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The MediaBay
Setting up the MediaBay window
You can show and hide the different sections of the
MediaBay (except for the Results list). This is handy, as it
allows you to save screen space and enables you to dis-
play only the information you need for your work.
Proceed as follows:
1. Click the “Set up Window Layout” button in the lower
left corner of the MediaBay window.
A transparent pane appears, covering the window. In the center of it is a
gray area containing checkboxes for the different sections.
2. Deactivate the checkboxes for the sections you want
to hide from view.
Any changes you make here are directly reflected in the MediaBay window.
Note that the Results list cannot be hidden.
Ö You can also use key commands for this: use the up/
down and left/right arrow keys to step through the check-
boxes and press [Space] to activate/deactivate the de-
sired checkbox.
3. When you are done, click outside the gray area to exit
the Setup mode.
Alternatively, you can wait a few seconds for the pane to disappear auto-
matically.
• You can change the size of the individual MediaBay sec-
tions by dragging the divider line between two sections.
Working with the MediaBay
When working with many music files, the most important
thing is to find the content you need quickly and easily.
The MediaBay helps you find and organize your content in
an effective and efficient way. After the first scan of the
folders you have activated for scanning (which will take a
certain time), all the files that were found are there for you
to browse, tag or modify.
At the beginning, all media files of the supported formats
are listed in the Results section: far too many to get a
good overview. However, by using the search and filter
techniques, you get the desired results very quickly.
The first thing to do is to set up “Locations”, that is folders
or directories on your system that contain media files.
Usually, files are organized in a specific way on your com
-
puter. For example, you might have folders reserved for
audio content, folders for special effects, folders for com-
binations of sounds making up the ambience noise you
need for a certain film take, etc. These can all be set as
different Locations in the MediaBay, allowing you to limit
the files available in the Results list according to context.
Whenever you expand your computer system (for exam-
ple, by adding new hard disks or an external volume con-
taining media files you want to work with), you should
make it a habit to save the new volumes as Locations or
add them to your existing Locations. Afterwards, you can
hide the Define Locations section from view. That way, the
MediaBay occupies less screen space and you can con
-
centrate on the important thing: the Results list.
For this list, you can specify which file types are displayed,
see
“Filtering according to media type” on page 211. If
there are still too many files to choose from, you can nar-
row down the results using a text search function, see
“Performing a text search” on page 212. This is often all it
needs to display what you want, allowing you to proceed
by previewing the files before inserting them into your
project (see
“Previewing files” on page 213). However, if
you need more complex and detailed filtering, this is also
possible using attribute filtering, see
“Applying an attribute
filter” on page 215. Finally, the files can be easily inserted
into the project, by using drag & drop, by double-clicking
or using the context menu options, see
“Inserting the files
into the project” on page 213.