) can be drawn di-
rectly into the Project window. For audio and MIDI tracks, you can draw
parts (see “Creating parts” on page 44).
• By dragging files and dropping them on the track at the
desired position.
You can create events by dragging and dropping from the following lo-
cations:
• The desktop.
• The MediaBay.
• The Pool.
• A library (a Pool file that is not attached to a project).
• The “Find media” dialog.
• The Project window of another open project.
• The Audio Part Editor of any open project.
• The Sample Editor of any open project – press [Ctrl]/[Com-
mand] and drag to create an event of the current selection, or
click in the left column of the region list and drag to create an
event from a region.
While you drag the clip in the Project window, its position will be indi-
cated by a marker line and a numerical position box. See also “By using
drag and drop” on page 274.
Audio file import options
When you are importing audio files there are a number of
options concerning how the files should be treated by Cu-
base:
• You can choose to copy the file into the audio folder of the
project and have the project make reference to the copied file
rather than the original file. This helps you keep your project
“self-contained”.
• You can choose to split stereo and multi-channel files into a
number of mono files.
• Furthermore, you may want all files in the project to have the
same sample rate and sample size (resolution).
!
Internally, events on musical time based tracks use the
same high precision for positioning (64 bit floating
point values) as linear time based events. However,
switching between linear and musical time base re-
sults in a very small loss of precision (introduced by
the mathematical operations used for scaling values in
the two different formats). Therefore you should avoid
switching repeatedly between the two modes.
Linear time base selected
Musical time base selected