Operation Manual
Cristina Bachmann, Heiko Bischoff, Marion Bröer, Sabine Pfeifer, Heike Schilling Thanks to: Ashley Shepherd The information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. The software described by this document is subject to a License Agreement and may not be copied to other media except as specifically allowed in the License Agreement.
Table of Contents
9 About this manual 51 Working with projects 10 Welcome! 11 System requirements and installation 12 12 14 15 15 15 About this chapter Minimum requirements Hardware installation Installing Nuendo Defragmenting the hard disk (Windows only) Register your software 16 Setting up your system 17 22 23 23 23 Setting up audio Setting up MIDI Connecting a synchronizer Setting up video Optimizing audio performance 27 VST Connections 28 28 28 32 32 32 36 About this chapter The VST Connections window Se
122 The arranger track 123 123 124 126 127 127 215 VST instruments and instrument tracks Introduction Setting up the arranger track Working with arranger events Flattening the arranger chain Live mode Arranging your music to video 216 216 216 218 220 129 The transpose functions 130 130 133 220 221 221 225 225 Introduction Transposing your music Other functions 136 Using markers 137 138 142 145 145 Introduction The Marker window Marker tracks Marker key commands Exporting and importing markers 226 S
282 The Sample Editor 362 Track Quick Controls 283 287 292 293 297 299 302 312 363 363 364 Window overview Operations Options and settings AudioWarp: Tempo matching audio Free Warp Working with hitpoints and slices VariAudio Flattening realtime processing 364 366 Remote controlling Nuendo 367 367 368 369 371 371 371 314 The Audio Part Editor 315 315 315 316 318 319 Background Opening the Audio Part Editor Window overview Operations Common methods Options and Settings Introduction Setting Up Operati
403 The MIDI editors 470 The Track Sheet 404 404 406 408 422 424 425 427 429 429 471 472 Introduction Opening a MIDI editor The Key Editor – Overview Key Editor operations The In-Place Editor The List Editor – Overview List Editor operations Working with SysEx messages Recording SysEx parameter changes Editing SysEx messages 473 Export Audio Mixdown 474 474 475 478 483 483 483 484 484 485 487 492 493 495 Introduction Opening the Logical Editor Window overview Setting up filter conditions Selecting a f
535 Audio editing to picture 580 Key commands 536 536 537 539 541 542 543 581 581 586 587 Introduction Video timeline and the grid Conforming production audio Adding sound design elements Conforming to picture changes Synchronize tempo maps to picture Using standard Nuendo tools for postproduction purposes 591 Index 548 ReWire 549 549 550 550 551 551 551 Introduction Launching and quitting Activating ReWire channels Using the transport and tempo controls How the ReWire channels are handled in Nuendo
1 About this manual
Welcome! Similarly, [Alt]/[Option]-[X] means “press [Alt] under Windows or [Option] under Mac OS X, then press [X]”. This is the Operation Manual for Steinberg’s Nuendo. Here you will find detailed information about all the features and functions in the program. Ö Please note that this manual often refers to right-clicking, for example, to open context menus. If you are using a Mac with a single-button mouse, hold down [Ctrl] and click.
2 System requirements and installation
About this chapter General notes on how to set up your system This chapter describes the requirements and installation procedures for the Windows version and the Mac version of Nuendo.
• Windows Vista/Windows 7 – If there is no dedicated ASIO driver available, you can also use the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver. • Mac – The audio hardware must be supplied with Mac OS Xcompatible drivers (CoreAudio or ASIO). Using the built-in audio hardware of the Macintosh (Mac only) Although Nuendo is designed with multi-channel input and output in mind, it is of course possible to use the program with “basic” stereo inputs and outputs.
Hardware installation • Steinberg software products always come with a license activation code, but not always with an USB-eLicenser. Copy protection If you want to activate a license for such a Steinberg software (e. g. an update/upgrade, or a VSTi) on the USB-eLicenser you received with your original version of Nuendo, click the “Enter Activation Code” button of the eLicenser Control Center and follow the instructions. ! Please read the following section before installing the Nuendo software.
Testing the card Macintosh To make sure that the audio card works as expected, perform the following tests: 1. Double-click the file called “Nuendo 5.mpkg”. • Use any software included with the audio card to make sure that you can record and play back audio without problems. • If the card is accessed via a standard operating system driver, try playing back audio using the computer’s standard audio application (e. g. Windows Media Player or Apple iTunes).
3 Setting up your system
Setting up audio ! Multi-channel input and output Make sure that all equipment is turned off before making any connections! Connecting audio Exactly how to set up your system depends on many different factors, e. g. the kind of project you wish to create, the external equipment you want to use, or the computer hardware available to you. Therefore, the following sections can only serve as examples. How you connect your equipment, i. e.
• When using the Mixer inside Nuendo, you can use the inputs on your audio hardware to connect microphones and/or external devices. Use the outputs to connect your monitoring equipment. You can create very complex setups using external instruments and external effects, and integrate Nuendo seamlessly with all your external equipment using the Control Room feature (see the chapters “VST Connections” on page 27 and “Control Room” on page 179).
Making settings for the audio hardware Most audio cards come with one or more small applications that allow you to configure the inputs of the hardware to your liking. This includes: • Selecting which inputs/outputs are active. • Setting up word clock synchronization (if available). • Turning monitoring via the hardware on/off (see “About monitoring” on page 21). • Setting levels for each input.
5. Bring up the control panel for the audio hardware and adjust the settings as recommended by the audio hardware manufacturer. If you are using audio hardware with a DirectX driver (Windows only) ! • Under Windows, you open the control panel by clicking the Control Panel button. The control panel that opens when you click this button is provided by the audio hardware manufacturer – not Nuendo (unless you use DirectX, see below). Hence it will be different for each audio card brand and model.
Setting up the input and output ports About monitoring Once you have selected the driver and made the settings as described above, you need to specify which inputs and outputs will be used and name these: In Nuendo, monitoring means listening to the input signal while preparing to record or while recording. There are three ways to monitor: 1. In the Device Setup dialog, select your driver in the Devices list on the left to display the driver settings for your audio hardware.
Setting up MIDI ! Setting MIDI Thru and Local On/Off Make sure that all equipment is turned off before making any connections! This section describes how to connect and set up MIDI equipment. If you have no MIDI equipment, you can skip this section. Note that this is only an example – you might need or want to hook things up differently! Connecting the MIDI equipment In this example we assume that you have a MIDI keyboard and an external MIDI sound module.
Connecting a synchronizer Setting up MIDI ports in Nuendo The Device Setup dialog lets you set up your MIDI system as follows: Ö When you change MIDI port settings in the Device Setup dialog, these are automatically applied. Showing or hiding MIDI Ports The MIDI ports are listed in the Device Setup dialog on the MIDI Port Setup page. By clicking in the “Visible” column for a MIDI input or output, you can specify whether or not it is listed on the MIDI pop-up menus in the program.
Short response times (latency) Another aspect of performance is response time. The term “latency” refers to the “buffering”, i. e. the temporary storing, of small chunks of audio data during various steps of the recording and playback process on a computer. The more and larger those chunks, the higher the latency. High latency is most irritating when playing VST instruments and when monitoring through the computer, i. e. when listening to a live audio source via the Nuendo Mixer and effects.
Audio hardware and driver The hardware and its driver can have some effect on regular performance. A badly written driver can reduce the performance of your computer. But where the hardware driver design makes the most difference is with latency.
• The lower bar graph shows the hard disk transfer load. If the overload indicator (on the far right) lights up, the hard disk is not supplying data fast enough to the computer. You may need to reduce the number of tracks playing back by using the Disable Track function (see “About track disable/enable” on page 87). If this does not help, you need a faster hard disk. Ö The overload indicator may occasionally blink, e. g. when you locate during playback.
4 VST Connections
About this chapter Setting up busses This chapter focuses on the settings you can perform in the VST Connections window. Here you can set up input and output busses, group and FX channels, external effects, and external instruments. Furthermore you can use this window to configure the Control Room and access the Control Room itself. Nuendo uses a system of input and output busses to transfer audio between the program and the audio hardware.
Let’s say you are using audio hardware with eight analog inputs and outputs and digital stereo connections (10 inputs and outputs all in all). Furthermore, you work with a surround setup in 5.1 format. In this scenario, you may want to add the following busses: Input busses • Most likely you need at least one stereo input bus assigned to an analog input pair. This will let you record stereo material.
Mac OS X only: Retrieving channel names Adding input and output busses For some audio cards, you can automatically retrieve the ASIO channel names for the ports of your audio hardware. Proceed as follows: Depending on whether you have selected the Inputs or the Outputs tab in the VST Connections window, the corresponding busses are listed, with the following information: 1. Open the Device Setup dialog via the Devices menu. Column Description 2.
Setting the Main Mix bus (the default output bus) 2. Select a channel configuration from the “Add Child Bus” submenu. The Main Mix is the output bus that each new audio, group or FX channel is automatically routed to. As you can see, you can create stereo child busses (routed to various speaker channel pairs in the surround bus) or other surround bus formats (with fewer channels than the “parent bus”). Any of the output busses in the VST Connections window can be the default output bus.
Setting up group and FX channels The Group/FX tab in the VST Connections window shows all group channels and FX channels in your project. You can create new group or FX channels by clicking the corresponding Add button. This is the same as creating group channel tracks or FX channel tracks in the Project window (see “Using group channels” on page 170 and the chapter “Audio effects” on page 195). However, the VST Connections window also allows you to create child busses for group and FX channels.
Setting up external effects The following options are available: To set up an external effect in the VST Connections window, proceed as follows: Setting Description Delay If your hardware effect device has an inherent delay (latency), enter this value here, as it allows Nuendo to compensate for that delay during playback. You can also let the delay value be determined by the program: Rightclick the Delay column for the effect and select “Check User Delay”.
pensation. When you have defined a MIDI device for the effect, the corresponding Device window will be opened. When Studio Manager 2 is installed, and you have set up a corresponding OPT editor, this OPT editor is displayed. 4. Click in the Device Port column for the “left” and “right” ports of the Return Bus and select the inputs on your audio hardware to which you connected the external instrument. 5. If you like, make additional settings for the bus.
When you select the external instrument in the VST Instruments window, the following happens: About the “plug-in could not be found” message • A parameter window for the external device opens automatically. This may either be the Device window, allowing you to create a generic device panel, an OPT editor window or a default editor. For information about the Device window, the MIDI Device Manager and User device panels, see the chapter “Using MIDI devices” on page 380.
• Use the arrow buttons next to the Tail Size value field to set the desired Tail length, i. e. the range after the part boundary is also to be included in the freeze. You can also click directly in the value field and enter the desired value manually (the maximum value being 60 s). • When the Tail Size is set to 0 s (default), the freezing will only take into account the data within the Part boundaries. Editing operations Identifying exclusive port assignments In some cases (i. e.
Automatically renaming selected busses Changing the port assignment for multiple busses You can rename all the selected busses at once using incrementing numbers or letters from the alphabet. To change the port assignment (or the output routing in case of groups/FX channels) for multiple entries in the Bus Name column at the same time, you need to select the corresponding busses first.
5 The Project window
Window Overview The Project window is the main window in Nuendo. This provides you with an overview of the project, allowing you to navigate and perform large scale editing. Each project has one Project window. Toolbar Info line Status line Project overview Ruler Inspector The track list with various track types The event display, showing audio parts and events, MIDI parts, automation, markers, etc.
Track type Description About parts and events Instrument This allows you to create a track for a dedicated instrument, making VST instrument handling easier and more intuitive. Instrument tracks have a corresponding channel strip in the Mixer. Each instrument track can have any number of automation tracks in the Project window. However, Volume and Pan are automated from within the Mixer.
The track list The Inspector The track list displays all the tracks used in a project. It contains name fields and settings for the tracks. Different track types have different controls in the track list. To see all the controls you may have to resize the track in the track list (see “Resizing tracks in the track list” on page 59). The area to the left of the track list is called the Inspector. This shows additional controls and parameters for the track you have selected in the track list.
Inspector handling For most track classes, the Inspector is divided into a number of sections, each containing different controls for the track. Which sections are available in the Inspector depends on the selected track. • You can hide or show sections by clicking on their names. Clicking the name for a hidden section brings it into view and hides the other sections. [Ctrl]/[Command]-clicking the section name allows you to hide or show a section without affecting the other sections.
Parameter Description Instrument tracks Inserts section Allows you to add insert effects to the track, see the chapters “Audio effects” on page 195 and “MIDI realtime parameters and effects” on page 372. The Edit button at the top of the section opens the control panels for the added insert effects. As explained in the chapter “VST instruments and instrument tracks” on page 215, the Inspector for an instrument track shows some of the sections from VST instrument channels and MIDI tracks.
FX channel tracks are automatically placed in a special folder, for easier management. When this folder track is selected, the Inspector shows the folder and the FX channels it contains. You can click one of the FX channels shown in the folder to have the Inspector show the settings for that FX channel – this way you do not have to “open” a folder track to access the settings for the FX channels in it.
Option Description It displays the following information: Performance Meter When this is activated, meters for ASIO time usage and hard disk transfer load are displayed, see “About the VST Performance window” on page 25. Option Description Record Time Max This displays the time you have left for recording, depending on your project settings and the available hard disk space. Click in this field to display the remaining record time in a separate window.
The following elements can be selected for display and editing on the info line: • • • • • • • • Audio events Audio parts MIDI parts Video events Markers Automation curve points Transpose events Arranger events • Adjusting the Velocity field shifts the velocity for the selected parts – the value you specify is added to the velocities of the notes in the parts. Again, this velocity shift only affects the notes on playback, and again, the value you specify is added to the Vel.Shift.
The ruler • To set the display format globally (for all windows), use the primary display format pop-up on the Transport panel, or hold down [Ctrl]/[Command] and select a display format in any ruler. The ruler at the top of shows the timeline. Initially, the Project window ruler uses the display format specified in the Project Setup dialog (see “The Project Setup dialog” on page 57), as do all other rulers and position displays in the project.
Note that ruler tracks are completely independent from the main event display ruler, as well as rulers and position displays in other windows. This means that: • Each ruler track in a project can have its own display format. • Ruler tracks are not affected by the display format setting in the Project Setup dialog (see “The Project Setup dialog” on page 57). • Ruler tracks are not affected if you set the display format globally with the primary time display in the Transport panel.
Grid Relative If you select this Snap type, events and parts will not be “magnetic” to the grid. Rather, the grid determines the step size for moving the events. This means that a moved event will keep its original position relative to the grid. The same principle works when changing the order of more than two events: 1 2 3 For example, if an event starts at the position 3.04.
Auto-Scroll “Auto-Scroll” and “Suspend Auto-Scroll when Editing” are activated When the Auto-Scroll option is activated, the waveform display will scroll during playback, keeping the project cursor visible in the window. You can find the Auto-Scroll button on the toolbars of the Project window and all editors. • If the “Stationary Cursors” option is activated in the Preferences dialog (Transport page), the project cursor will be positioned in the middle of the screen (if possible).
6 Working with projects
Creating new projects • Click Activate to open and activate the new project. The New Project command on the File menu allows you to create a new project, either as an empty project or based on a template: The active project is indicated by the lit Activate Project button in the upper left corner of the Project window. To activate a different project, simply click its Activate Project button. 1. Select “New Project…” from the File menu. The templates list is displayed. By default, this list is empty.
Saving projects Save as Template Save and Save As The commands Save and Save As allow you to save the active project as a project file (file extension “.npr”). The Save command stores the project under its current name and location, while Save As allows you to rename and/or relocate the file. If a project has not been saved yet or if it has not been changed since it was last saved, only Save As is available.
Auto Save • If any processing has been applied, you will be asked whether you want to Freeze Edits. If you do this, you do not have to archive the Edits folder. Everything belonging to the project will be contained in the project file and the Audio folder. If you activate the Auto Save option in the Preferences dialog (General page), Nuendo will automatically save backup copies of all open projects with unsaved changes. These backup copies are named “-xx.
Cleanup 1. Select “Back up Project…” from the File menu. A file dialog opens in which you can choose an existing empty folder or create a new folder to save the project. 2. Click OK. The “Back up Project Options” dialog opens. The Cleanup function on the File menu helps you to save hard disk space by locating and – if you like – deleting unused audio files in the project folders on your disk. 1. Select “Cleanup…” from the File menu. If there are any open projects, an alert shows.
Startup Options • If you hold down [Ctrl]/[Command] while launching Nuendo. The “On Startup” pop-up menu in the Preferences dialog (General page) allows you to specify what happens when you launch Nuendo. The following options are available: • To open a project, select it and click the “Open Selection” button. Option Description Do Nothing Nuendo launches without opening a project. Open Last Project The last saved project is opened on launch.
The Project Setup dialog Setting Description Start The start time of the project. Allows you to have the project start at another time than zero. Also used for setting the sync start position when synchronizing Nuendo to external devices (see the chapter “Synchronization” on page 496). The format of this value is always in timecode. When you change this setting you will be asked whether you want to keep the project content at its timecode positions.
Zoom and view options Setting Description Bar Offset This works just like “Display Offset” described above, in that it offsets the time positions in the ruler by a number of bars, allowing you to compensate for the Start position setting. The difference is that Bar Offset is only used when the “Bars+Beats” display format is selected (see “The ruler” on page 47). Sample Rate The sample rate at which Nuendo records and plays audio.
• You can zoom the contents of parts and events vertically, using the waveform zoom slider in the top right corner of the event display. • You can use the Track scale pop-up (opened by clicking the arrow button above the vertical zoom control) to set the number of tracks to view in the current Project window. This is useful when viewing quiet audio passages. The track height will be adjusted to show only the number of tracks specified on the pop-up menu.
2. Hold down [Alt]/[Option] and drag the lower border of the track until it reaches the desired height. • If you want to rename a preset, select “Organize…” from the pop-up menu. Now, when you select this track, (and “Enlarge Selected Track” is activated), it will be enlarged. It will revert to the changed size, when you select a different track. In the dialog that opens, select the desired preset in the list and click the Rename button.
Handling tracks Option Description Transparent Events When this is activated, events and parts will be transparent, showing the waveforms and MIDI events only. Show Data on Small Track Heights If this is activated, the contents of events and parts will be shown, even if the height of a track is very small. The Event Display–Audio page contains settings for audio events: To add a track to the project, open the “Add Track” submenu from the Project menu and select a track type.
Disabling audio tracks • To select a track, click on it in the track list. A selected track is indicated by a light gray color in the track list. This track is selected. Audio tracks can be disabled by selecting “Disable Track” from the track list context menu. Disabling a track is similar to muting it (see “Muting events” on page 75), since a disabled track will not be played back.
In the Preferences dialog (Editing–Project & Mixer page), you can find the following option affecting the track folding behavior: • Deep Track Folding When this is activated, any folding settings you make in the Track Folding submenu of the Project menu also affect the subelements of the tracks, i. e. if you fold in a folder track which contains 10 audio tracks 5 of which have several automation tracks open, all these audio tracks within the folder track will be folded in as well.
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.
The Preferences dialog (Editing–Audio page) contains a setting that lets you decide which options to use. Select one of the following options on the “On Import Audio Files” pop-up menu: There are two ways to do this: • Draw a part on a MIDI or audio track with the Pencil tool. You can also draw parts by pressing [Alt]/[Option] and using the Arrow tool. • Double-click with the Arrow tool on a MIDI or audio track, between the left and right locator.
• Moving tracks into a folder In the track list, click on a track that you want to move into a folder and drag it onto a folder track. An arrow pointing to a folder appears when you drag the track onto the folder track in the list. The track is placed in the folder track, and all parts and events on the track will be represented by a corresponding folder part (see below). You can also create subfolders by moving one folder track into another.
Auditioning audio parts and events Ö When scrubbing with the mouse, insert effects are always bypassed. Audio parts and events can be auditioned in the Project window with the Play tool: Ö It is also possible to “scrub” all audio and video tracks of your project with the Jog wheel and Shuttle Speed control on the Transport panel, see “The shuttle speed control” on page 87. ! When auditioning, audio will be routed directly to the Control Room, if the Control Room is activated.
Option Description From Start to Cursor Selects all events that begin to the left of the project cursor. From Cursor to End Selects all events that end to the right of the project cursor. Equal Pitch These are available in the MIDI Editors (see “Selecting notes” on page 412) and the Sample Editor (see “Using the Select menu” on page 289). Select Controllers in Note Range This is available in the MIDI Editors (see “Selecting controllers within the note range” on page 412).
Moving events • Use the Nudge buttons on the toolbar. To move events in the Project window, use the following methods: These move the selected events to the left or right. The amount of movement depends on the selected display format (see “The Project Setup dialog” on page 57) and the value set on the Grid pop-up menu. • Click and drag to a new position. All selected events are moved, maintaining their relative positions. You can only drag events to tracks of the same type.
To align audio events or parts to selected parts or events, proceed as follows: 1. Select an event or part of any type on any track. Modifier Icon [Ctrl]/[Command] -[Shift] -[Alt]/[Option] This copies the audio event/part and aligns its start to the end of the selected event, part or range. This function is available when you move the mouse on the beginning of the non-selected event. [Ctrl]/[Command] -[Shift] This aligns the end of the audio event/part to the end of the selected event, part or range.
Duplicating events Events can be duplicated in the following ways: • Hold down [Alt]/[Option] and drag the event to a new position. If Snap is activated, this determines to which positions you can copy the events (see “The Snap function” on page 48). ! • You can also perform the Repeat function by dragging: Select the event(s) to repeat, press [Alt]/[Option], click the handle in the lower right corner of the last selected event and drag to the right.
Renaming events Gluing events together By default, audio events show the name of their clip, but you can enter a separate descriptive name for separate events if you like. This is done by selecting the event and typing in a new name in the “Description” field in the info line, or by using the Rename Object command from the Edit menu. You can glue events together using the Glue Tube tool.
The actual resizing is done by clicking and dragging the lower left or right corner of the event. If Snap is activated, the Snap value determines the resulting length (see “The Snap function” on page 48). Resizing events using time stretch If you want to resize a part and make its contents “fit” the new size, you should use this sizing mode. Proceed as follows: 1. Click the Arrow icon on the toolbar and click again to select the “Sizing Applies Time Stretch” option from the pop-up menu. 2.
Sliding the contents of an event or part Locking events You can move the contents of an event or part without changing its position in the Project window. By default, this is done by pressing [Alt]/[Option]-[Shift], clicking in the event or part and dragging to the left or right. If you want to make sure that you do not edit or move an event by accident, you can lock it.
Muting events Removing events To mute individual events in the Project window, proceed as follows: To remove an event from the Project window, use any of the following methods: • To mute or unmute a single event, click on it with the Mute tool. • Click on the event with the Erase tool.
Editing in Lane Display mode When you are recording in Stacked cycle recording mode, each take ends up on a separate lane on the track, see “Recording audio in Stacked mode” on page 101 and “Cycle Record mode: Stacked/Stacked 2 (No Mute)” on page 105. However, you can also select this lane mode manually for individual tracks, and use it when editing in the Project window. This makes it easier to view and handle overlapping events and parts. Audio tracks 1.
3. To merge all overlapping parts into one, make sure that the MIDI track is selected, position the left and right locators around the parts and select “Merge MIDI in Loop” from the MIDI menu. In the dialog that opens, activate the Erase Destination option and click OK. This merges all unmuted MIDI between the locators to a single part. 4. To turn off Lanes mode, select “Lanes Off” from the Lane Display Type pop-up menu.
The Range Selection pop-up menu • By using the Trim buttons on the toolbar. If you want to work with different selection ranges the Range Selection pop-up menu comes in handy. Activating one of the options (Selection A or Selection B) from the pop-up menu will not only select the corresponding selection but also cause the event display to switch between the two locations. The left Trim buttons will move the start of the selection range and the right buttons will move the end.
Using Cut, Copy, and Paste Function Description When working with selection ranges, you can either use Cut, Copy and Paste on the Edit menu, or use the functions “Cut Time” and “Paste Time” on the Range submenu on the Edit menu. These work differently to their related functions on the Edit menu: Crop All events or parts that are partially within the selection range are cropped, that is, sections outside the selection range are removed.
To undo and redo your actions, proceed as follows: 1. On the Edit menu, select “History…”. The Edit History dialog opens. A branch is created when you have undone at least one action. All following actions you perform will then be gathered in a new branch. The dialog contains a list of all your edits, with the most recent action at the bottom of the list. The Action column displays the name of the action while the Time column tells you when this action was performed.
The Preferences dialog Saving a preference preset When you have made your preferences settings, proceed as follows to save all settings as a preset: 1. Make sure that the “Store marked preferences only” option is not activated. This is because this option is used for saving partial settings (see below), as opposed to complete settings. 2. Click the Store button in the lower left section of the Preferences dialog.
When you have made your specific preferences settings, proceed as follows to save the partial settings as a preset: 1. Activate “Store marked preferences only”. A new “Store” column is added to the Preferences list. • Gluing folder parts together with the Glue tube tool. This will only work if the adjacent folder parts contain events or parts on the same track. • Resizing a folder part resizes the contained events and parts according to the selected resizing method, see “Resizing events” on page 72.
7 Playback and the Transport panel
Background Metronome click on/off This chapter describes the various methods available for controlling playback and transport functions in Nuendo. The Transport panel Below you can find a brief description of each item on the Transport panel. The pictures below show the Transport panel with all controls visible. The Transport panel is divided into the following sections, from left to right.
Changing the Transport panel setup You can customize the appearance of the Transport panel by right-clicking anywhere on the panel and selecting/deselecting the corresponding options on the context menu. • By using the position slider above the transport buttons in the Transport panel. The range of the slider relates to the Length setting in the Project Setup dialog. Hence, moving the slider all the way to the right will take you to the end of the project.
also independent, giving you three different time units shown at the same time (in the Project window, you can also create additional ruler tracks – see “Using multiple rulers – ruler tracks” on page 47). The following rules apply: There are several ways to set locator positions: • To set the left locator, press [Ctrl]/[Command] and click at the desired position in the ruler. Similarly, pressing [Alt]/[Option] and clicking in the ruler sets the right locator.
The shuttle speed control • The “Use Inserts While Scrubbing” option in the Preferences dialog on the Transport–Scrub page allows you to activate insert effects for scrubbing with the jog wheel. By default, insert effects are bypassed. The shuttle speed control (the outer wheel on the Transport panel) allows you to play back the project at any speed (four times the playback speed at maximum), forwards or backwards. This is a quick way to locate or “cue” to any position in the project.
• Select “Enable Track” from the track context menu to re-enable disabled tracks. Playback functions Apart from the standard transport controls on the Transport panel, you can also find a number of functions on the Transport menu that can be used to control playback.
The Virtual Keyboard (Nuendo Expansion Kit only) 3. Activate the Record button and press a key on your computer keyboard to enter a note. The Virtual Keyboard can be displayed in the Transport panel. It allows you to play and record MIDI notes by using your computer keyboard or mouse. This is useful if you have no external MIDI instrument at hand and you do not want to draw in notes with the Pencil tool. The Virtual Keyboard can perform all functions that can be controlled by external MIDI keyboards, e.
8 Recording
Background Record-enabling tracks This chapter describes the various recording methods that you can use in Nuendo. As it is possible to record both audio and MIDI tracks, both recording methods are covered in this chapter. Nuendo can record on a single track or on several tracks (audio and/or MIDI) simultaneously. To make a track ready for recording, activate the Record Enable button for the track in the track list, in the Inspector, or in the Mixer.
Manually activating recording You activate recording by clicking the Record button on the Transport panel or toolbar or by using the corresponding key command (by default [*] on the numeric keypad). 3. Activate playback from some position before the left locator. When the project cursor reaches the left locator, recording is automatically activated.
• To record in cycle mode, you can start recording from the left locator, from before the locators or from within the cycle, in Stop mode or during playback. As soon as the project cursor reaches the right locator, it will jump back to the left locator and continue recording a new lap. • The results of cycle recording depend on the selected cycle record mode and are different for audio (see “Recording audio in cycle mode” on page 99) and MIDI (see “Recording MIDI in cycle mode” on page 105).
• The higher the bit resolution, the larger the files and the more strain is put on the disk system. If this is an issue, you may want to lower the record format setting. ! For further information on the options in the Project Setup dialog, see “The Project Setup dialog” on page 57. RAM requirements for recording When recording live music performances, or during large postproduction projects, you will often simultaneously record on a large number of tracks at the same time.
• In the Inspector, you select an input bus on the Input Routing pop-up menu in the top section. As described in the section “The Inspector” on page 41, the Inspector shows the settings for the selected track. Ö You can also select an FX channel as recording source. In this case, only the output of the FX channel will be recorded. For more information about the routing possibilities, see “Routing” on page 168.
Setting input levels When recording digital sound, it is important to set the input levels correctly – loud enough to ensure low noise and high audio quality, but not so loud that clipping (digital distortion) occurs. Clipping typically occurs in the audio hardware when a too loud analog signal is converted to digital in the hardware’s A/D converters. • It is also possible to get clipping when the signal from the input bus is written to a file on your hard disk.
Monitoring • Tapemachine Style In this context, “monitoring” means listening to the input signal during recording. There are three fundamentally different ways to do this: via Nuendo, externally (by listening to the signal before it reaches Nuendo), or by using ASIO Direct Monitoring (which is a combination of both other methods – see below). Monitoring via Nuendo If you monitor via Nuendo, the input signal is mixed in with the audio playback.
ASIO Direct Monitoring Recording If your audio hardware is ASIO 2.0 compatible, it may support ASIO Direct Monitoring (this feature may also be available for audio hardware with Mac OS X drivers). In this mode, the actual monitoring is done in the audio hardware, by sending the input signal back out again. However, monitoring is controlled from Nuendo. This means that the audio hardware’s direct monitoring feature can be turned on or off automatically by Nuendo, just as when using internal monitoring.
• In “Normal” or “Merge” mode, recording where something has already been recorded creates a new audio event that overlaps the previous one(s). There are five different modes on the Transport panel, but the first two modes only apply to MIDI recording. For audio cycle recording, the following applies: When you record audio, there is no difference between “Normal” and “Merge” mode – the difference only applies to MIDI recording (see “About overlap and the Record Mode setting” on page 104).
To select another take for playback, proceed as follows: 1. Holding [Alt]/[Option], right-click the event and select “To Front” on the context menu. Whether a right click opens the context menu or the toolbox is determined by the “Popup Toolbox on Right Click” option in the Preferences dialog (Editing–Tools page). Depending on this setting the context menu is opened by right-clicking or by right-clicking holding any modifier key.
Recording audio in Stacked mode When you record audio in cycle mode and the “Stacked” Cycle Record Mode is selected on the Transport panel, the following happens: 4. When you are satisfied with the result, select all events on all lanes and select “Delete Overlaps” from the Advanced submenu of the Audio menu. This puts all events back on a single lane and resizes events so that overlapped sections are removed. • Each complete recorded cycle lap is turned into a separate audio event.
• Nuendo processes audio internally in 32 Bit Float format – recording in the same format means the audio quality will be kept absolutely pristine. 5. Pull down the View Options pop-up menu for the input channel and select “Inserts”. The reason is that the effect processing in the input channel (as well as any level or EQ settings you make there) is done in 32 Bit Float format.
MIDI recording specifics Naming MIDI ports in Nuendo Activating MIDI Thru MIDI inputs and outputs are often displayed with unnecessarily long and complicated names. However, you can rename your MIDI ports to more descriptive names: Normally, when working with MIDI, you will have MIDI Thru activated in Nuendo, and Local Off selected in your MIDI instrument(s).
Setting the MIDI channel and output The MIDI channel and output settings determine where the recorded MIDI is routed during playback, but are also relevant for MIDI Thru in Nuendo. Channel and output can be selected in the track list or in the Inspector. The procedure below describes how to make the settings in the Inspector, but it can be done in largely the same manner in the track list as well. 1.
About punch in and out on MIDI tracks Performing and setting up manual and automatic punch in/out recording for MIDI tracks is done in exactly the same way as for audio tracks. There is one thing to note, however: 4. On the next lap, you wait until bar seven and start playing. This way you will overwrite the last two bars only. 5. Make sure that you stop playing before the next lap begins – otherwise you will overwrite the entire take.
5. When you are happy with the result, close the editor. Program Change messages 6. To turn it all into a single MIDI part (containing your “perfect take”), select all parts and select “Merge MIDI in Loop” from the MIDI menu. Normally, when you switch from one program to another on your keyboard (or whatever you use to record), a number corresponding to that program is sent out via MIDI as a Program Change message.
Retrospective Record • Solo Record in MIDI Editors This feature allows you to capture any MIDI notes you play in Stop mode or during playback and turn them into a MIDI part “after the fact”. This is possible due to the fact that Nuendo can capture MIDI input in buffer memory, even when not recording. If this is activated and you open a part for editing in a MIDI editor, its track is automatically record-enabled.
Section Description Channels If you activate a channel button, no MIDI messages on that MIDI channel will be recorded or thruput. Already recorded messages will, however, be played back normally. Controller Allows you to prevent certain MIDI controller types from being recorded or thruput. To filter out a controller type, select it from the list at the top of the Controller section and click “Add”. It will appear on the list below.
• To activate the metronome click, activate the Click button on the Transport panel. If “Use Musical Precount” is selected, the following precount options are available: You can also select the “Metronome On” option on the Transport menu or use the corresponding key command (by default [C]). Option Description Precount Bars Sets the number of bars the metronome counts in before recording starts.
Option Description 5. Activate the “Use Time-Linear Count-In” option. Lo Note/ Velocity Sets the MIDI note number and velocity for the “low notes” (the other beats). Options for the time-linear count-in are displayed in the “Count-In Options” section. Activate Audio Click Selects whether or not the metronome sounds via the audio hardware. Beeps When this is selected, the audio clicks will be beeps generated by the program.
Lock and Unlock Record During recording it can happen that you accidentally deactivate the record mode, e. g. by pressing [Space]. In order to prevent this, you can set up a key command for this in the Key Commands dialog. If you use the Lock Record key command, the Record button will turn gray and the record mode is locked until you use the Unlock Record key command or enter Stop mode.
9 Fades, crossfades and envelopes
Creating fades There are two types of fade ins and fade outs in audio events in Nuendo: event-based fades that you create by using the fade handles (see below) and clip-based fades created by processing (see “Clip-based fades” on page 114). Event-based fades Selected audio events have triangular handles in the upper left and right corners. These can be dragged to create a fade in or fade out, respectively.
The result depends on your selection: Removing fades • If you select a range from the beginning of the event, a fade in is created within the range. • If you select a range that reaches the end of an event, a fade out is created in the range.
The Fade dialogs Option Description Fade Length Value This parameter is only available when editing fades made by dragging the fade handles. It can be used to enter fade lengths numerically. The format of values displayed here is determined by the Primary Time Display in the Transport panel. When you activate the Apply Length option, the value entered in the Fade Length value field is used when clicking Apply or OK.
Creating crossfades Overlapping audio material on the same track can be crossfaded, for smooth transitions or special effects. You create a crossfade by selecting two consecutive audio events and selecting the Crossfade command on the Audio menu (or by using the corresponding key command, by default [X]). The result depends on whether the two events overlap or not: • If the events overlap, a crossfade is created in the overlapping area.
The Crossfade dialog Ö This section describes the default Crossfade dialog. However, if you activate the “Simple Crossfade Editor” option in the Preferences dialog (Editing–Audio page), a simplified dialog is used instead (similar to the regular Fade dialogs). Option Description Chaining Mode This setting determines how the audio to the right of the crossfade on the track behaves when you move the crossfade for an event.
Option Description Option Description Volume This changes the volume of the crossfaded events. This is the same as using the volume handles in the event display, see “About the volume handle” on page 114. Auto Zoom Nudge buttons Use the Nudge buttons to nudge the fade area or the audio in the desired direction, see “Using the Nudge buttons” on page 119. Activate this to zoom and center the display automatically on the current crossfade when you resize it.
For symmetric crossfades, the splice point for the fade out and the fade in is initially situated in the center of the crossfade. By moving the overlap sliders, you can move the crossfade around the splice point to determine how much of the fade out and how much of the fade in event are included. • If “Symmetric Fades” is activated and the Nudge Mode is set to “Move Audio”, the Nudge buttons in the fade in display will move the audio event.
• If “Symmetric Fades” is deactivated, the upper Length controls change the length of the fade out curve, and the lower controls change the length of the fade in curve. Making global Auto Fade settings Changing the crossfade length and moving the splice points This opens the Auto Fades dialog for the project. 1. To make Auto Fades settings globally for a project, select “Auto Fades Settings…” from the Project menu.
Making Auto Fade settings for individual tracks By default, all audio tracks will use the settings you have made in the project’s Auto Fades dialog. However, since Auto Fades use computing power, a better approach may be to turn Auto Fades off globally and activate them for individual tracks, as needed: 3. To add an envelope point, click in the event with the Pencil tool. An envelope curve and a curve point appear. 1.
10 The arranger track
Introduction The arranger track allows you to work with sections of your project in a non-linear fashion, to simplify arranging to the maximum extent. Instead of moving, copying and pasting events in the Project window to create a linear project, you can define how different sections are to be played back, like a playlist. 3.
Working with arranger events • By dragging and dropping arranger events from the list on the right to the arranger chain on the left. You now have a number of arranger events that form the basic building blocks for your arrangement. The next step is to arrange these events using the functions of the Arranger Editor. A blue insertion line shows you where the dragged event will end up.
When you now play back the arranger chain, you will hear the complete arrangement. Proceed as follows: 1. Make sure that Arranger mode is activated. In Arranger mode the project will be played back using the arranger settings.
Flattening the arranger chain In the Source section you can specify which arranger chains are flattened. The available options are: When you have found an arranger chain that suits your purposes, you can “flatten” it, i. e. convert the list into a linear project. Proceed as follows: Option Description Current Chain If you activate this option, only the current chain will be flattened. 1. Click the Flatten button (or select Flatten Chain from the pop-up menu in the Inspector for the arranger track).
3. You can now flatten the arranger track by clicking the Flatten button. If you realize that you want to do further arrangements, you can click the “Go Back” button and make your adjustments. Your Flattening settings will be kept. In the Jump Mode pop-up menu, you can define how long the active arranger event will be played, before jumping to the next one. The following options are available: Option Description None Jumps to the next section immediately. 4 bars, 2 bars 1.
An example: 1. Set up a project with a MIDI track and three MIDI parts. The first part should start at position 00:00:00:00 and end at position 00:01:00:00, the second should start at position 00:01:00:00 and end at position 00:02:00:00 and the third should start at position 00:02:00:00 and end at position 00:03:00:00. 2. Activate the Sync button on the Transport panel. 3. Add an arranger track and create arranger events that match the MIDI parts. 4.
11 The transpose functions
Introduction Transposing an entire project with the root key Nuendo offers transpose functions for audio, MIDI and instrument parts and for audio events. These allow you to create variations of your music or change the harmonics of an entire project or separate sections. The root key you specify for a project will be the reference that audio or MIDI events in your project will follow. You can however exclude separate parts or events from being transposed, e. g.
The entire project will be played back with this root key. To do so, the separate loops are transposed to match the project root key. For example, if you have imported a bass loop in C and the project root key is set to E, the bass loop will be transposed up by 4 semitones. 3. Right-click the transpose track in the track list and select “Set root key for unassigned events” from the context menu. This sets the project root key for all parts or events not containing any root key information.
Changing the root key of single events or parts If you want to check if an audio event or part has root key information or if you want to change it, proceed as follows: 1. Open the Pool and display the Key column by activating the Root Key option on the View/Attributes pop-up menu. you can brighten up your loops in C major by transposing them by 5 semitones, so that the subdominant on F major is played back, or you can turn your hit more interesting by transposing the last chorus one semitone upwards. 1.
Transposing individual parts or events using the info line You can also transpose individual audio and MIDI parts and events via the info line (or the Inspector). This transposition will be added to the global transposition (i. e. the root key or the transpose events). Proceed as follows: 1. Select the event that you want to transpose. 2. In the Project window info line, adjust the Transpose value as desired.
If you record audio or MIDI, Global Transpose will be set to “Independent”, provided that the transpose track exists and you have specified at least one transpose event (even when the transpose value is not defined). In this case, your recording will sound exactly the way you played it. The transpose events will not be taken into account during recording and the recorded event will not get the project root key. Have a look at the following example: 1. Set up a project with the root key in C. 2.
3. Make sure that the “Keep Transpose in Octave Range” button is activated on the transpose track and change the transpose value of the transpose event to 7. Your chord will be transposed accordingly. If you enter a transpose value of 7, your chord will be transposed by seven semitones upwards. In this example, this would be G3/B3/D4. 4. Set the transpose value to 8 semitones. As “Keep Transpose in Octave Range” is activated, your chord will now be transposed to the nearest interval or pitch.
12 Using markers
Introduction Using cycle markers Markers are used to locate certain positions quickly. If you often find yourself jumping to a specific position within a project, you should insert a marker at this position. You can also use markers to make range selections (see “Using markers to make range selections in the Project window” on page 143) or for zooming (see “Zooming to cycle markers” on page 137). Markers are located on marker tracks. For postproduction purposes, you can set up multiple marker tracks.
The Marker window Set up Attribute Columns for Details Locate arrow Set up Attribute Columns Adding, moving, and removing markers Auto-Scroll with Project Cursor • To select a marker, click on it in the Marker window. • To edit a selected marker, click on it. Select multiple markers by [Shift]-clicking or [Ctrl]/[Command]-clicking them. Reset Filters • To add a position marker, open the Functions pop-up menu and select the “Insert Marker” option.
Navigating in the marker list You can navigate in the marker list using your computer keyboard and select entries by pressing [Enter]. This is a quick and easy way to jump to markers during playback or recording: • To move to the previous/next marker in the list, press [Up Arrow]/[Down Arrow]. • To jump to the first/last marker, press [PageUp]/[PageDown]. • To step through the attributes of a marker, select a marker, then click again and press [Tab]. You can step back by pressing [Shift]-[Tab].
• To adjust the width of a column, place the mouse pointer between two column headers and drag left or right. Setting up user attributes To set up your own attributes, proceed as follows: 1. Click the “Set up Attribute Columns” button and select “Define User Attributes…”. The pointer changes to a divider when you place it between two column headers. Ö No matter by which attribute you sort, the second sort criterion will always be the position attribute.
Using the Details view The following marker preferences are available: The Details view is displayed below the regular marker list. It shows the details for the marker that is selected in the marker list. If more than one marker is selected, only the details for the first marker of the selection are shown. Column Description Cycle follows when locating to Markers This sets the left and right locators automatically to a position or cycle marker, when locating to this marker.
Reassigning marker IDs Adding, moving, and removing marker tracks Sometimes, especially when setting markers on the fly, you may forget or miss to set a marker. When added later, this marker’s ID will not correspond to its position on the marker track. Therefore, it is possible to reassign the IDs for all markers on a track. • To add a marker track to the project, select Marker from the Add Track submenu of the Project menu. Proceed as follows: 1.
• Drawing in cycle markers. To draw a cycle marker range, press [Ctrl]/[Command] and use the Pencil tool or the Arrow tool. If Snap is activated on the toolbar, this determines at which positions you can draw markers. 3. Click on a marker track in the selected range and drag the range to a new position. • If you hold down [Alt]/[Option] while you drag the range, the selection in the Project window is copied instead. Multiple marker tracks • Resizing cycle markers. Select a cycle marker by clicking on it.
• When exporting an audio mixdown of the audio between the cycle markers (see “Exporting and importing markers” on page 145), only the cycle markers of the active track are displayed in the Export Audio Mixdown dialog. • Most marker key commands affect the active track, see “Marker key commands” on page 145. 5. Activate the marker track for the first narrator, play back the video file, and at the position where the first dialog section should be replaced, trigger the “Insert and name Marker” command.
Marker key commands Operation Description Default key command You can check or change any key command assignments for the marker commands in the Transport and Marker categories of the Key Commands dialog. In the following section, the available key commands for markers are listed. If not stated otherwise, the key commands only affect the active marker track.
Importing EDL CMX3600 files (Edit Decision Lists) In Nuendo, you can import Edit Decision Lists (EDLs) in CMX3600 format. EDLs are cut lists, i. e. representations of video edits that can be used to align audio events to a reference video file in Nuendo. They contain reel and timecode data that help you to detect the exact position of each video clip. Most EDLs are simple ASCII files created by offline editing systems, but you can also create, open, and edit them manually with a text editor. 4.
Nuendo supports the following ways of scene naming: • Three number scene naming, e. g. 25-3-5 The first is the scene number, the second is the setting or shooting angle and the third is the take number. As separators, the following characters can be used: comma (,), semicolon (;), full stop (.), hyphen (-), underscore (_), slash (/), backslash (\). On import, the data in the CSV file will be interpreted as markers.
7. Click OK to apply your settings. • Click OK to continue. The CSV Import - Attribute Selection dialog opens. Here, you can assign the columns of the CSV to several marker attributes (e. g. timecode in, timecode out, name). The Import Options dialog opens. 8. Use the column pop-up menus to assign marker attributes. Ö Note that at least the attribute for timecode in has to be assigned. 13.
To export a CSV file containing markers from Nuendo, proceed as follows: 1. Set up the markers for your project. 2. On the File menu, open the Export submenu and select “CSV Marker…”. Option Description Sort track after track Activate this option if you want to sort the markers by their track name. Generate Column Headings Activate this option if you want to generate column headings. 6.
Ö To be able to export markers via MIDI export, your project must contain at least one marker track. For a description of how to export MIDI files, see “Exporting MIDI files” on page 560. Importing markers as part of a track archive You can import position markers and cycle markers by importing track archives containing marker tracks. Select the tracks that you want to import in the Import Options dialog.
13 The Mixer
Overview • Mixing down several audio tracks (complete with automation and effects if you wish) to a single audio file. See the chapter “Export Audio Mixdown” on page 473. Opening the Mixer The Mixer can be opened in several ways: • By selecting Mixer from the Devices menu. • By clicking the Mixer icon on the toolbar. If this icon is not visible, you need to activate the “Media & Mixer Windows” option on the toolbar context menu first. • By using a key command (by default [F3]).
Ö All options for configuring the Mixer described in this chapter are identical for all Mixer windows. The use of multiple Mixer windows combined with the ability to recall different Mixer configurations enables you to focus on the task at hand and keep window scrolling down to a minimum. • You can hide and show these panes by activating or deactivating the “Hide Input Channels” or “Hide Output Channels” button on the common panel (see “The common panel” on page 154).
How to route audio channels to busses is described in the section “Routing audio to output busses in the Mixer” on page 169. Ö If the Control Room is disabled (see the chapter “Control Room” on page 179), the Main Mix (the default output) bus is used for monitoring. For information about Monitoring, see “About monitoring” on page 32. • On the common panel, click the “Hide Extended Mixer” button or the “Hide Routing View” button (respectively).
Showing/hiding channel types In the lower part of the common panel you will find a vertical strip with icons representing the different channel types: “Can Hide” options, see “Showing/hiding individual channels” on page 156 • For a description of the options available for audio-related channels, see “Options for extended audio channel strips” on page 160. The options for MIDI channels are described in the section “Options for extended MIDI channel strips” on page 174.
Showing/hiding individual channels About the Command Target Additionally to hiding or showing channel types via the common panel, you can show or hide individual channel strips. Proceed as follows: Command targets let you specify which channels are affected by Mixer “commands” (all the functions that key commands can be assigned to), e. g. what to display in the extended Mixer, or the width setting of the channel strips. You can set command targets using the common panel or the context menu. 1.
• You can now return to this stored configuration at any time by clicking the “Select Channel View Set” button (the down arrow to the left of the “Store View Set” button) and selecting it from the pop-up menu. The Window submenu The Mixer context menu, opened by right-clicking anywhere on the Mixer window background, contains a Window submenu. Its options are handy for quickly switching to another open Mixer window, showing/hiding the different Mixer panes, etc.
You can use the faders to set up a volume balance between the audio and MIDI channels, and perform a manual mix by moving the faders and other controls while playing back. Using the Write function (see “Enabling and disabling the writing of automation data” on page 240), you can automate the levels and most Mixer actions.
• Clicking the Solo button for a channel mutes all other channels. About the Input Phase control A soloed channel is indicated by a lit Solo button, and also by the lit Global Solo icon on the common panel. Click the Solo button again to turn off Solo. Each audio-related channel and input/output channel has an Input Phase button (to the left of the Input Gain control). When this button is activated, the phase polarity is inverted for the signal.
Audio-specific procedures This section describes the options and basic procedures regarding audio channels in the Mixer.
• The EQ section, either with value sliders (“EQs”) or as numerical settings with a curve display (“EQs curve”). These two views have exactly the same controls but different graphic layouts. The EQ section is also available in the Channel Settings window. For EQ parameter descriptions, see “Making EQ settings” on page 164. • The Sends section, with 8 effect pop-up menus and send level value sliders.
Setting pan in the Mixer For each audio-related channel with at least a stereo output configuration you will find a miniature pan control at the top of the channel strip. This control is different for stereo and surround configurations. Panning channels with a stereo output configuration • If Stereo Dual Panner is selected, there will be two pan controls with the upper controlling pan for the left channel, and the lower controlling pan for the right channel.
About the “Stereo Pan Law” setting Using Channel Settings In the Project Setup dialog you will find a pop-up menu named “Stereo Pan Law”, which allows you to select one of several pan modes. These modes are required for power compensation. Without power compensation, the power of the sum of the left and right side is higher (louder) if a channel is panned center than if it is panned left or right.
The Channel Settings window in its default configuration is used for the following operations: • • • • Apply equalization, see “Making EQ settings” on page 164. Apply send effects, see “Audio effects” on page 195. Apply insert effects, see “Audio effects” on page 195. Copy channel settings and apply them to another channel, see “Copying settings between audio channels” on page 166. 3. Select a channel from the pop-up menu to show the settings for that channel in the open Channel Settings window.
Below we describe how to set up EQ in the Channel Settings window, but the parameters are the same in the Mixer and Inspector (apart from the presets and reset function, which are not available in the Mixer). The Equalizers + Curve pane in the Channel Settings window consists of four EQ modules with parameter sliders, an EQ curve display and some additional functions at the top. 6. To invert an EQ band (i. e. reflect the curve along the x axis), click the Inverse button to the right of its On/Off button.
EQ bypass Whenever one or several EQ modules are activated for a channel, the EQ button lights up in green in the Mixer channel strip, Inspector (Equalizer and Channel sections), track list, and Channel Settings window (top right corner of the EQ section). You can also bypass all EQ modules. This is useful, as it allows you to compare the sound with and without EQ.
Proceed as follows: Changing the meter characteristics 1. In the Mixer, select the channel you want to copy settings from. On the Mixer context menu, there is a submenu named “Global Meter Settings”. Here you can make settings for the preferred meter characteristics, with the following options: 2. On the common panel, click the “Copy First Selected Channel’s Settings” button. • If Hold Peaks is activated, the highest registered levels are “held” and are shown as static horizontal lines in the meter.
Saving and loading Mixer settings It is possible to save complete Mixer settings for all or all selected audio-related channels in the Mixer. These can later be loaded into any project. Channel settings are saved as Mixer settings files. These have the file extension “.vmx”. 2. Open the Mixer context menu and select “Load Selected Channels”. A standard file dialog opens, allowing you to locate the saved file. 3. Select the file and click Open. The channel settings are applied to the selected channels.
• In the Inspector, you can select input and output busses using the Input and Output Routing pop-up menus. • In the Mixer, you can select busses in the routing panel at the top of each channel strip. For more information about the routing panel, see “Normal vs. extended channel strips” on page 154. • Stereo tracks can be routed to mono input busses, stereo input busses or stereo child busses within a surround bus.
Ö You can also create sends that can be routed to other output channels. This can be useful when creating quick headphone mixes from the current monitor mix or to create a downmix of a surround mix. This is done by creating a send from the current monitor output bus, assigned to another output bus connected to a headphone amplifier. Using group channels You can route the outputs from multiple audio channels to a group.
Direct Routing In large postproduction projects, a lot of time and effort has to go into the routing of individual tracks, group channels, etc. The Direct Routing features of Nuendo help you to set up your routing easily and quickly.
3. Select all the channels for which you want to set up the same destinations (e. g. all audio tracks, or all groups). To automate the switching of routing destinations, proceed as follows: • The Direct Routing settings can be applied to all selected channels at once. To do this, keep [Shift]-[Alt]/[Option] pressed when making a selection or activating a button. 1. Play back your project, taking note of the positions where routing changes are necessary. 4.
Ö In order to apply the following settings to all selected channels at once, keep [Shift]-[Alt]/[Option] pressed when making a selection or activating a button. • The main output configuration is wider than the Direct Routing destination: A downmix is performed before sending the signal to that destination (e. g. from 5.1 to stereo). 3. Activate the “Summing Mode On/Off” buttons for the selected channels.
MIDI-specific procedures • The Sends section, with 4 send effect slots for the channel. This section describes basic procedures for MIDI channels in the Mixer. The sends can also be found in the Inspector and the Channel Settings window for MIDI channels. How to use MIDI send effects is described in the chapter “MIDI realtime parameters and effects” on page 372. MIDI channel strips • The Meter section.
Every MIDI channel has its own Channel Settings window. • To unlink channels, select one of the linked channels and select “Unlink Channels” from the Mixer context menu. The channels are unlinked. Note that you do not have to select all the channels that are linked, only one of them. Ö It is not possible to remove individual channels from the link. What will be linked? The following rules apply to linked channels: • Only level, mute, solo, select, monitor and record enable will be linked between channels.
VST Mixer Diagrams Channel Objects 176 The Mixer
Control Room Objects 177 The Mixer
The Mixer
14 Control Room
Virtual Control Room – The concept The concept behind the Control Room features in Nuendo is to divide the studio environment into the performing area (studio) and the engineer/producer area (control room) common to traditional studios. Previously, an analog console or some method of speaker control and monitor routing was necessary to provide this functionality to the DAW environment.
VST Connections – Studio tab The Studio tab of the VST Connections window is where you configure the inputs and outputs for the Control Room Mixer. You can also enable or disable the Control Room and open the Control Room Mixer. The channel width of the Control Room channel is shown in the Configuration field on the top right of the tab. For more information about the VST Connections window, see the chapter “VST Connections” on page 27. Click here to open the Control Room Mixer.
Phones The Phones channel is used by the engineer in the control room for checking cue mixes and as another option for listening to the mix or external inputs on a pair of headphones. Furthermore, the Phones channel can be used for previewing, see “Control Room preferences” on page 190. It is not intended for cue mixes that performers use while recording. ! ! The Phones channel is stereo only. Inserts are available on the Talkback and all other Control Room channels.
Switching between monitors that share device ports will be seamless, providing any downmix of multi-channel audio to stereo if needed. Only one monitor set can be active at a time. If your scenario does not require you to assign ports to several Monitor channels, it is recommended to activate the “Exclusive Device Ports for Monitor Channels” option in the Preferences dialog (VST–Control Room page).
The Control Room Mixer 3. 2. 4. 5. 6. 1. 7. 8. 27. 9. 6. 10. 26. 11. 12. 25. 24. 13. 23. 14. 15. 16. 6. 22. 21. 20. 19. 18. 17. 6. The Control Room Mixer is where you can access all the features of the Control Room. It is designed to display information and controls only for the channels you have defined in the VST Connections window. For example, if you have not defined any Studio channels, they will not appear in the Control Room Mixer.
The Control Room Mixer has a variety of controls, some that are similar to the Project Mixer and some that are unique to Control Room operations. In the following each control is briefly described: 11. Listen Activate/Deactivate All Listen 1. Input Phase This gain control adjusts the volume of the Main Mix (or monitor source) when channels have been put in Listen mode. This allows you to keep listen-enabled channels in context with the Main Mix.
21. Channel labels 30. Monitor Source selectors These labels reflect the names entered in the VST Connections window. Using these buttons you can activate/deactivate the available monitor sources that were set up in the VST Connections window. For more information about selecting a monitor source, see “Selecting a monitor source” on page 188. 22. Talkback Enable to Studio and talkback amount In order for Talkback signals to be routed to a Studio, the Talkback Enable to Studio button must be lit.
37. Open MixConvert Settings Clicking on this tab opens the MixConvert plug-in used to downmix multi-channel signals for monitoring. With this plug-in you can modify the settings for each downmix preset. For more information about the MixConvert plug-in see the chapter “Surround sound” on page 226 and the separate PDF document “Plug-In Reference”. Note that you can also double-click in the center of the speaker solo area to open the MixConvert plug-in.
If you do not wish to see full sized meters but still want some indication of signal activity, activate the “Signal Presence Indicators” option in the Preferences dialog (VST–Control Room page). They will be displayed next to the input selection buttons and indicate signal presence for all inputs. The Main Mix and the Control Room channel The channel configuration of the Main Mix determines the channel configuration of the Control Room channel.
Activating several monitor sources at the same time Suggested settings By activating several monitor sources, you will hear the sum of the selected busses or group channels. For example, this is useful to listen to the final mix without having to route the individual submixes to the Main Mix first. There are two ways to achieve this: With all the versatility that the Control Room provides there are also opportunities for confusion when first setting up the Control Room.
Control Room preferences • Dim Studio during Talkback There are several preferences for the Control Room Mixer. These are found in the Preferences dialog (VST–Control Room page). When this option is enabled, the cue mix heard in a Studio will be dimmed (by the amount set in the Talkback Dim Level field (below the TALK button) for as long as the Talkback channel is used. When disabled, the cue mix level remains the same during Talkback.
• In the Project Mixer, the Studio Sends are accessed by choosing the Studio Sends option from the View options pop-up menu in each channel or by clicking the star icon (“Show Studio Sends”) on the common panel of the extended Project Mixer. Each Studio can have a unique name in order to help identify what it is being used for.
To copy fader and pan information from the main mix, proceed as follows: 1. In the Project Mixer, select all the channels that you wish to copy settings from. The following operations affect only selected channels. 2. In the Control Room Mixer, right-click anywhere on a Studio channel strip to open the context menu that has the Studio’s name as a submenu. This submenu contains all the Studio Send functions for that Studio.
Once all Studio Sends have been set to -6 dB, post-fader, any changes to the main mix will also change the Studio mix. For “more me” channels, simply turn up the level on that channel or even set the signal to pre-fader for absolute control. Studio Send cue mix summary ! If you deactivate the Relative Mode option, all Studio Sends are set to the same absolute level. While the dialog window is still open, you may activate the Relative Mode checkbox again and reload the previous relative levels.
The Control Room Overview allows you to see the signal flow through the Control Room Mixer. All the routing functions of the Control Room Mixer are duplicated in the Overview. Open the Control Room Mixer and the Control Room Overview windows side by side. As you operate the controls in the Mixer you will see the various pale squares light up in the Overview, indicating changes in signal flow.
15 Audio effects
About this chapter Nuendo comes with a number of effect plug-ins included. This chapter contains general details about how to assign, use and organize effect plug-ins. The effects and their parameters are described in the separate PDF document “Plug-in Reference”. Nuendo is able to run plug-ins originally developed for different platforms: you can use a 32-bit plug-in under Windows Vista/Windows 7 64 bit, and you can use plug-ins developed for Mac PPC on Mac Intel systems.
However, be aware that this can lead to a situation where you added more plug-ins on “transport stop” than the system can handle on playback. Therefore, you should always find the passage with the largest number of events playing simultaneously to make sure that your system offers the required performance.
As you can see, the last two insert slots (for any channel) are post-EQ and post-fader. Post-fader slots are best suited for insert effects where you do not want the level to be changed after the effect, such as dithering (see “Dithering” on page 201) and maximizers – both typically used as insert effects for output busses.
• To bypass all inserts for a track, click the global bypass button. This button can be found at the top of the Inserts section in the Inspector or the Channel Settings window. It lights up in yellow to indicate that the inserts of this track are bypassed. In the track list and the channel strip in the Mixer, the Inserts State button will also light up in yellow. For example, if you insert a plug-in on a 5.1 track, Nuendo tries to apply a 5.1 configuration to this plug-in.
Using the Routing Editor Operations If the Effect Routing pop-up menu does not contain the configuration that you need, you can use the Routing Editor. It allows you to freely set up the routing for the individual channels. For example, if you want to apply an effect only to the right speaker, you can choose the Mono configuration from the pop-up menu and use the Routing Editor to move the connection from the left speaker (L) to the right (R).
Adding insert effects to busses All input and output busses have eight insert slots, just like regular audio channels. The procedures for adding insert effects are the same. • Adding insert effects to an input bus allows you to record with effects. The effects will become a permanent part of the recorded audio file (see the chapter “Recording” on page 90). • Insert effects added to an output bus will affect all audio routed to that bus, like a “master insert effect”.
Another special use for group channels and effects is the following: If you have a mono audio track and want to process this through a stereo insert effect (e. g. a stereo chorus or an auto panner device), you cannot just insert the effect as usual. This is because the audio track is in mono – the output of the insert effect will be in mono as well, and the stereo information from the effect will be lost.
Send effects 3. Select an effect for the FX channel track. This is not strictly necessary at this point – you can also leave the plug-in pop-up menu set to “No Effect” and add effects to the FX channel later. Background As their name implies, send effects are outside of an audio channel’s signal path, i. e. the audio data to be processed must be sent to the effect (as opposed to insert effects, which are inserted into the channel’s signal path). To this end, Nuendo provides FX channel tracks.
2. Make sure that the FX channel is routed to the correct output bus. This is done with the Output Routing pop-up menu at the top of the fader section (also available in the Mixer and Inspector). 3. To add an insert effect in an empty slot (or to replace the current effect in a slot), click in the slot and select an effect from the pop-up menu. This works just like when selecting insert effects for a regular audio channel. 4. When you add an effect, its control panel will automatically appear.
3. Select an FX channel track from the pop-up menu. 6. If you want the signal to be sent to the FX channel before the audio channel’s volume fader in the Mixer, click on the Pre-Fader button for the send so that it lights up. Now the send is routed to the FX channel. 4. Activate the On/Off button for the effect send. If you hold down [Shift]-[Alt]/[Option] when clicking the button, you activate or deactivate this effect slot for all selected channels. A send set to pre-fader mode. 5.
Bypassing the sends You set up send panning in the following way: • In the Mixer, you can click on the lit (blue) Sends State button for a channel to bypass (disable) all its sends. 1. Open the Channel Settings window for the audio channel. When the sends are bypassed, the button is yellow. Click the button again to enable the sends. 2. Right-click somewhere in the Channel Settings window (not the EQ display), to open the context menu and open the Customize View submenu. 3.
• If the FX channel is configured in a surround format, the pan control will be a miniature surround panner, similar to the one found in the Mixer. 3. Open the Inserts tab for the first Vocal track in the Inspector and select “PingPongDelay” from the Effects pop-up menu. You can click and drag the “ball” in the miniature panner display to position the send in the surround field, or double-click in the display to bring up the surround panner. See the chapter “Surround sound” on page 226 for details.
Triggering a compressor using side-chain signals About drag & drop Compression, expansion or gating can be triggered by side-chain signals exceeding a specified threshold. When you drag effects from one insert slot to another (on the same channel or between different channels), the following applies: You may run into a situation where you want to lower the volume of one instrument every time another instrument is played.
a preset pop-up menu and a Preset Management pop-up menu for saving and loading effect presets. Some plug-ins also feature a side-chain button, see “Using the sidechain input” on page 207. Effect presets can be divided into the following main categories: • VST presets for a plug-in These are stored parameter settings for a specific effect.
5. When you have found the preset that you want, double-click on it (or click outside the Presets browser). 2. Select “Save Preset…” from the pop-up menu. The Save Preset dialog opens. The preset is applied. • To return to the preset that was selected when you opened the Presets browser, click the “Revert to Last Setting” button. • You can also open the Presets browser by clicking the button to the right of the preset field an selecting “Load Preset” from the pop-up menu.
About earlier VST effect presets Saving insert effect combinations As stated previously, you can use any VST 2.x plug-ins in Nuendo. For a description of how to add VST plug-ins, see “Installing and managing effect plug-ins” on page 212. You can save the complete insert effect rack for a channel together with all parameter settings as an inserts preset. Inserts presets can be applied to audio, instruments, FX channel, or group tracks.
• You can use the Preset Management pop-up menu to save your settings as preset, or to rename or remove the current preset. Installing VST 2.x plug-ins under Mac OS X Extracting insert effect settings from track presets • /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/ You can extract the effects used in a track preset and load them into your inserts “rack”: This is only possible if you are the system administrator. Plug-ins installed in this folder will be available to all users, for all programs that support them.
Organizing VST 2 plug-ins Managing and selecting VST plug-ins If you have a large number of VST 2 plug-ins, having them all on a single pop-up menu in the program may become unmanageable. For this reason, the VST 2 plug-ins installed with Nuendo are placed in appropriate subfolders according to the effect type. To display all available VST plug-ins, open the “VST PlugIns” tab. • Under Windows, you can organize VST plug-ins by moving, adding or renaming subfolders within the Vstplugins folder.
VST 2.x Plug-in Paths button This opens a dialog where you can see the current paths to where VST 2.x plug-ins are located. You can add/remove folder locations by using the corresponding buttons. If you click “Add”, a file dialog opens, where you can select a folder location. About the “shared” plug-ins folder (Windows and VST 2.x only) You can designate a “shared” VST 2.x plug-ins folder. This will allow VST 2.x plug-ins to be used by other programs that support this standard.
16 VST instruments and instrument tracks
Introduction VST instrument channels VST instruments are software synthesizers (or other sound sources) that are contained within Nuendo. They are played internally via MIDI. You can add effects or EQ to VST instruments, just as with audio tracks. You can access a VST instrument from within Nuendo by creating a VST instrument channel and associating this channel with a MIDI track. Proceed as follows: Ö This chapter describes the general procedures for setting up and using VST instruments.
• If you do not want the plug-in control panels to open every time you load a plug-in, open the Preferences dialog (VST–Plug-ins page) and deactivate “Open Effect Editor After Loading it”. You can open a plug-in panel at any time by clicking the “e” button of the corresponding plug-in slot. 4.
• Click the Edit (“e”) button to open the control panel for the VST instrument. • Below the Edit button is a small LED that will light up when MIDI data is received by the instrument. • The rightmost button allows you to activate the desired output for the instrument. This is useful when you are using VST instruments that have a large number of audio busses, which may be confusing. Click one of the entries in the pop-up list to activate/deactivate output busses for this instrument.
Restrictions 3. In the Results list, select a MIDI loop and drag it to an empty section in the Project window. • Instrument tracks have no MIDI sends. • MIDI volume and pan cannot be controlled (there is no “MIDI fader” tab in the Inspector); instead, the VST instrument volume and pan are used (via the “Channel” tab in the Inspector). This applies also to the respective automation parameters.
Exporting instrument tracks as MIDI file You can also export instrument tracks as standard MIDI files, see “Exporting MIDI files” on page 560. Please note: • As there is no MIDI patch information in an instrument track, this information is missing in the resulting MIDI file. • If you activate “Export Inspector Volume/Pan”, volume and pan information of the VST instrument will be converted and written into the MIDI file as controller data.
The Freeze Instrument Options dialog opens with the following options for the Freeze operation: Unfreezing If you need to make adjustments (either to the MIDI tracks, to the VST instrument parameters or to the VST instrument channels if these were frozen) you need to unfreeze the VST instrument: 1. Click the Freeze button for the VST instrument again (either in the VST Instruments window or in the Inspector). You will be asked to confirm this operation. 2. Click “Unfreeze”.
As described in the chapter “Audio effects” on page 195, there are two types of VST presets that can be used: the VST 2 standard FXB/FXP files and the VST 3 preset standard with the extension “.vstpreset”. Some of the included VST instruments use the VST 2 preset standard, and others use the VST 3 standard. All VST 2 instruments can import FXB/FXP files and also convert them to the VST 3 standard. Once converted, you can use all VST 3 features, see “About earlier VST instrument presets” on page 224.
Using the “Choose Track Preset” dialog Selecting VST instrument presets 1. Right-click the track list to open the context menu and on the Add Track submenu select “Add Track Using Track Preset…”. The previous sections focussed on selecting presets for the creation of new instrument tracks, or for changing the setup of an existing track. However, you can also use presets to change the settings of the VST instrument itself. The Choose Track Preset dialog opens.
7. When you have found the preset that you want, double-click on it (or click outside the Presets browser). The preset is applied. • To return to the preset that was selected when you opened the Presets browser, click the “Revert to Last Setting” button. Ö You can also open the Presets browser via the Presets pop-up menu in the control panel of the VST instrument. Saving VST instrument presets You can save your settings as presets for further use (e. g. in other projects): 1.
About latency Depending on your audio hardware and its ASIO driver, the latency (the time it takes for the instrument to produce a sound when you press a key on your MIDI controller) may simply be too high to allow comfortable realtime VST instrument playback from a keyboard. If this is the case, a workaround is to play and record your parts with another MIDI sound source selected, and then switch to the VST instrument for playback.
17 Surround sound
Introduction Available surround configurations Nuendo has integrated surround sound features with support for several formats. This support goes all the way through the audio path: all audio-related channels (i. e. audio and instrument tracks as well as group channels) and busses can handle multi-channel speaker configurations (up to 12 channels). A channel in the Mixer can either carry complete surround mixes, or an individual speaker channel which is part of a surround setup.
Format Description Format Quadro Description 7.0 Cine The original Quadraphonic format for music, with one speaker in each corner. This format was intended for vinyl record players. LRCS+Lfe A Left, Mid-left, Center, Mid-right, Right front speaker arrangement with Left and Right surround channels. 7.0 Music Same as LRCS, but including an LFE subchannel. Same as 6.0 Music, but including a Center front channel. Quadro+Lfe 7.1 Cine Same as Quadro, but including an LFE subchannel. 6.
Format Routing channels to individual surround channels Description 8.1 Music Same as 8.0 Music, but including an LFE subchannel. If you want to place an audio source in one separate speaker channel, you can route it directly to that speaker channel. This is useful for premixed material or multi-channel recordings that do not require panning. • To do this, simply select an individual speaker channel in the Output Routing pop-up menu. 10.
• You wish to record a surround setup “live”. • You have prepared surround premixes (e. g. stems) that you want to record on a new audio track with a surround configuration. Using the SurroundPanner V5 • To view a slightly larger version of the miniature surround control in the extended Mixer panel, select the Panner option on the View Options pop-up menu.
The plug-in panel Positioning signals in the pan area Double-click on any of the miniature panner controls to open the plug-in panel in a separate window. In the pan area, you see a graphical representation of the sound source, with the different input channels shown as gray balls – except for the left and right front channels that are shown in yellow and red. Here, you can position the sound source using the mouse: • By clicking at the desired position in the pan area.
Speaker channels – Solo and Mute vs. Disabling The speakers that are distributed around the surround field represent the output configuration. You can disable speakers or solo/mute them. This speaker is muted. This speaker is soloed. This speaker is disabled. • By clicking on one of the icons above the pan area, the corresponding positioning mode is activated persistently. That way you do not have to keep the corresponding modifier key pressed all the time.
Ö To move one of the panning balls in this mode, you do not have to click directly on them. You will always move the panning ball that is nearer to the position of the mouse pointer. ! When panning in independent positioning mode, automation data is written for several parameters. Due to this, special automation rules apply, see “Automation” on page 236. ! Automation data for the independent positioning mode is always written for the complete sound source, not for individual channels.
Orbit controls Radius Orbit Center When using the Orbit Center control, the Radius encoder allows you to control the distance of the sound source from the center of the surround field (without changing the angle). Radius An example: Counter Shot The Orbit controls are used to rotate the sound source (including all input channels and the positioning handle) around the center of the surround field. Orbit Center This is the main control that allows you to perform the rotation.
• If the selected input already contains an LFE channel (x.1 configuration), it is routed through the SurroundPanner V5 and the LFE encoder is used to control the volume of this channel. • If the selected input does not contain an LFE channel (x.0 configuration), all input channels are distributed evenly to the output LFE channel. In this case, it might be useful to raise the volume of this “downmix” using the LFE encoder. Ö The LFE channel is used as a full range channel, no low-pass filtering is applied.
These controls influence the perception of spatiality and ambience, as well as the traceability of signals. • At 100 % you get a very transparent, clear sound that conveys much spatiality. • At 0 % the signal is less transparent and movements cannot be traced easily. Ö The Depth parameter is only available for configurations with front and rear channels.
Pinning the SurroundPanner V5 window When working with multiple channels in a surround configuration, the screen might become overcrowded with plug-in windows and you can easily lose track of where each panner window belongs. If you want to work with only one panner window at a time, you can open the SurroundPanner V5 for one of your channels and activate the “Pinned window follows VST channel selection” button at the top of the plug-in panel.
The MixConvert plug-in is described in detail in the separate PDF document “Plug-in Reference”. Ö There is one exception to this behavior. When a stereo channel is routed to a mono destination through the channel routing or an aux send routing, a normal stereo panner will appear. However, this panner will control the balance of the left and right channels as they are blended into the mono destination. The center position blends both channels together by equal amounts.
18 Automation
Introduction In essence, automation means recording the values for a particular Mixer or effect parameter. When you create your final mix, you will not have to worry about having to adjust this particular parameter control yourself – Nuendo will do it for you. Automation is a key feature when mixing in complex, multi-track projects. Enabling and disabling the writing of automation data You can automation enable tracks and Mixer channels in Nuendo by activating their automation Write buttons.
Ö You will also find global Read/Write buttons on the Automation panel, see “The Read/Write buttons” on page 248. Writing automation data There are two approaches you can use to create automation curves: manually (see “Manual writing of automation data” on page 241) and automatically (see “Automatic writing of automation data” on page 241).
7. If you now activate playback, the automated parameter will change with the automation curve. Editing automation events In the Mixer, the corresponding fader moves accordingly. Automation events can be edited much like other events. You can cut, copy, paste, group, and nudge events, etc. 8. Repeat the procedure if you are not happy with the result. If you draw over existing events, a new curve is created.
• By clicking on the automation parameter name in the track list and selecting “Remove Parameter” from the popup menu. This will remove all automation events from the automation track, and the automation track will be closed. Assigning a parameter to an automation track Default parameters are already assigned to automation tracks when you open them, according to their order in the Add Parameter list.
2. Select “More…”. The Add Parameter dialog opens. This dialog shows a list with all parameters that can be automated for the selected channel (sorted into different categories), including the parameters for any assigned insert effects. To view the parameters in a category, click the “+” sign for the corresponding category folder. Automated parameters Repeat the above procedure to assign a parameter to each available automation track. Ö Tempo changes cannot be automated on automation tracks.
• To hide all automation tracks for all tracks in the track list, right-click any track and select “Hide All Automation” from the context menu. This option is also available on the Track Folding submenu of the Project menu. • To show or hide automation tracks, you can also use the options in the Show section of the Automation panel, see “The Show options” on page 260. Showing only used automation tracks If a lot of automation tracks are used, it may be impractical to have them all open in the track list.
The initial value Gaps An initial value is always used when “Use Virgin Territory” is disabled in the Automation Settings (see “Automation Preferences” on page 260). After an automation pass you will find virgin territory only to the right of the last automation event. “Empty” sections between two automation curves are referred to as “gaps” in the following sections. When no automation data exists for a particular parameter, the starting point of an automation pass is saved as the initial value.
The “Terminator” setting You can “force” any automation track into using virgin territory, by defining any automation event on the automation curve as the “terminator” point of this part of the curve. This will automatically delete the line between this event and the next one, creating a gap. Ö Note that this is independent of the setting for “Use Virgin Territory” – you can create gaps at any time.
The Automation panel Click here… …to open the Automation panel. The Automation panel is a floating window, similar to the Mixer and Transport panel, and can be left open while you work. The Project window will always have the focus. To show the Automation panel, open the Project menu and select the Automation Panel option or click the “Open Automation Panel” button on the Project window toolbar.
Note that you can change the automation mode at any time, i. e. in play or stop mode or during an automation pass. You can also assign key commands to the automation modes, see “Automation key commands” on page 261. The current automation pass will always punch out as soon as one of the following conditions is met, independent of which automation mode is selected: • • • • • If you disable Write. If you stop playback. If you activate Fast Forward/Rewind.
Now, re-touch the fader and move it towards the original value. As soon as you cross the original curve, punch out occurs automatically. You can use Trim either in Stop or in Play mode: • In Stop mode, you can select one of the Fill options (see “The Fill options” on page 254) and edit the trim curve manually by clicking on it and moving it up or down. The original automation curve is displayed in a lighter color and its values are merged with the trim curve.
To freeze your trim curve manually, select the corresponding option on the Freeze Trim pop-up menu in the Automation Settings (see “Automation Preferences” on page 260). You have the following possibilities to freeze your trim data manually: Function Description Fill Gaps on Selected Tracks This option is used with virgin territories (see “Virgin territory vs. the initial value” on page 245). Select this option to fill any gaps in the automation curves of the selected tracks with a continuous value.
Working with Automation Passes An automation pass begins with the first parameter that is written after activating Write automation and starting playback. It ends when playback stops, either when you click the Stop button or when the position cursor jumps to another position (e. g. because Cycle or Arranger mode is activated). You can undo automation passes in the Automation Pass history. 4.
A branch is a sequence of automation passes. In a branch each automation pass is represented by a rectangle with the number of the automation pass. Automation that you perform manually, as well as other edits and processes in between automation passes, are represented by smaller rectangles. These rectangles only serve as indicators, they cannot be used to undo the edits. • If you want to activate a deactivated branch, select the desired branch and click the “Activate Selected” button.
The following Join options are available: Join indicator Join Now The Join indicator shows the timecode position where the last automation pass was stopped, i. e. the point where the Auto Join will automatically occur. When automation is resumed, this indicator is updated. If you hit Stop and want to resume automation manually, proceed as follows: 1. Start playback and watch the automation curve. 2. When the cursor reaches the desired position, click Join Now on the Automation panel.
To Start Loop “To Start” is similar to the “To Punch” option, but with the following difference: When “To Start” is selected, punching out of automation will fill the automation track from where you punched out to the start of the project. To use the Loop option, you must first set up a loop range with the left and right locators. When you then select Loop, punching out will set the found value within the range defined by the left and right locator.
Fill combinations One shot vs. continuous fill You can also combine the various Fill options. The Fill options can be used in two different ways: • Combining “To Punch” and “To End” will fill the automation track from the punch in position to the end of the project. • When you click one of the Fill buttons, it is highlighted, and will be enabled during the next automation pass. Afterwards, the option is disabled again.
The Preview workflow The Preview workflow has three different phases: touchcollecting the required parameters, finding the required values, and performing the actual automation pass. Proceed as follows: Touch the required parameter, start rolling, find the desired value and select Punch to start the new automation pass. • If you want to compare the value found during preview with previously automated values, activate the Suspend option.
Punch vs. Punch on Play Touch Assist When using the Punch option as described above, starting playback and punching in are two separate actions. If you want to punch in when starting playback, activate Punch on Play. When you use Preview mode, you may get into a situation where you change some parameters, but not others, although they belong to the same group of parameters (e. g. EQ settings).
The Punch Log section However, if you manually touch-collect a parameter, e. g. volume, and then add volume again by loading a punch log entry, the settings for volume from the punch log will be used, replacing any values set manually. The Suspend options This section of the Automation panel displays a list of recent punch in operations performed in Preview mode.
• To suspend the writing of automation data for all parameters/parameter groups, click the All button at the bottom of the Suspend Write category. When any of the options in the Suspend Write category are enabled, clicking All will disable these buttons. Automation Preferences If you click the button in the bottom left of the Automation panel, you open the Automation Preferences. These are divided into General and Automation Settings.
Option Description Max Punch Logs This specifies how many log entries are displayed. You can set values from 5 to 100, see also “The Punch Log section” on page 259. Freeze Trim In this pop-up menu you can specify how to freeze your trim curve. Select “Manually” if you want to freeze your trim curve manually. Select “On Pass End” if you want a freeze to be performed whenever a write operation is finished.
MIDI Controller Automation Setup settings The following options are available: In the MIDI Controller Automation Setup dialog, you can specify how existing MIDI automation is handled on playback and where new automation data is recorded, in a MIDI part or as track automation. Option Description MIDI Part Select this to record MIDI part automation. Automation Track Select this to record the controller data on an automation track in the Project window. Proceed as follows: 1.
19 Audio processing and functions
Background Audio processing in Nuendo can be called “non-destructive”, in the sense that you can always undo changes or revert to the original versions. This is possible because processing affects audio clips rather than the actual audio files, and because audio clips can refer to more than one audio file. This is how it works: If you attempt to process an event that is a shared copy (i. e.
The Preview, Process, and Cancel buttons These buttons have the following functionality: Button Description Preview Allows you to listen to the result of the processing with the current settings. Playback will continue repeatedly until you click the button again (the button is labeled “Stop” during Preview playback). You can make adjustments during Preview playback, but the changes are not applied until the start of the next “lap”.
Envelope controls The five sliders below the display are used for setting up the “reverb envelope”, that is, a gain curve modifying how the impulse response is applied over time, and thereby the reverb character. These settings are reflected in the red Envelope display above. The sliders have the following functionality: Parameter Description First Reflections A level control for the first section of the reverb (the length of which is set with the next parameter, see below).
Envelope display Clipping detection text Shows the shape of the envelope curve. The resulting waveform shape is shown in dark gray, with the current waveform shape in light gray. You can click on the curve to add points, and click and drag existing points to change the shape. To remove a point from the curve, drag it outside the display.
Noise Gate Normalize The level below which you want audio to be silenced. Levels below this value will close the gate. The Normalize function allows you to specify the desired maximum level of the audio. It then analyzes the selected audio and finds the current maximum level. Finally it subtracts the current maximum level from the specified level and raises the gain of the audio by the resulting amount (if the specified maximum level is lower than the current maximum, the gain will be lowered instead).
Pitch Shift Volume/Amplitude Allows you to lower the volume of the pitch-shifted sound. Multi Shift When this is activated, you can add several transpose values, creating multi-part harmonies. This is done by adding intervals in the keyboard display (see above). Note that you cannot use the Preview function in Multi Shift mode. • If the intervals you add make up a standard chord, this chord is displayed to the right.
Formant Mode Curve Kind If you are processing vocal material, activate this option in order to preserve the vocal characteristics of the pitchshifted audio and to avoid a a “chipmunk voice” effect. These buttons determine whether the envelope curve consists of spline curve segments (left button), damped spline segments (middle button) or linear segments (right button). Time Correction When this is activated, the pitch shift process will not affect the length of the audio.
Pitch Shift Mode Remove DC Offset These are the same parameters as on the Transpose tab, see “Pitch Shift Mode” on page 269. This function will remove any DC offset in the audio selection. A DC offset is when there is too large a DC (direct current) component in the signal, sometimes visible as the signal not being visually centered around the “zero level axis”.
Reverse Time Stretch Reverses the audio selection, as when playing a tape backwards. There are no parameters for this function. Silence Replaces the selection with silence. There are no parameters for this function. Stereo Flip This function allows you to change the length and “tempo” of the selected audio without affecting the pitch. The dialog contains the following parameters: Define Bars section This function works with stereo audio selections only.
• MPEX 4 mode Resulting Length section These settings are used if you want to stretch the audio to fit within a specific time span or tempo. The values will change automatically if you adjust the Time Stretch Ratio (see below). Option Description Samples The desired length in samples. Seconds The desired length in seconds. BPM The desired tempo (beats per minute).
The process plug-in dialog Tail This parameter is useful if you are applying an effect that adds material after the end of original audio (such as reverb and delay effects). When the checkbox is activated, you can specify a tail length using the slider. The tail time is included when playing back with the Preview function, allowing you to find the appropriate tail length. Pre/Post-Crossfade These settings allow you to gradually mix the effect in or out.
The Offline Process History dialog • To modify the settings of the selected processing, click the “Modify” button. If you want to remove or modify some or all processing from a clip, this can be done in the Offline Process History dialog. Processing that can be modified in the Offline Process History dialog includes the functions on the Process menu, any applied plug-in effects, and Sample Editor operations such as Cut, Paste, Delete and drawing with the Pencil tool.
Batch Processing Nuendo features a Batch Processing function that lets you apply a chain of audio processing to one or several events in one go – in either the Project window or the Pool. Batch Processing is based on operations in the Offline Process History dialog, described above. That is, the list of applied processes in this dialog is what can be made to constitute a batch process.
Freeze Edits Managing Batch Processes You can delete and rename created batch processes in the Manage Batch Processes dialog. The Freeze Edits function on the Audio menu allows you to make all processing and applied effects permanent for a clip: 1. Select the clip in the Pool or one of its events in the Project window. 2. Select “Freeze Edits…” from the Audio menu.
Detect Silence The Detect Silence function searches for silent sections in an event and either splits the event, removing the silent parts from the project, or creates regions corresponding to the non-silent sections. • To open the Detect Silence dialog, select one or several audio events in the Project window or the Audio Part Editor. On the Audio menu, open the Advanced submenu and select “Detect Silence”.
6. Click the Process button. Setting Description Min. time open Determines the minimum time that the function will remain “open” after the audio level has exceeded the Open Threshold value. If the audio contains repeated short sounds, and you find that this results in too many short “open” sections, try raising this value. Min. time closed Determines the minimum time that the function will remain “closed” after the audio level has dropped below the Close Threshold value.
The default values give good results in most situations, but you can adjust the settings if you like: Setting Description Min. Sets the lowest frequency shown in the graph. Option Description Max. Size in Samples The function divides the audio into “analysis blocks”, the size of which is set here. The larger this value, the higher the frequency resolution of the resulting spectrum. Sets the highest frequency shown in the graph.
Statistics The Statistics function on the Audio menu analyzes the selected audio (events, clips or range selections) and displays a window with the following information: Item Description Min. Sample Value The lowest sample value in the selection, as a value between -1 and 1 and in dB. Max. Sample Value The highest sample value in the selection, as a value between -1 and 1 and in dB. Peak Amplitude The largest sample value (in absolute numbers) in the selection, in dB.
20 The Sample Editor
Window overview The Sample Editor allows you to view and manipulate audio by cutting and pasting, removing, or drawing audio data, and by processing or applying effects (see the chapter “Audio processing and functions” on page 263).
Opening the Sample Editor The info line To open the Sample Editor, double-click an audio event in the Project window or the Audio Part Editor, or doubleclick an audio clip in the Pool. You can have more than one Sample Editor window open at the same time. The info line is displayed below the toolbar. It shows information about the audio clip: Ö Double-clicking an audio part in the Project window opens the Audio Part Editor, even if the part contains a single audio event only.
The Definition tab The VariAudio tab Disable Pitch Changes The Definition tab helps you to adjust the audio grid and define the musical context of your audio. This is useful if you have an audio loop or audio file that you want to match to the project tempo, see “AudioWarp: Tempo matching audio” on page 293. If the Definition tab is open, a second ruler is displayed, showing the musical structure of your audio.
• To define a new viewing area, click in the upper half of the Overview and drag a rectangle. The Range tab The ruler On this tab you will find functions for working with ranges and selections (see “Making selections” on page 289). The Sample Editor ruler is located between the Overview line and the waveform display. The ruler is explained in detail in the section “The ruler” on page 47. When the Definition tab is open, an additional ruler displays the musical structure of the audio file.
• You can select whether the level is shown as a percentage or in dB. This is done by opening the level scale pop-up menu at the top of the level scale and selecting an option. • Select the “Show Half Level Axis” option on the context menu of the waveform display, if you want the half level axes to be shown.
Auditioning While you can use the regular play commands to play back audio when the Sample Editor is open, it is often useful to listen to the edited material only. Ö When auditioning, audio is routed to the Control Room (if activated) or to the Main Mix (the default output bus). For information about routing, see “Routing” on page 168. Clicking the Audition icon on the toolbar plays back the edited audio, according to the following rules: • If you have made a selection, this selection will be played back.
3. Click on the “S” flag and drag it to the desired position. You can also adjust the snap point by setting the project cursor at the desired position, and selecting “Snap Point To Cursor” on the Audio menu. Making selections To select an audio section in the Sample Editor, click and drag with the Range Selection tool. A selected range The snap point will be set to the position of the cursor. This method can also be used in the Project window and the Audio Part Editor.
Option Description From Start to Cursor (Edit menu only) Selects all audio between the clip start and the project cursor. From Cursor to End (Edit menu only) Selects all audio between the project cursor and the end of the clip. For this to work, the project cursor must be within the clip boundaries. Equal Pitch all Octaves/ same Octave This function requires that the audio event has been analyzed using the VariAudio features and that one or several notes are selected.
Creating a new clip or audio file from the selection To extract a selection from an event and either create a new clip or a new audio file, proceed as follows: 1. Make a selection range. 2. Open the context menu and select “Bounce Selection” from the Audio submenu. A new clip is created and added to the Pool, and another Sample Editor window opens with the new clip. This clip refers to the same audio file as the original clip, but contains the audio corresponding to the selection range only.
Options and settings Making selections from regions If you select a region in the list and click the Select Region button above, the corresponding section of the audio clip is selected (as if you had selected it with the Range Selection tool) and zoomed. This is useful if you want to apply processing to the region only. Ö You can also double-click a region in the Pool to have its audio clip opened in the Sample Editor with the area of the region automatically selected.
Ö The Sample Editor function “Snap to Zero Crossing” is independent of the same setting in the Project window toolbar or other editors. It has no effect outside the Sample Editor. When Musical Mode is activated, audio events will adapt to any tempo changes in Nuendo, just like MIDI events. Auto-Scroll When the Auto-Scroll option is activated on the Sample Editor toolbar, the waveform display will scroll during playback, keeping the project cursor visible in the editor.
2. Activate the Musical Mode button on the toolbar. Your clip is warped and stretched automatically to adapt it to the project tempo. The rulers reflect the change. Proceed as follows: 1. Open the Sample Editor and define a selection range for your audio clip. Alternatively, you can define a range by setting the start and end of the audio event. In the Project window, the audio event is now shown with a note symbol and a double arrow in the upper right corner to indicate that Musical Mode is activated.
Manual Adjust You might have a very special loop where the automatic function does not lead to satisfying results. In this case you can manually adjust the grid and tempo of your audio file. Proceed as follows: 7. Click and drag the blue vertical line to the left or right to the position of the first downbeat in the second bar and release the mouse button. The beginning of the next bar is set, and all following bars are stretched or compressed by the same amount. 1.
• If you are not satisfied with a specific edit, you can hold down any modifier key and click on the adjusted grid line (bar or beat). The Eraser tool appears together with a tooltip indicating that you can remove your edit. When you are done, you can activate Musical Mode to adjust your audio loop to the project tempo. Applying swing If you find that your audio sounds too straight, e. g. after having quantized it with the Auto Adjust function, you can add swing.
If you select the Advanced menu item, a dialog opens where you can manually adjust the three parameters that govern the sound quality of the time stretching: You can also use warp tabs for further tweaking after having activated Musical Mode. ! Parameter Description Grain size The realtime time stretching algorithm splits the audio into small pieces called “grains”. This parameter determines the size of the grains. For material with many transients, use low Grain size values for best results.
5. Play back the audio file and determine where the first beat of a bar in the audio event does not match the corresponding ruler position in the project. If you find it difficult to pinpoint an exact position in the audio event, you can use the Scrub tool and/or zoom in the view. Moving the insert position of existing warp tabs If you wish to change the insert position of a warp tab in the audio, click and drag the warp tab handle in the ruler. This will change the warping. 6.
Working with hitpoints and slices Hitpoint detection is a special feature of the Sample Editor. It detects attack transients in an audio file and adds a type of marker, i. e. a “hitpoint”, at each transient. These hitpoints allow you to create “slices”, where each slice ideally represents each individual sound or “beat” in a loop (drum or other rhythmic loops work best with this feature).
The following happens: • The Sample Editor closes. • The audio event is “sliced” so that the sections between the hitpoints become separate events, all referring to the same original file. • The audio event is replaced by an audio part, containing the slices (double-click the part to view the slices in the Audio Part Editor). ! • If the project tempo is higher than the loop’s original tempo, you may want to activate auto crossfades for the track.
5. Audition the slices by pointing and clicking in any slice area. The pointer changes to a speaker icon and the corresponding slice is played back from the beginning to the end. • If you hear a single sound split into two slices you can disable an individual slice by clicking on the handle of the corresponding hitpoint. The hitpoint handle gets smaller and its line disappears to indicate that it is disabled. To reactivate a disabled hitpoint, click on the hitpoint handle again.
Ö The created slices are shown as separate events in the Project window. Close Gaps This function from the Advanced submenu of the Audio menu is useful if you have sliced a loop for tempo changes and you change the project tempo. Lowering the project tempo below the loop’s original tempo creates gaps between the slices – the slower the tempo, the wider the gaps. Increasing the project tempo over the loop’s original tempo compresses the slices using the time stretch function and creates overlaps.
In between the different segments you may find gaps where non-tonal portions have been detected. Such gaps can be caused by non-tonal portions of the audio, e. g. breath sounds. Audio waveform Segments Note pitches represent the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. The note A4 is perceived to be of the same pitch as a sine wave of 440 Hz. The notation of pitches is a logarithmic frequency scale.
Applying editing, offline processes, and VariAudio • If you click “Proceed”, your edits are applied, and you will lose your VariAudio data. The following offline processes and edits that affect the length of the audio file may lead to the reanalysis of the audio material: • Options on the Select Process menu, on the Process tab of the Sample Editor Inspector, or in the Process submenu of the Audio menu that can be applied to selections.
The following paragraphs list the corrections that can be performed when Segments mode is activated. Changing the note start or end point 3. Click at the desired position to cut the segment. The segment is cut accordingly taking Snap into account. ! If you find that a note starts or ends too early or too late, e. g. when the reverb of a note or a consonant is not included in the segment, proceed as follows: 1. On the VariAudio tab activate Segments mode. 2.
Moving segments horizontally Pitch & Warp tool After cutting a segment it may be necessary to move segments horizontally, for example, if you notice that a note is at the wrong position. Proceed as follows: If you activate the Pitch & Warp tool on the VariAudio tab, you can change the pitch and the timing of your audio. ! 1. On the VariAudio tab activate Segments mode. 2. Move the mouse pointer over the upper border of the segment. The mouse pointer becomes a double arrow. 3.
There are three different modes that affect the way in which a note will snap to a certain pitch that can be accessed using the following modifier keys: Quantize Pitch You can also quantize the audio pitch upwards or downwards to iteratively reduce the deviation from the nearest semitone position. Option Description Default modifier Absolute Pitch Snapping Pitches the segment to the next semitone.
If you want to change the pitch modulation only for the segment start or end, you can set an “anchor point” to specify which part of the segment is affected. Proceed as follows: 1. Move the mouse pointer over the top border of the segment. 4. Repeat the steps above to set anchors and tilt the micro-pitch curve until you are satisfied with the result.
Proceed as follows: 1. After having corrected the segmentation, select the segment for which you would like to change the pitch. 2. Activate the Pitch & Warp tool and click the MIDI Input button. 3. Press a key on your MIDI keyboard or use the Virtual Keyboard (Nuendo Expansion Kit only) to change the pitch of the segment. Ö MIDI controller data like pitchbend or modulation are ignored. Warping segments ! Any correction of the segmentation must be applied before warping segments. Time correction, i. e.
Ö Timing modifications introduced this way will not adapt to the project tempo. If this is what you want, use Musical Mode (see “AudioWarp: Tempo matching audio” on page 293). 2. Move the mouse pointer over the start of the segment so that it becomes a double arrow and drag the segment start to the beginning of the bar. The segment border snaps to the grid at the exact bar position. • You can change the insert position of a warp tab in the audio by clicking and dragging the warp tab handle in the ruler.
Now the beginning of the waveform matches the desired bar position. Listening to your modifications You can listen to the results of your modifications using the following methods: • By activating Acoustic Feedback on the toolbar. The segments are played back so that you can easily audition your pitch modifications while editing. • By using the Play tool on the toolbar. • By using the Audition and the Audition Loop tool on the toolbar. • By using cycle playback in the Project window.
Proceed as follows: 1. Open the VariAudio tab. 2. Open the Functions pop-up menu and select “Extract MIDI…”. You can also use a key command to extract your audio as MIDI. In this case no dialog opens and the settings that were used for the previous extraction are used instead. For further information on how to set up key commands, please refer to the chapter “Key commands” on page 580. The “Extract MIDI” dialog opens. 3.
Proceed as follows: 3. Select an algorithm preset and click OK. 1. Select the audio event(s) you wish to process. 2. Select “Flatten” from the Realtime Processing submenu of the Audio menu or use the corresponding button on the Process tab. If you did not perform any pitch modifications, a dialog opens where you can select an algorithm for the processing.
21 The Audio Part Editor
Background Window overview The Audio Part Editor allows you to view and edit the events inside audio parts. Essentially, this is the same type of editing that you do in the Project window, which means that this chapter contains a lot of references to the chapter “Working with projects” on page 51. Audio parts are created in the Project window in one of the following ways: • By selecting one or several audio events on the same track, and selecting “Events to Part” from the Audio menu.
About lanes If you make the editor window larger, this will reveal additional space below the edited events. This is because an audio part is divided vertically in lanes. • For events on different lanes, the event on the lowest lane gets playback priority. The overlapping sections of the upper event will not be played because the event on the lower lane has playback priority! Imagine the following situation: You have two overlapping audio events, with the top event audible during playback.
Auditioning There are several ways to listen to the events in the Audio Part Editor: By using the Speaker tool If you click somewhere in the editor’s event display with the Speaker tool and keep the mouse button pressed, the part will be played back from the position where you clicked. Playback will continue until you release the mouse button. Ö The Audio Part Editor also supports the key commands “Preview start” and “Preview stop” in the Media category of the Key Commands dialog.
Handling several parts When you open the Audio Part Editor with several parts selected – all on the same track or on different tracks – they might not all “fit” in the editor window, which can make it hard to get an overview of the different parts when editing.
Options and Settings Creating an audio part from regions 1. In the Project window, select the event you recorded in Cycle mode. After recording, this will play the last take. 2. Pull down the Audio menu and select “Events to Part”. You are asked whether you want to “Create part using regions”. 3. Click “Regions”.
22 The Pool
Background Opening the Pool Every time you record on an audio track, a file is created on your hard disk. A reference to this file – a clip – is also added to the Pool. Two general rules apply to the Pool: You can open the Pool in any of the following ways: • By clicking the “Open Pool Window” button on the Project window toolbar. If this icon is not visible, you need to activate the “Media & Mixer Windows” option on the toolbar context menu first.
Window overview Column Description Status This column displays various icons that relate to the current Pool and clip status. See “About the Status column symbols” on page 322 for a description of the icons. Musical Mode The checkbox in this column allows you to activate or deactivate Musical Mode. If the Tempo column (see below) displays “???”, you have to enter the correct tempo before you can activate Musical Mode. Tempo This shows the tempo of audio files, if available.
Symbol Description Sorting the Pool contents This indicates that the clip file is external, i. e. located outside the current Audio folder for the project. You can sort the clips in the Pool by name, date, etc. This is done by clicking on the corresponding column heading. Clicking again on the same heading switches between ascending and descending sort order. This indicates that the clip has been recorded in the currently open version of the project.
Operations Setting parameters of the Rename Object dialog Ö Most of the Pool-related main menu functions are also available on the Pool context menu (opened by right-clicking in the Pool window). The Rename Object dialog provides a great deal of flexibility and options when renaming multiple objects in Nuendo. In addition to simple prefix, suffix, and incremental numeric additions to names, you can remove certain characters, include timestamp information and more.
Option Description Using drag and drop Sample rate The sample rate of the audio file. Audio Tempo The audio tempo for that clip if it has been assigned. When using drag and drop to insert clips into the Project window, please note the following: User Attribute Any one of the custom attributes created in the Setup User Attributes dialog (see “User Attributes” on page 323). An example of the result is displayed in the bottom of the window for reference.
Deleting from the hard disk Locating events and clips To delete a file permanently from the hard disk, it must first be moved to the Trash folder: Locating events via clips in the Pool 1. Follow the instructions for deleting clips above, but click the Trash button instead of the Remove from Pool button. If you want to find out which events in the project refer to a particular clip in the Pool, proceed as follows: 1. Select one or more clips in the Pool.
• If you want to limit the search to certain folders, choose “Select Search Path” and select the desired folder in the dialog that opens. 3. Move the mouse pointer over the “Name” text to the right of the name field and click on the arrow that appears. Move the mouse pointer over the “Name” text to the right of the name field and click… The search will include the selected folder and all subfolders.
• You can save presets of your search filter settings. To do this, click Save Preset on the Presets submenu and enter a name for the preset. Locate missing files 1. Select “Find Missing Files…” from the Media or context menu. The Resolve Missing Files dialog opens. Existing presets can be found at the bottom of the list. To remove a preset, click on the preset to activate it, then select Remove Preset.
Proceed as follows: 1. Open the Pool and locate the clip(s) for which files are missing. 2. Check the Status column – if it says “Reconstructible”, the file can be reconstructed by Nuendo. 3. Select the reconstructible clips and select “Reconstruct” from the Media menu. The editing is performed and the edit files are recreated. Removing missing files from the Pool If the Pool contains audio files that cannot be found or reconstructed, you may want to remove these.
They may have the following characteristics: • Split channels/Split multi-channel files • Stereo or mono • Any sample rate (although files with another sample rate than the one used in the project will play back at the wrong speed and pitch – see below). • 8, 16, 24 bit or 32 bit float resolution. Various video formats can be imported. For information about the supported video formats, see “Video file compatibility” on page 521.
Changing the Pool Record folder Applying processing to clips in the Pool All audio clips that you record in the project will end up in the Pool Record folder. The Pool Record folder is indicated by the text “Record” in the Status column and by a red dot on the folder itself. You can apply audio processing to clips from within the Pool in the same way as to events in the Project window. Simply select the clip(s) and choose a processing method from the Audio menu.
Proceed as follows: Open Library 1. Select the file(s) you wish to minimize. Opens a file dialog for opening a saved library file. 2. Select “Minimize File” on the Media menu. Save Library An alert appears, informing you that the entire Edit History will be cleared. Click Minimize to proceed or Cancel to stop the process. 3. After the minimizing is finished, another alert appears, because the file references in the stored project have become invalid.
Option Description Replace Files Converts the original file without changing clip references. The references are however saved with the next save action. New + Replace in Pool Creates a new copy with the chosen attributes, replaces the original file with the new one in the Pool and redirects the current clip references from the original file to the new file. This is the option to select if you want your audio clips to refer to the converted file, but still want to keep the original file on disk (e. g.
23 The MediaBay
Introduction One of the biggest challenges in typical computer-based production environments is how to manage the ever-growing number of plug-ins, instruments, sounds, presets, etc. from multiple sources. Nuendo features an efficient database for media file management that allows you to handle all your media files from within your sequencer program.
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.
The Define Locations section The scanning status for the individual folders themselves is indicated by the color of the folder icons: • A red icon means that the folder is currently being scanned. • A light blue icon means the folder has been scanned. • A dark blue icon is displayed for folders which are excluded from the scan. • An orange icon is displayed when the scanning process for the folder was interrupted. • A yellow icon is displayed for folders that have not yet been scanned.
Updating the display To define a location, proceed as follows: You can update the display in two ways: by rescanning or by refreshing. 1. In the list to the left, select the desired folder. Rescanning A naming dialog for the new location is displayed. When you click the Rescan button, the selected folder is rescanned. If a folder contains a large number of media files, the scanning process may take some time.
• To select the parent folder of the selected folder, click the “Browse Containing Folder” button. • To remove a location from the pop-up menu, select it and click the “Remove Browse Location Definition” button. • To show the files contained in the selected folder and any subfolders (without showing these subfolders), activate the Deep Results button. When this button is deactivated, only the folders and files contained in the selected folder are shown.
Click here to open the pop-up menu. Option Description MIDI Loops When this is activated, the list shows all MIDI loops (file name extension .midiloop). Pattern Banks (Nuendo Expansion Kit only) When this is activated, the list shows all pattern banks (file name extension .patternbank). Pattern banks are generated by the MIDI plug-in Beat Designer. For more information, see “Previewing pattern banks (Nuendo Expansion Kit only)” on page 344 and the separate PDF document “Plug-in Reference”.
Boolean text search The search in progress indicator You can also perform advanced searches, using boolean operators or wildcards. The following elements can be used: At the top right in the Results list you will find an indicator which shows whether the MediaBay is currently searching for files. Option Description And [+] [a and b] – When entering strings separated by “and” (or a plus sign), all files are found that contain both a and b.
Managing files in the Results list Previewing audio files • You can move/copy a file from the Results list to another location by clicking on it and dragging it to another folder in the Define Locations section. Transport controls Preview level You will be asked whether you want to copy or move the file to the new location.
• To make a selection range, move the mouse over the upper part of the waveform, so that it turns into a pencil, click and drag. When the pencil is shown, you can click and drag to make a selection range. Previewing VST presets and track presets for MIDI and instrument tracks Ö Track presets for audio tracks can only be previewed in the Presets browser (see “Loading track or VST presets in the Inspector or the context menu of the track” on page 359).
Previewing presets using the Memo Recorder The Memo Recorder function continually repeats a given sequence of notes as a loop. To use the Memo Recorder, proceed as follows: 1. On the Sequence Mode pop-up menu, select Memo Recorder. 2. Enter the notes via the MIDI or computer keyboard. The Play button is automatically activated and you will instantly hear the notes you play with the preset settings applied.
The Filters section The following options are available: With the MediaBay, you can perform very refined file searches. You have two possibilities: Logical or Attribute Filtering. Ö You can also save your filter settings in a MediaBay Aspect, allowing for a quick recall of particular searches, see “MediaBay aspects” on page 351. Applying a logical filter Logical filtering is similar to working with the Logical Editor, see the chapter “The Logical Editor, Transformer, and Input Transformer” on page 431.
Applying an attribute filter Advanced text search You can also perform very advanced text searches using boolean operators. Proceed as follows: 1. Select the desired location. 2. Activate Logical filtering by clicking on the Logical button at the top of the Filters section. A condition line appears. 3. Select the desired attribute on the Attributes pop-up menu, or leave the setting on “Any Attribute”. 4. Make sure that the condition is set to “matches”. 5.
• Selected attribute values in the same column form an OR condition. The Attribute Inspector This means that files must be tagged according to either one or the other attribute value to be displayed in the Results list. Attributes (or “tags”) for media files are sets of metadata providing additional information on the file. When you have selected one or more files in the Results list, the Attribute Inspector shows a two-column list of attributes and their values.
• Click the Defined button to show a configured set of attributes for the selected media type. In this mode, you can choose which attributes are displayed (regardless of whether corresponding values are available for the selected files). For more information on how to set up the list of displayed attributes, see “Managing the attribute lists” on page 350.
About the color scheme used in the Attribute Inspector Editing the attributes of multiple files simultaneously The colors used for the displayed values in the Attributes Inspector have the following meaning: There is no limit as to how many files can be tagged at the same time, but you need to be aware that the tagging of a large amount of files in one go may take quite a while. This operation is executed in the background, so that you can continue with your work as usual.
• When you specify attribute values for a file that is writeprotected, this is reflected in the Pending Tags column next to the Write Protection column in the Results list. Note that if you rescan the MediaBay content and a media file on your hard disk has changed since the last scan, all pending tags for this file will be lost.
Creating a new aspect 3. Specify the type of the attribute. Attributes can be of the types “Text”, “Number” or “Yes/No” switch. For “Number” attributes, you can specify how many decimals are displayed, by entering the corresponding value in the Precision field. 4. In the text field below, enter the name for the new attribute. To add a new MediaBay aspect, proceed as follows: 1. On the Media menu, open the MediaBay Aspects submenu and select “New Aspect…”.
3. In the Define Locations section, select the folder (or removable hard drive, etc.) containing the files with production sound you want to work with and save it as Location. 4. Hide the Define Locations section to save screen space. Removing MediaBay Aspects • To remove a MediaBay Aspect, open the Media menu, and on the MediaBay Aspects submenu, select Remove Aspect. Preferences 5. In the Locations section, select the Location you just created. You can now also close this section. 6.
Option Description Use Current Selection as Base Location Activate this to show only the selected folder and its subfolders. To switch back to the display of all folders, deactivate this option. Scan Folders Only when MediaBay is Open When this is activated, Nuendo only scans for media files when the MediaBay window is open. When this is deactivated, the folders are scanned in the background even when the MediaBay window is closed.
Click the Browse button to expand the dialog to show the Results list (as you can find it in the MediaBay). However, only file types that can be used in this context are shown. Applying instrument presets When working with VST instruments, you can choose from a variety of presets via the Presets pop-up menu. The Preset browser opens: You can also apply track presets to existing tracks. The dialog that opens in this case is the same as above.
external device and directly browse its contents in the MediaBay, without having to scan the device again. This can be achieved by creating a volume database for the external device. Volume databases are files that can be created for drives of your computer or for external storage media. They contain the same kind of information about the media files on these drives as the regular MediaBay database. Creating a volume database To create a separate volume database file for a drive, proceed as follows: 1.
24 Working with track presets
Introduction The following data is saved in instrument track presets: Track presets are templates from audio, MIDI or instrument tracks that can be applied to newly created or existing tracks of the same type. They contain sound and channel settings, and allow you to quickly browse, preview, select and change sounds, or reuse channel settings across projects. Track presets are organized in the MediaBay (see the chapter “The MediaBay” on page 334), where you can categorize them with attributes.
If you select more than one track when creating a track preset, the settings of all selected tracks will be saved as one multi-track preset. Multi-track presets can only be applied if the target tracks are of the same type, number and sequence as the tracks in the track preset, therefore, they should be used in recurring situations with very similar tracks and settings. VST (instrument) presets VST instrument presets (extension “.
Ö You can also drag and drop track presets from the Windows Explorer or the Mac OS Finder, but in this case, no preview for track presets is possible. Loading track or VST presets in the Inspector or the context menu of the track 1. In the Project window, select a track. 2. Click in the Load Track Preset field at the top of the Inspector (above the track name) or right-click the track in the track list and select “Load Track Preset”. The Presets browser opens. Applying a multi-track preset 1.
For information on the general handling of inserts presets, see “Effect presets” on page 209. The general handling of EQ presets is described in the section “Using EQ presets” on page 166. Extracting sound from an instrument track or VST preset For instrument tracks, you can extract the “sound” of an instrument track preset or VST preset, that means the VST instrument and its settings.
Track presets are saved within the application folder in the “Track Presets” folder (in default subfolders named according to their track type: audio, MIDI, instrument, and multi). Ö You cannot change the default folders, but you can add further subfolders (by clicking the New Folder button). In the MediaBay all presets are available under the (virtual) VST Sound node, see “The VST Sound node” on page 337.
25 Track Quick Controls
Introduction 2. Double-click the parameter that you want to assign to the first quick control slot. Nuendo can give you instant access to up to eight parameters of each audio, MIDI or instrument track. This is done with the aid of the so-called quick controls, set up on the Quick Controls Inspector tab for these tracks. The parameter name and its value are displayed in the slot. You can change the value by dragging the slider.
Setting up quick controls on an external remote controller 5. Select “QuickControl1” in the “Control Name” column. Quick controls become really powerful when used in combination with a remote controller. 6. Move the control (knob, fader or other) on your remote control device that you want to use for the first quick control. 7. In the Device Setup dialog, click the Learn button. Setting up the connection between the slots on the Quick Controls Inspector tab and a remote control device is easy.
3. Open the VST Mixer folder. The pop-up menu lists all channels available in the Mixer of your current project. 4. Now assign a parameter of one particular channel to quick control 1, and another parameter of another channel to quick control 2. Here, quick controls 1–8 have been set up to control the main volume of eight audio tracks. The Quick Controls tab has become a “secondary” mixer, dedicated to quick-controlling parameters on other tracks.
26 Remote controlling Nuendo
Introduction Selecting a remote device It is possible to control Nuendo via MIDI. A large number of MIDI control devices is supported. This chapter describes how to set up Nuendo for remote control. The supported devices are described in the separate PDF document “Remote Control Devices”. 1. Open the Device Setup dialog from the Devices menu. 2. If you cannot find the remote device you are looking for, click on the plus sign in the top left corner and select the device from the pop-up menu.
• In the Project window (track list) and the Mixer (bottom of channel strips) you will now see white stripes indicating which channels are currently linked to the remote control device. Audio 10 can be remote controlled, while Audio 11 is not linked to the remote control device. ! Sometimes communication between Nuendo and a remote device is interrupted or the handshaking protocol fails to create a connection.
The Generic Remote device • Click “Reset” to revert to the default settings. The selected function is now assigned to the button or control on the remote device. A note about remote controlling MIDI tracks While most remote control devices will be able to control both MIDI and audio channels in Nuendo, the parameter setup may be different. For example, audio-specific controls (such as EQ) will be disregarded when controlling MIDI channels.
5. Use the pop-up menu to the right to select a bank. Banks are combinations of a certain number of channels, and are used because most MIDI devices can control only a limited number of channels at a time (often 8 or 16). For example, if your MIDI control device has 16 volume faders, and you are using 32 Mixer channels in Nuendo, you would need two banks of 16 channels each. When the first bank is selected you can control channel 1 to 16; when the second Bank is selected you can control channel 17 to 32.
9. When you are finished, close the Device Setup window. Apple Remote (Macintosh only) Now, you can control the specified Nuendo parameters from the MIDI remote device. To select another bank, use the pop-up menu in the Generic Remote window (or use a control on the MIDI remote device, if you have assigned one for this). Many Apple computers come with an Apple Remote Control, a small hand-held device akin to TV remote controls. It allows you to remotely control certain features in Nuendo.
27 MIDI realtime parameters and effects
Introduction For each MIDI track, you can set up a number of track parameters, or modifiers, and MIDI effects. These affect how the MIDI data is played back, “transforming” MIDI events in realtime before they are sent to the MIDI outputs. On the following pages, the available parameters and effects are described. Keep in mind: • The actual MIDI events will not be affected – the changes happen “on the fly”.
Parameter Description Monitor button When this is activated (and the “MIDI Thru Active” option is activated in the Preferences dialog, MIDI page), incoming MIDI will be routed to the selected MIDI output. Toggle Timebase button Switches between musical (tempo related) and linear (time related) time base for the track, see “Switching between musical and linear time base” on page 63. Lock button Activate this to disable all editing of all events on the track.
Ö This setting is also affected by the global Transpose settings. For detailed information, see the chapter “The transpose functions” on page 129. Velocity Shift This setting lets you change the dynamics of all notes on the track. The value in this field is added to the velocity of each note message that is sent out (use negative values to lower the velocities). The range is -127 to +127 with 0 representing no change in velocity.
Range Notepad section The Range function lets you specify a note (pitch) or velocity range and either force all notes to fit within this range, or exclude all notes outside this range from playback. As with the Random function, there are two separate Range settings. Set them up as follows: This is a standard notepad, allowing you to enter notes and comments about the track. Each track has its own notepad in the Inspector. 1.
MIDI effects MIDI Inserts section Nuendo comes with a number of MIDI effect plug-ins, capable of transforming the MIDI output from a track in various ways. Just like the MIDI modifiers, MIDI effects are applied in realtime to the MIDI data played back from the track (or to MIDI you play live “thru” the track).
Ö Effects that display their controls in the Inspector can be opened in a separate control panel window by pressing [Alt]/[Option] and clicking the Edit button. MIDI Sends section About presets Several of the MIDI plug-ins come with a number of presets for instant use. MIDI In and Out activity indicators Save and Remove Preset buttons This allows you to add up to four MIDI send effects. Unlike audio send effects, you can select and activate send effects individually for each track.
Applying a MIDI insert effect – an example Here is a step-by-step example of how to add a MIDI insert effect to a MIDI track: 1. Select the MIDI track and open the Inspector. 2. Open the MIDI Inserts tab in the Inspector. • Alternatively you can use the Mixer: bring up the extended Mixer panel and select “Inserts” on the view options pop-up menu for the track’s channel strip.
28 Using MIDI devices
Background The MIDI Device Manager allows you to specify and set up your MIDI devices, making global control and patch selection easy. But the MIDI Device Manager also features powerful editing functions that can be used to create MIDI device panels. MIDI device panels are internal representations of external MIDI hardware, complete with graphics.
When you open the MIDI Device Manager for the first time, it will be empty (because you have not installed any devices yet). On the following pages we describe how to add a pre-configured MIDI device to the list, how to edit the settings and how to define a device from scratch. 6. Make sure that the Enable Edit checkbox is activated.
The Patch Banks list in the left half of the window shows the patch structure of the device. This could simply be a list of patches, but it is usually one or several layers of banks or groups containing the patches (much like a folder structure on a hard disk for example). • You can rename a device in the Installed Devices list by double-clicking and typing – this is useful if you have several devices of the same model, and want to separate them by name instead of by number.
Selecting a patch for an installed device Renaming patches in a device If you return to the Project window at this point, you will find that the installed device has been added to the MIDI Output menus (in the track list and the Inspector). Now you can select patches by name, in the following way: The pre-configured devices list is based on the factorypreset patches, i.e. the patches included in the device when you first bought it.
The Commands pop-up menu contains the following items: Create Bank • To remove an event, select it and press [Delete] or [Backspace]. ! Creates a new bank at the highest hierarchical level of the Patch Banks list. You can rename this by clicking on it and typing a new name. New Folder Creates a new subfolder in the selected bank or folder. This could correspond to a group of patches in the MIDI device, or just be a way for you to categorize sounds, etc.
3. Specify a Default Name below the event display. The added events will get this name, followed by a number. You can rename presets manually in the Patch Banks list later. 4. Click OK. A number of new presets have now been added to the selected bank or folder, according to your settings. Device panels in the program In this section we will take a look at a pre-configured MIDI device panel to illustrate how it can be used in Nuendo.
6. Select the correct MIDI output from the Output popup menu, select the device in the list and click the Open Device button. The device control panel opens in a separate window. The Edit (“e”) button at the top opens the Edit Panel window, see the separate PDF document “MIDI Devices”. Showing panels in the Inspector 1. In the Inspector, open the User Panel tab and click on the arrow on the right. A “Panels” folder is shown with the selected device in a node structure below it.
Showing panels in the Mixer Automating device parameters 1. Open the Mixer and make sure that the extended channel view is shown. Automation works just like for normal audio and MIDI tracks: 2. Open the View options pop-up menu for the MIDI channel connected to the device and select “User Panel”. 1. Open the device control panel by clicking the Open Device Panels button in the Inspector. 2. Activate Write automation on the device panel.
About Studio Connections Studio Connections is the name of an initiative led by Steinberg and Yamaha. The initiative intends to create industry standards for totally integrated system environments using software and hardware products.
• Click the Open Device Panels button, to open the editor window for the device. Ö Please also refer to the separate documentation for the Studio Manager 2 and the OPT components.
29 MIDI processing and quantizing
Introduction This chapter describes the various MIDI processing functions available on the MIDI menu. They offer various ways to edit MIDI notes and other events, either in the Project window or from within a MIDI editor. MIDI functions vs. MIDI modifiers In some cases, the result of a MIDI function can also be obtained by using MIDI modifiers and effects (see “MIDI realtime parameters and effects” on page 372).
Setting up quantize on the toolbar Swing At its most basic, setting up quantizing consists of selecting a note value from the Quantize pop-up menu on the toolbar (in the Project window or a MIDI editor). The Swing slider is only available when a straight note value is selected for the grid and Tuplet is off (see below). It lets you offset every second position in the grid, creating a swing or shuffle feel. When you adjust the Swing slider, the result is shown in the grid display.
Presets The Random Quantize setting The controls in the lower left corner of the dialog allow you to store the current settings as a preset, which will then be available on the Quantize menus on the toolbars. The usual preset procedures apply: This setting affects the result of the quantizing. It allows you to set a “distance” in ticks (120ths of sixteenth notes). • To store the settings as a preset, click the Store button.
The Auto Quantize function An example: If you activate the Auto Q button on the Transport panel, all MIDI recordings you make are automatically quantized according to the settings you have made in the Quantize Setup dialog. Length Quantize set to “Quantize Link”. Iterative Quantize Another way to apply “loose” quantization is to use the Iterative Quantize function on the MIDI menu.
Freeze Quantize Semitones There may be situations when you want to make the quantized positions “permanent”. For example, you may want to quantize notes a second time, having the results based on the current quantized positions rather than the original positions. To make this possible, select the notes in question and select “Freeze Quantize” from the Advanced Quantize submenu. This makes the quantized positions permanent. This is where you set the amount of transposition.
Making your settings permanent The settings described in the chapter “MIDI realtime parameters and effects” on page 372 do not change the MIDI events themselves, but work like a “filter”, affecting the music on playback. Therefore, you may want to make them permanent, i. e. convert them to “real” MIDI events, for example to transpose a track and then edit the transposed notes in a MIDI editor.
Applying effects to a single part Dissolving parts into separate channels Normally, the MIDI modifiers and effects affect a whole MIDI track. This may not always be what you want – you may want to apply some MIDI effects to a single part for example (without having to create a separate track for that part only).
An example: This is useful when working with drums for example, as it allows you to split up a part into different drum sounds and edit these independently. When you have made the desired modifications, you can reassemble all your drums into one part using the Bounce MIDI command, see below. This part contains events on MIDI channels 1, 2, and 3. This option is especially handy when working with instrument parts on instrument tracks.
Other MIDI functions Delete Controllers The following items can be found on the Functions submenu of the MIDI menu: This function removes all MIDI controllers from the selected MIDI parts. Delete Continuous Controllers Legato Extends each selected note so that it reaches the next note. This function removes all “continuous” MIDI controller events from the selected MIDI parts. Therefore, “on/off” events such as sustain pedal events are not removed.
Minimum Velocity Velocity When the Minimum Velocity checkbox is activated, the velocity of notes is taken into account, allowing you to remove weak notes. You specify the minimum velocity (for notes to be kept) in the value display. This function opens a dialog that allows you to manipulate the velocity of notes in various ways. Remove when under This setting is only available when both Minimum Length and Minimum Velocity is activated.
Fixed Velocity Reverse This function sets the velocity of all selected notes to the Insert Velocity value on the toolbar in the MIDI editors. This function inverts the order of the selected events (or of all events in the selected parts), causing the MIDI music to play backwards. Note that the effect is different from reversing an audio recording. With MIDI, the individual notes will still play as usual in the MIDI instrument – it is only the order of playback that is changed.
30 The MIDI editors
Introduction Opening a MIDI editor There are several ways to edit MIDI in Nuendo. You can use the tools and functions in the Project window for largescale editing, or the functions on the MIDI menu to process MIDI parts in various ways (see “What is affected by the MIDI functions?” on page 392).
Handling several parts When you open a MIDI editor with several parts (or a MIDI track containing several parts) selected, you might find it somewhat hard to get an overview of the different parts when editing. • The button “Show Part Borders” can be used if you want to see clearly defined borders for the active part. When this is activated, all parts except the active one are grayed out, making the borders easily discernible.
The Key Editor – Overview Toolbar Status line Info line Ruler Note display Controller display The toolbar Option Description The toolbar contains tools and various settings for the Key Editor. The following toolbar elements are available: Transpose Palette The transpose buttons allow you to transpose the selected notes, see “Moving and transposing notes” on page 413.
The status line The status line is displayed below the toolbar in the Key Editor. At the bottom of the pop-up menu, there are two additional items: It displays the following information: Option Description Mouse Time Position This displays the exact time position of the mouse pointer, in the format selected for the ruler, allowing you to perform editing or to insert notes at exact positions.
Ö Unlike notes, events in the controller display have no length. The value of an event in the display is “valid” until the start of the next event. The controller display For a description of editing in the controller display, see “Editing in the controller display” on page 417. The area at the bottom of the Key Editor window is the controller display.
4. To edit several notes, click and drag with the mouse across the notes. A line is displayed. The notes will be trimmed along this line. visible at all times. However, when you are working in a MIDI editor, you may want to deactivate Auto-Scroll – this way, the events you are working with will stay visible.
Coloring notes and events Acoustic Feedback By using the Event Colors pop-up menu on the toolbar, you can select a color scheme for the events in the editor. The following options are available: If the speaker icon on the toolbar is activated, individual notes will automatically be played back (auditioned) when you move or transpose them, or when you create new notes by drawing. This makes it easier to hear what you’re doing.
• If Snap is activated, this determines the start position of the created note. • If you click once, the created note will have the length set on the Length Quantize pop-up menu on the toolbar. You can create a longer note by clicking and dragging. The length of the created note will be a multiple of the Length Quantize value. Drawing notes with the Line tool The Line tool can be used for creating series of contiguous notes. To do so, click and drag to draw a line and then release the mouse button.
Selecting notes Selecting notes is done using any of the following methods: • To select all notes of a certain pitch, press [Ctrl]/[Command] and click on the desired key in the keyboard display to the left. • Use the Arrow tool. The standard selection techniques apply, like selecting by clicking on the note or using a selection rectangle. Note that when you press [Shift] and click on notes or draw a selection rectangle, these notes will be added to the overall selection.
Moving and transposing notes Duplicating and repeating notes To move notes in the editor, use any of the following methods: Notes are duplicated much in the same way as events in the Project window: • Select the notes and use the buttons on the transpose palette on the toolbar. • Hold down [Alt]/[Option] and drag the note(s) to a new position. • Click and drag to a new position. If Snap is activated, this determines to which positions you can copy notes (see “Snap” on page 410).
Using cut and paste Splitting notes You can use the Cut, Copy and Paste options on the Edit menu to move or copy material within a part or between different parts. When you paste copied notes, you can either use the regular Paste function or the function “Paste Time” from the Range submenu of the Edit menu. There are three ways to split notes: • “Paste” inserts the copied notes at the project cursor position without affecting existing notes.
Deleting notes To delete notes, either click on them with the Erase tool or select them and press [Backspace]. Editing on the info line The info line shows the values and properties of the selected events. If a single event is selected, its values are displayed on the info line. If several events are selected, the info line shows the values of the first of these events (in color). You can edit the values on the info line using regular value editing.
How the Key Editor handles expression maps (Nuendo Expansion Kit only) When an expression map is assigned to a MIDI track (see the chapter “VST Expression” in the NEK manual), the musical articulations defined for that map are displayed in the following locations of the Key Editor: In the info line. 4. Play a note on your MIDI instrument. The note selected in the editor will get the pitch, velocity and/or note-off velocity of the played note.
5. Play the first note or chord on your MIDI instrument. The note or chord appears in the editor and the step input position advances one quantize value step. Ö If Move Insert Mode is activated, all notes to the right of the step input position will be moved to “make room” for the inserted note or chord. • If you remove all lanes, the controller display will be completely hidden. To bring it back again, select “Create New Controller Lane” from the context menu.
• Each MIDI track has its own controller lane setup (number of lanes and selected event types). When you create new tracks, they get the controller lane setup used last. • You can use the Pencil tool to change the velocity of a single note: click on its velocity bar and drag the bar up or down. While you drag, the current velocity value is shown in the display to the left.
• The remaining three Line tool modes (Sine, Triangle and Square) align the velocity values to continuous curve shapes (see below). Ö If there is more than one note at the same position (e. g. a chord), their velocity bars will overlap in the controller lane. If none of the notes are selected, all notes at the same position will be set to the same velocity value when you draw. To edit the velocity of only one of the notes at the same position, first select the note in the note display.
• The Parabola mode works in the same way, but aligns the values to a parabola curve instead, giving more “natural” curves and fades. Note that the result depends on the direction from which you draw the parabola. Ö You can also set the curve period freely by holding down [Shift] when you insert events in Sine, Triangle or Square mode. Activate Snap, [Shift]-click and drag to set the length of one period. The period length will be a multiple of the quantize value.
! When the Auto Select Controllers button is activated in the Key Editor toolbar, selecting notes will also select the corresponding controller events. Moving events (either using cut/copy/paste or drag & drop) in the note display will also move the corresponding controller events (see also “Selecting controllers within the note range” on page 412).
The In-Place Editor Adding and editing Poly Pressure events Poly Pressure events are special, in that they “belong to” a specific note number (key). That is, each Poly Pressure event has two editable values: the note number and the amount of pressure. Therefore, when Poly Pressure is selected on the event type pop-up menu, there are two value fields to the left of the controller display, one for the note number and one for the amount.
• Just like in the Key Editor, you can edit velocity or continuous controllers at the bottom of the In-Place Editor. To change which controller type is shown, click in the controller name field directly below the piano keyboard and select a controller type from the pop-up menu. To add or remove controller lanes, right-click below the controller name field and select an option from the context menu.
The List Editor – Overview Toolbar Filters bar Status line Ruler Value display Event list Event display The toolbar The status line The toolbar contains several items that are the same as in the Key Editor (edit solo, snap, quantize settings, etc.). These are described earlier in this chapter.
List Editor operations • Notes will get the insert velocity value set in the insert velocity field on the toolbar, see “Setting velocity values” on page 411. Customizing the view You can click and drag the divider between the list and the event display to make one area wider and the other narrower. Furthermore, the list can be customized in the following ways: • You can change the order of the columns by dragging the column headings.
• You can edit several events at once. If several events are selected and you edit a value for one event, the other selected events’ values will be changed as well. Normally, any initial value differences between the events will be maintained – i. e. the values will change by the same amount. If you press [Ctrl]/ [Command] when you edit, however, all events will get the same value. Ö For SysEx (system exclusive) events, you can only edit the position (Start) in the list.
The Hide section (filtering out event types) The Hide section on the Filters bar allows you to hide specific event types from view. For example, it may be hard to find note events if the part contains a lot of controller data. By hiding the controllers, the list becomes more manageable. • To hide an event type, activate the corresponding checkbox on the Filters bar. • To hide all event types except one, press [Ctrl]/[Command] and click the checkbox of the event type you want to view.
Bulk dumps 4. When done recording, select the new part and open the List Editor from the MIDI menu. Recording a bulk dump in Nuendo In any programmable device, the settings are stored as numbers in computer memory. Change those numbers, and you will change the settings. Normally, MIDI devices allow you to dump (transmit) all or some settings in the device’s memory in the form of MIDI SysEx messages.
• If the dump is very short (for instance, a single sound) you can put it in the middle of the project to re-program a device on the fly. However, you can achieve the same effect by using Program Change. This is definitely preferable, since less MIDI data is sent and recorded. Some devices may be set up to dump the settings for a sound as soon as you select it on the front panel. • If you create parts with useful SysEx dumps, you can put these on a special muted track.
Editing a value The selected value can be edited directly in the main display or in the ASCII, decimal, and binary displays. Just click on it and type in the desired value as usual. Adding and deleting bytes Using the Insert and Delete buttons or their corresponding computer keyboard keys, you can add and delete bytes from the message. Inserted data will appear before the selection. To delete the complete SysEx message, select it in the List Editor and press [Delete] or [Backspace].
31 The Logical Editor, Transformer, and Input Transformer
Introduction Most of the time you will perform your MIDI editing graphically in one of the MIDI editors. But there are times when you want more of a “search and replace” function on MIDI data, and that’s where the Logical Editor comes in. The principle of the Logical Editor is this: • You set up filter conditions to find certain elements. This can be elements of a certain type, with certain attributes or values or on certain positions, in any combination.
Window overview Filter conditions list Action List Column Description Condition This determines how the Logical Editor compares the property in the Filter Target column to the values in the Parameter columns (see below). The available options depend on the Filter Target setting. Parameter 1 Here you set which value the element properties are compared to (depending on the Filter Target).
Condition Elements will be found if their Filter Target property… Less …has a value lower than the one set up in the Parameter 1 column. Less or Equal …has a value that is the same as or lower than the one set up in the Parameter 1 column. Inside Range …has a value that is between the values set up in the Parameter 1 and Parameter 2 columns. Note that Parameter 1 should be the lower value and Parameter 2 the higher.
Searching for Value 1 or Value 2 Searching for note pitch or velocity A MIDI event is composed of several values. What is displayed for Value 1 and 2 depends on the type of event: If you add another condition line with the Filter Target “Type”, Condition “Equal” and Parameter 1 set to “Note”, the Logical Editor will “know” you are searching for pitch or velocity. This has the following benefits: Event type Value 1 Value 2 Notes The Note Number/ Pitch. The velocity of the note.
Searching for element types Selecting Type as the Filter Target allows you to find elements of a certain type only. • The Condition column contains only three options: Equal, Unequal and All Types. • Clicking the Parameter 1 column displays a pop-up menu, listing the available types (Note, Poly Pressure, Controller, etc.). The Logical Editor will find all elements matching or not matching the selected type (depending on the Condition).
• If two condition lines are combined with a boolean Or, one of the conditions (or both) must be fulfilled for an element to be found. Selecting a function The Logical Editor will find all events that are notes (regardless of their position) and all events starting at the beginning of the third bar (regardless of their type). When you add a new condition line, the boolean setting defaults to And.
Copy (Logical Editor only) Option Description This will copy all found elements, transform them according to the action list and paste them into a new part on a new MIDI track. The original events are not affected. Channel Allows you to change the MIDI channel setting, see “Searching for MIDI channels” on page 435. Type Allows you to change the event type, e. g. transform aftertouch events to modulation events.
For example, if the Action Target value is 17 and Parameter 1 is 5, the result of rounding will be 15 (the closest value that can be divided by 5). Another word for this type of operation would be “quantizing”, and it is actually possible to use it for this, by setting the Action Target to “Position” and specifying a quantize value with Parameter 1 (in ticks, with 480 ticks per quarter note). Set Random Values between Use Value 2 This is only available when Action Target is set to Value 1.
For example, if you apply this to note velocities with Parameter 1 set to 0 and Parameter 2 set to -100, you create a velocity fade-out, keeping the original velocity relations: Storing your own settings as a preset If you have made Logical Editor settings that you want to use again, you can store them as a preset: 1. Click on the Store Preset button on the right of the Preset menu. A dialog for specifying a name for the new preset is displayed. 2. Enter a name for the preset and click OK.
Opening the Input Transformer The Function pop-up menu To open the Input Transformer for a MIDI track, select the track and click the Input Transformer button in the Inspector to open the pop-up menu. The Function pop-up menu contains two options: Filter and Transform. • In Filter mode, only the filter conditions (the upper list) are taken into account. All events matching the conditions set up will be filtered out (excluded from the recording).
32 The Project Logical Editor
Introduction On the Edit menu you will find the function “Project Logical Editor…”. This opens a Project Logical Editor for the entire project. It works similar to the Logical Editor on the MIDI menu, see the chapter “The Logical Editor, Transformer, and Input Transformer” on page 431.
Setting up filter conditions General procedure Column Description Bar Range/ Time Base This column is only used if the Filter Target is set to “Position”. If one of the “Bar Range” options is selected in the Condition column, you use the Bar Range/Time Base column to specify “zones” within each bar (allowing you to find all elements on or around the first beat of every bar, for example).
3. Open the pop-up menu in the Condition column and select the desired condition. For media types, the following options are available: Condition Description Equal This finds the Media Type set up in the Parameter 1 column. All Types This finds all Media Types.
Ö To take maximum advantage of this feature, we recommend using a standard nomenclature in your projects (Drums, Perc, Voc, etc.). Searching for elements at certain positions 1. Select “Position” in the Filter Target pop-up menu. • If you select any condition other than the Range, Bar Range, Cursor, Loop or Cycle options, you set up a specific position (in PPQ, seconds, samples, or frames) in the Parameter 1 column. Use the Bar Range/Time Base column to specify the time base.
Three examples: Condition An element will be found, if it… Less …has a value lower than the one set up in the Parameter 1 column. Less or Equal …has a value that is the same as or lower than the one set up in the Parameter 1 column. Inside Range …has a value that is between the values set up in the Parameter 1 and Parameter 2 columns. Note that Parameter 1 should be the lower value and Parameter 2 the higher.
• If two condition lines are combined with a boolean Or, one of the conditions (or both) must be fulfilled for an element to be found. The Project Logical Editor will find all parts or events that match exactly the cycle. ! When you add a new condition line, the boolean setting defaults to And.
Operation Description Operation Description Set Relative Random Values between This will add a random value to the current Position value. The added random value will be within the range specified with Parameter 1 and 2. Note that these can be set to negative values. For example, if you set Parameter 1 to -20 and Parameter 2 to +20, the original Position value will get a random variation, never exceeding ±20. Sends Bypass Enables, disables or toggles the sends bypass status.
Selecting a function Applying the defined actions Once you have set up filter conditions, selected a function and set the required actions (or loaded a preset), you apply the actions defined with the Project Logical Editor by clicking the Apply button. The left pop-up menu at the bottom of the Project Logical Editor is where you select the function – the basic type of editing to be performed. Project Logical Editor operations can be undone just like any other editing.
Organizing and sharing presets The Project Logical Editor presets are stored within the application folder in the Presets\Logical Edit Project subfolder. While these files cannot be edited manually, you can reorganize them (e. g. putting them in subfolders) like any files. This also makes it easy to share presets with other Nuendo users, by transferring the individual preset files. Ö The list of presets is read each time the Project Logical Editor is opened.
33 Editing tempo and signature
Background A note about tempo-based audio tracks Whenever you create a new project, Nuendo will automatically set the tempo and time signature for this project. The tempo and signature settings can be displayed in two ways: either on dedicated tracks in the Project window, or in the Tempo Track Editor. Tempo modes Before we go into detail about tempo and signature settings, you should understand the different tempo modes.
About the tempo and signature tracks The tempo track and the signature track allow you to view and edit tempo and signature data in the project context. The Tempo Track Editor has a toolbar, info line and ruler just like other editors in Nuendo, plus an area for the display of time signature events and a tempo curve display.
Editing tempo and signature Selecting tempo curve points You can use the options of the Tempo Track Editor or the tempo and signature tracks to edit tempo and signature settings. The descriptions given below are valid in both cases. The only exception is the tempo recording slider (see below) which is available only in the Tempo Track Editor. Editing the tempo curve ! This section assumes that you are working in tempo track mode, i. e. the Tempo button must be activated on the Transport panel.
Adjusting the curve type You can change the curve type of a tempo curve segment at any time, using the following method: 1. With the Arrow tool, select all curve points within the segment you want to edit. To set the tempo in fixed mode: • Adjust the value numerically in the tempo display on the Tempo Track Editor toolbar or in the track list. • On the Transport panel, click on the tempo value to select it, enter a new value and press [Enter]. 2.
Process Tempo The Process Bars dialog Process Tempo allows you to define a specific length or end time for a set range, and the tempo track will automatically set a tempo that will fit the range in the specified time. The Process Bars dialog (opened from the Tempo Track Editor or the signature track) uses the global “Insert Silence” and “Delete Time” functions from the Range submenu of the Edit menu.
Option Description Action – Replace Bars When you select this action, clicking the Process button will cause the time signature of the specified bar range to be replaced by the one you specify in this dialog. Action – Signature This lets you specify the time signature for the action you select on the Action pop-up menu (except for the Delete Bars action). Process Click on this button to apply your changes to the specified bar range.
Merge Tempo From Tapping The Time Warp tool This function allows you to create a complete tempo track based on your tapping. Typically, you would use this if you have an audio file with no tempo mapping and want to be able to add other material afterwards, etc. The Time Warp tool lets you adjust the tempo track so that “musical time-based” material (positions related to the tempo) matches “linear time-based” material (positions in time). Some typical applications: 1.
While you are dragging, the track(s) you are editing are temporarily switched to linear time base. This means that the contents of the tracks remain at the same time positions regardless of the tempo (there is an exception to this in the Project window, see below). Viewing and adjusting tempo events When you select the Time Warp tool, the ruler of the active window is shown in brown. Existing tempo events are shown in the ruler as “flags” with the tempo values displayed. 4.
Matching a musical score to video Here’s an example of how to use the Time Warp tool in “musical events follow” mode. Let’s say you are creating the music for a film. You have a video track, an audio track with a commentary and some audio and/or MIDI tracks with your music. Now you want to match the position of a musical cue to a position in a video film. The musical cue is located in bar 33. There are no tempo changes in the project (yet). 7.
11. Now match the second musical cue to the correct video position by dragging the musical position to the desired time position as before. The new tempo event is edited – the first tempo event is unaffected and the original cue is still matched. • If you know you are going to match several cues this way, make it a habit to press [Shift] each time you use the Time Warp tool to match positions. This adds a new tempo event – that way, you do not have to add tempo events afterwards as described above.
Now, if you simply adjusted that beat in the tempo grid to match the beat in the recording, the tempo event at the first downbeat would be changed – this would ruin the match in the previous bars! We need to lock these by inserting a new tempo event. 9. Locate the last beat that is in sync. This would be the beat just before the position where the audio and tempo drift apart. 10. Press [Shift] and click at that position to insert a tempo event there. This locks this matched position.
34 The Project Browser
Window Overview Time Format (display format) pop-up menu Add pop-up menu and Add button for creating new parts, events and regions. Project Structure list. This is where you navigate through the project. Filter pop-up menu, used for MIDI editing Event display. This is where you view and edit parts, events and regions. The Project Browser window provides a list based representation of the project. This allows you to view and edit all events on all tracks by using regular value editing in a list.
• You can sort events in the display by columns, by clicking the column heading. For example, if you want to sort events by their start positions, click that column heading. An arrow appears in the column heading, indicating that events are sorted by that column. The direction of the arrow indicates whether the events are sorted in ascending or descending order. To change the direction, click the column heading again.
The list columns for audio parts Parameter Description Parameter Description End Name The name of the part. Double-clicking on the part symbol beside it opens the part in the Audio Part Editor. This is only used for note events, allowing you to view and edit the end position of a note (thereby resizing it). Length Start The start position of the part. Editing this value is the same as moving the part in the Project window. This is only used for note events.
Ö For SysEx (system exclusive) events, you can only edit the position (Start) in the list. However, clicking the Comment column opens the SysEx Editor, in which you can perform detailed editing of system exclusive events. For a description of this, see “Working with SysEx messages” on page 427. Filtering MIDI events When you are editing MIDI in the Project Browser, the large number of different MIDI events displayed can make it hard to find the events you want to edit.
Column Description Editing the tempo track Length The length of the event. Editing this value is the same as resizing the event, and will automatically change the End value as well. Offset This determines “where in the video clip” the event starts. Note that the event cannot start before the start of the clip, or end after the end of the clip. Thus, if the event already plays the whole video clip, the Offset cannot be adjusted at all.
35 The Track Sheet
Overview Viewing the pages in the track sheet The track sheet provides a text-form “flow-chart” representation of the Project. It lists all audio (and video) tracks and their contents, and can easily be printed out. If your project is large (i. e. there are many tracks and/or many events) or if you are working with a large scale factor (see below), the resulting track sheet may have more than one page. To open the Track Sheet window, select “Track Sheet” from the Project menu.
Adjusting the view Setting Description The two sliders at the bottom of the Track Sheet window have the following functionality: No leading zeroes By default, the time positions of events will be listed in a syntax with “leading zeroes”. For example, if the display format is seconds, hours and minutes will be listed as “01”, “02” etc. If this is activated, the time column will not display the leading zeroes. Merge events if gap is less or equal... If events on a track are lined up end to end – i. e.
36 Export Audio Mixdown
Introduction Mixing down to audio files The Export Audio Mixdown function in Nuendo allows you to mix down audio from the program to files on your hard disk in a number of formats. In the Channel Selection section, you can choose which channels (or busses) to export. By activating the “Channel Batch Export” option you can choose to mix down several channels in one go. For each channel, an individual file will be created. 1. Set up the left and right locators to encompass the section you want to mix down.
6. In the File Location section at the top you can set up the naming scheme for the exported files and select a path for the mixdown files. • If you have activated any of the options in the “Import into Project” section, the mixdown file(s) will be imported back into the same or a new project. For details about the naming options, see “About the File Location section” on page 476. When playing back the reimported file in the same Nuendo project, mute the original tracks so that you only hear the mixdown.
About the Cycle Marker Selection section Path Options If you have already setup cycle markers to organize your project (see “Cycle markers” on page 137), or if you want to export different subsections of a project in one go, it might be useful to define the export range based on cycle markers. This is done in the Cycle Marker Selection section at the bottom left of the window. • Select “Choose…” to open a dialog in which you can browse for a path and enter a file name.
Ö By combining the available naming elements, you can make sure that all the files of a batch are exported with unique names. If you have set up a naming scheme that would result in identical file names, a warning message appears when you click the Export button. • To add an element, press the “+” button on the far right, and to remove an element from the naming scheme click the corresponding “-” button.
Option Description About the Import Options dialog L/R Channels Activate this if you want to export only the left and right subchannels of a multi-channel bus into a stereo file. Realtime Export Activate this if you want the export to happen in realtime, in which case the process will take at least the same time as regular playback.
Option Description Edit button By clicking this button the “Broadcast Wave Chunk” dialog opens where you can enter additional information that will be embedded in the exported files. Note that in the Preferences dialog (Record–Audio–Broadcast Wave page) you can enter default text strings for author, description and reference that will automatically be displayed in the “Broadcast Wave Chunk” dialog. Insert iXML chunk This allows you to include additional project-related metadata (e. g.
Ogg Vorbis files Ogg Vorbis is an open source, patent-free audio encoding and streaming technology, offering compressed audio files (extension “.ogg”) of small size, but with comparatively high audio quality. In the File Format section you will find only one setting: the Quality fader. The Ogg Vorbis encoder uses variable bit rate encoding, and the Quality setting determines between which limits the bit rate will vary.
Advanced tab • Dynamic Range Control These controls allow you to define the dynamic range of the encoded file. The dynamic range is the difference in dB between the average loudness and the peak audio level (the loudest sounds) of the audio. These settings affect how the audio is reproduced if the file is played on a Windows computer with a player from the Windows Media series, and the “Quiet Mode” feature of the player is activated to control the dynamic range.
37 Networking
Introduction Networking protocol and ports This chapter describes how you can use Nuendo’s networking technology to collaborate with other users of Nuendo in a peer-to-peer network. In addition to TCP/IP, the Nuendo networking technology uses the standard network protocol UDP (User Datagram Protocol - primarily used to broadcast messages over a network).
Selecting a user name If your computer is in a subnet that uses NAT If your computer resides in a subnet that uses NAT (Network Address Translation), all computers in the subnet share the same external IP address, while the individual computers in the subnet have internal IP addresses. In this case, you must set up a port mapping from the external ports 6991 and 6992 to your internal ports 6991 and 6992 - i. e. the actual ports on your computer, as opposed to the ports of the subnet.
5. Click in the text field, type in a name of your choice and click OK. If the network has already been created, the original creator – or administrator – may have already decided on user names for all participants. If so, ask the administrator for yours and enter it. For more information about selecting user names for other participants, see “Creating a permission preset” on page 487.
3. Click the “Add WAN Connection” button in the toolbar. A dialog opens, requesting the Domain Name or the IP address of the computer you want to connect to. Updating the network information If all users in a network are online and have entered user names (see “Selecting a user name” on page 484), you can do the following to update the network information in Nuendo: • Open the Shared Projects dialog and click the “Rescan Network” button to update the network information.
When this function is called, a dialog shows the progress of the checking process. • When all project participants are found, a dialog lists all project participants and their response times (i. e. the time it took for their computers to respond to the check). If the response times were longer than the standard timeout, or if a participant was not found who you know is in fact online and waiting for network information, you may want to click on “Adjust timer”.
3. Type in the desired name and click OK. 9. If you do not want a user to have read or write permission, click the corresponding column to deactivate the permissions. The permission preset is created and added to the list. Ö Having write permission automatically means to also have read permission.
Setting up users and permissions manually Instead of creating a permission preset in the User Manager dialog, you can use the “Project Sharing and Permissions” dialog to manually set up which users should be allowed to share a project, and what read and write permissions they should have. Ö It is not possible to add users who have not yet been established in the network (see “Creating a permission preset” on page 487). If this is what you want, use the “User Manager” dialog.
• To make separate track permissions in the project Inspector, select a track in the track list, open the Network section in the Inspector and click the “Override Project Permissions” button (the key symbol). This makes it possible to make read and write permission settings for the track directly in the Inspector. Sharing a project Once you have set up all the users and their permissions – i. e.
2. A dialog opens, asking you to confirm that you want to disconnect the network. In the “Shared Projects” dialog 1. If it is not already active, activate the network by checking the option “Active” on the Network menu. All the users will be disconnected from the project. The project will still be shared when you connect to the network again. 2. Open the “Shared Projects” dialog from the Network menu. • To reactivate the network, check the “Active” option on the Network menu again. 3.
Therefore, try placing your large files on a file server and import them into Nuendo without using the “Copy File to Working Directory” option. The server path should now be displayed in the Pool. 6. To join a project, select it and click the “Join Project” button (or double-click the project name in the list). A dialog opens, allowing you to specify the project folder. Joining projects The “Shared Projects” dialog lets you join projects shared by other users in the network.
• Clicking “No” allows you to simply commit your tracks without having to download all shared tracks. (Please stay connected until all others have received your tracks.) • If the symbol on the right of the Network tab in the Inspector is orange, you have only read access to the track, and cannot make changes to it. • When you click “Yes”, you can join using your active project without having to create a new project locally.
To a project If you have made changes to several tracks, or made other project changes, you will probably want to commit all changes at once: • Pull down the Network menu and select “Commit Changes” to commit the changes over the network. Alternatively, you can click the corresponding button on the Project window toolbar. See “Using the Setup options” on page 572 for information about how to customize the toolbar.
After the verification process, a dialog lists the results of the verification process. Nuendo may either have been able to restore communication through the process, or still be unable to communicate with some participant(s). The dialog lists each participant with whom communication still failed (see below).
38 Synchronization
Background What is synchronization? Synchronization is the process of getting two or more devices to play back together at the same exact speed and position. These devices can range from audio and video tape machines to digital audio workstations, MIDI sequencers, synchronization controllers, and digital video devices. Synchronization basics There are three basic components of audio/visual synchronization: position, speed, and phase.
• VITC (Vertical Interval Timecode) is contained within a composite video signal. It is recorded onto video tape and is physically tied to each video frame. • MTC (MIDI Timecode) is identical to LTC except that it is a digital signal transmitted via MIDI. • Sony P2 (9-Pin, RS-422) Machine Control also has a timecode protocol that is mainly used for locating and is not nearly accurate enough for speed and phase. It can be used in certain situations where there is no alternative.
Ö When transferring material between various video formats and film, it becomes necessary to change the speed (frame rate) of one timecode standard so that video or film frames can line up in some mathematical relationship to the destination format. That is where all the various pullups and pull-downs come from. Certain frame rates were created as a result of applying a pull-down. For example, 23.976fps is actually 24fps pulled down by 0.1 %.
MIDI clock MIDI clock is a signal that uses position and timing data based on musical bars and beats to determine location and speed (tempo). It can perform the same function as a positional reference and a speed reference for other MIDI devices. Nuendo supports sending MIDI clock to external devices but cannot slave to incoming MIDI clock. ! MIDI clock cannot be used to synchronize digital audio. It is only used for MIDI devices to play in musical sync with one another.
The two Project Setup sections Project Start Time The Project Setup sections at the bottom left of the Project Synchronization Setup dialog are related to the active project in Nuendo. Therefore they are only visible if you have opened a project in Nuendo. Here you can change timecode parameters and project options that affect synchronization. These settings are identical with the settings in the Project Setup dialog, see “The Project Setup dialog” on page 57.
Project Setup - Display Regardless of the technical needs of a project’s timeline, the user might want to see time information displayed in a different format. The settings in the “Project Setup - Display” section allow you to change how Nuendo’s timeline is displayed, but not the underlying timeline itself. When set to “Internal Timecode”, Nuendo is the timecode master, generating all position references for any other device in the system. The other options are for external timecode sources.
Option Description Lock Frames Control Playback Speed When this option is activated, Nuendo will attempt to control the playback speed of the 9-pin device. Displays follow locating device When this option is activated, the Project cursor will follow the incoming timecode’s position. This is very helpful with tape-based devices as they locate much slower than non-linear systems. The cursor gives you a visual indication of the position of the tape machine at all times.
Auto-Detect Frame-Rate Changes 9-Pin Control 1 and 2 Nuendo can notify the user when the frame rate of timecode changes at any point. This is helpful in diagnosing problems with timecode and external devices. This notification will interrupt playback or recording. Deactivating this option will avoid any interruption in playback or recording.
Ö Some devices can only listen to their specific IDs. Therefore, using the All option will not work with such devices. Machine Control Output Settings – 9-Pin Control 1 and 2 Number of Audio Tracks The number of audio tracks should be set to match the amount of available audio tracks in the destination device. This setting determines how many record-enable buttons are shown in the MMC Master panel (see below).
Master Machine Control Preferences Send ‘Still’ instead of ‘Stop’ There are five preference settings for Nuendo’s master machine control operation. They affect how the machine reacts to various commands from Nuendo. Similar to FF/Rewind commands, Stop commands result in the tape being released from the heads. Still commands on the other hand, also cause the transport to stop, but without releasing the tape from the heads.
Option Description MIDI Timecode Follows Project Time MMC Output Set this to the MIDI output that is connected to the master machine control device. MMC Device ID This determines the MIDI ID number that is used to identify the machine in Nuendo. Activate this option to ensure that the MTC output follows Nuendo’s time position at all times including looping, locating, or jumping while playing. If not, MTC will continue on without changing locations at a loop or jump point until playback stops.
Synchronized operation Once you have connected all the devices that will be synchronized, it is important to understand how Nuendo operates in Sync mode. Sync mode is enabled by activating the Sync button on the Transport panel. Nuendo’s Edit Mode will take advantage of this feature by locating the VTR to the start of the first selected event. For more information about Edit Mode, see “About the Edit Mode” on page 527.
Example scenarios Sync settings for a personal music studio To better understand how synchronization options can be utilized, three example scenarios are provided. To synchronize the devices in this example scenario, proceed as follows: 1. Make the connections as shown in the diagram above. Personal music studio In this simple example, any device that uses MTC can be substituted.
Postproduction suite Sync settings for audio layback in a postproduction suite In audio for video postproduction, synchronization needs are an everyday concern. Very often users need to synchronize with a 9-Pin VTR in order to work with video material. At the same time the audio clock has to be synchronized with the video clock source to ensure that both audio and video run at the same speed. These steps outline the process of “laying back” finished audio to the VTR.
10. Ensure that the pre-roll and post-roll times are appropriate for the VTR. In most cases, the default values will be sufficient for the VTR to get up to speed before punching in. 11. On Nuendo’s Transport panel, activate the Sync button. This turns Nuendo into a timecode slave. Once the VTR starts to play, Nuendo will sync to incoming timecode. 12. On the 9-Pin Device panel, click the Auto Edit button. This starts the Auto Edit process.
3. In the “Machine Control Input Source” section, select the SyncStation option. Provided that the SyncStation is set to route record and track arming commands to Nuendo, this will allow the digital console to record-enable audio tracks in Nuendo and enter record mode via 9-Pin commands sent to the SyncStation. 4. On the Transport panel, activate the Sync button. Nuendo will await incoming timecode from the SyncStation. 5. Test the record-enable buttons on the console.
Making connections Below, we assume that you are connecting two computers. Should you have more than two computers, it is still best to start with two and add the others one by one once the system is working – this makes troubleshooting easier if you run into problems. For two computers, you will need two digital audio cables, one in each direction: 1. Use the first digital audio cable to connect the digital output of computer 1 to the digital input of computer 2. 2.
Ö The latency does not affect the synchronization – it is always perfectly in time. But it can affect the time it takes to send and receive MIDI and audio signals, or make the system seem sluggish. To adjust the latency of a system, you adjust the size of the buffers in the ASIO control panel – the lower the buffer size, the lower the latency. It is best to keep to fairly low latencies (buffer sizes) if your system can handle it – about 12 ms or less is usually a good idea.
The VST System Link networking signal is carried on only one bit of one channel. This means that if you have an ADAT-based system which normally carries eight channels of 24-bit audio, once you activate VST System Link you will have seven channels of 24-bit audio and one channel of 23-bit audio (the least significant bit of this last channel will be used for networking). In practice this makes no discernible difference to the audio quality, since you will still have around 138 dB headroom on this channel.
VST System Link sends and understands all transport commands (such as play, stop, fast forward, rewind, etc.). This allows you to control the entire network from one computer without a problem – try it! If you jump to a locator point on one machine, all other machines will also instantly jump to that locator point. ! 3. If you now pull down the Input or Output Routing popup menu, you will find the specified System Link ports added to the list of MIDI inputs or outputs.
Hearing the network audio If you are using an external mixing desk, hearing your audio really is not an issue – just plug the outputs of each computer into the desired channels on the external mixing desk, start playback on one of the computers, and you are good to go. However, many people prefer to mix internally inside the computer and just use a desk for monitoring (or maybe not use any external mixer at all).
Once you have done this, the transmission of all the transport, sync, and MIDI information to the whole network is handled pretty much automatically. However, where you may run into confusion in a large network is in the transmission of audio signals back to a central mix computer. If you have lots of hardware inputs and outputs on your ASIO cards, you do not have to send audio via the chain at all, but can transmit it directly to the master mix computer via one or more of its other hardware inputs.
8. Open the Send Routing pop-up menu for one of the sends and select the VST System Link bus assigned to the reverb in step 3. 9. Use the Send slider to adjust the amount of effect as usual. The signal will be sent to the track on computer 2 and processed through its insert effect, without using any processor power on computer 1. You can repeat the steps above to add more effects to the “virtual effect rack”.
39 Video
Introduction Video container formats Nuendo is a full-featured postproduction media tool that is capable of dealing with video content in several ways. You can work with video and create complete soundtracks from within Nuendo. The soundtrack can then be inserted into a video file, recorded onto video tape or exported as an audio file that can be married to the video or film later.
If you are not able to load a certain video file, the required codec is probably not installed on your computer. In this case, you can search the Internet (e. g. the Microsoft or Apple web sites) for video codecs. Dedicated video cards The use of a dedicated video card is also supported in Nuendo. These cards are normally used in video editing systems to capture video to disk and display it while editing.
Preparing a video project in Nuendo The following sections describe the basic operations necessary for preparing a Nuendo project involving video. It is advisable to store your video files on a separate hard drive from your audio files. This can help prevent data streaming problems when using high-resolution video with many audio tracks. Ö When importing video, Nuendo automatically creates a thumbnail cache file.
must manually change it back after clicking the “Get From Video” button. In this case, it is important that the video event is snapped to the timeline to ensure proper positioning and synchronization within the project. Ö Nuendo can only detect the supported frame rates (these are the frame rates listed in the Frame Rate pop-up menu in the Project Setup dialog).
Playing back video as when they are calculated. When the processes that rely heavily on the computer CPU are finished, the frames are automatically recalculated, i. e. the program automatically switches between realtime calculation of the pictures and using the cache file. Ö There are situations where no thumbnail cache file can be generated, e. g. if you import a video file from a folder that is write-protected.
To set up a video output device, proceed as follows: Playing back video on the computer screen 1. Pull down the Devices Menu and select “Device Setup…” to open the Device Setup dialog, and select the Video Player page. The Video Player window is used for playing back video on your computer screen. 2. In the Active column, activate the checkbox for the device that you want to use for playing back video. • To open the Video Player window, pull down the Devices menu and select Video Player.
Option Description Double Size The window is enlarged to twice the actual size. Video Quality This submenu allows you to change the quality of the video image. Higher settings make the video display sharper and smoother, but lead to an increased processor load. Editing video • Drag the borders, just like when resizing other windows. Ö The higher the resolution, the more processing power is needed for playback.
Extracting audio from a video file Replacing the audio in a video file If a video file contains audio, the audio stream can be extracted. As always when importing audio material, a dialog is displayed allowing you to select different import options (see the section “Audio file import options” on page 64). The extracted audio stream is added to the project on a new audio track and can be edited like all other audio material, see the chapter “Audio editing to picture” on page 535.
About film transfers When working on film projects, video postproduction editors typically transfer the film footage to video for use with computer video editing systems. Once the film has been edited, it can be transferred back to film for presentation in theaters or may remain in video format for television broadcast and release on videotape or DVD. Pull-up and pull-down When film footage is transferred to video, the frame rate must be converted from 24 fps to either 25 fps (PAL/SECAM) or 29.
When properly done, the first frame of film will be transferred to both fields of the first frame of video and so on. All that is needed is the 4 % increase in speed for this to be a one-to-one transfer. ! 4. The third film frame is transferred to the second field of video frame three and the first field of video frame four.
Film speed is faster than NTSC video speed. When the audio is pulled down, it allows production audio (DAT tapes or files from a field recorder) from a film shoot to play back in sync with NTSC video. Even though 29.97 fps is a faster frame rate than 24 fps (film speed), the video is running -0.1 % slower than the original film due to the 2-3 transfer process and hence the need to slow the audio down a bit. ! Audio pull-down -0.
The idea is that when you have completed the audio mix for your film project, the video will be sped back up to film speed for the final transfer back to film and your audio mix can then be played at the standard 48 kHz sample rate (no pull-down) and will remain in sync with the picture. • +0.1 % pull-up This pull-up is not normally used except in situations similar to the one described above but for NTSC video.
Ö It makes no difference whether you make your Audio Pull-up/Pull-down settings in the Project Setup dialog or the Project Synchronization Setup dialog. If you use the Project Synchronization Setup dialog, your adjustment is reflected in the Project Setup dialog, and vice versa. Adjusting the video playback speed back to film reverses the process used when adjusting audio playback speed. For NTSC video, the video playback speed must be adjusted up +0.1 % back to film speed.
Tips What is 23.976 fps used for? The world of digital video formats is ever changing and the results are new developments for every media professional involved in movies, television, corporate video, and more. With the advent of HD cameras that are capable of recording at several different frame rates internally, the options available to cinematographers have become staggering.
40 Audio editing to picture
Introduction Nuendo has been designed from the ground up as a production tool with features that are catered to working with video and film. The depth and versatility of Nuendo’s design allow you to work very precisely and yet retain the freedom and ease that allows greater creativity in creating music and sound design for film and video. Film frames can be displayed as SMPTE numbers or in feet and frames (a traditional method used by film editors).
code displayed anywhere in Nuendo with a semicolon, you are using drop-frame timecode. This is the only indication besides looking at the Project Setup dialog, that you are using drop-frame timecode. Drop-frame SMPTE timecode display with frames separated by a semicolon. When the Project window’s time display is set to timecode, the grid options change.
The most commonly used format, the OMF file, comes in two basic formats: files with embedded audio and files that refer to external audio media. Both formats store information about where to place each piece of audio in the timeline. Each format has its strengths and weaknesses and the choice of which one to use will depend on the circumstances, see “File handling” on page 552. After importing the OMF, align your video file to play in sync with the OMF audio.
6. Import any audio files from a field recorder, open the Media menu and from the “Insert into Project” submenu select “At Origin”. Create as many tracks as necessary to prevent overlaps. Once the file has been placed “at Origin”, it can be used as a source for EDL conforming. Once you have successfully imported video and reference audio and conformed any production audio to the video, you are ready to begin adding new sound elements and creating the final soundtrack.
• Use four-point editing with the Range Selection tool. This is described below. Four-point editing with the Range Selection tool It is often necessary to go through a large sound file to find a specific sound effect. This is especially true for field recordings with multiple takes of each sound and dead air time in between.
Adjusting events to picture Once audio events have been placed to picture, their fades, durations and positions can be fine-tuned. Nuendo’s nudge features are designed just for this type of use. As the nudge buttons are not displayed on the toolbar by default, you have to right-click on the toolbar and select “Nudge Palette” from the context menu to access them. Using the nudge buttons you can incrementally adjust the position (move) and size (trim) of your events.
5. In the Range Length field in the info line, enter the duration of the cut. Now the range selection encompasses all the events in the project that are to be removed together with the old video. Picture insert To make a picture change involving the addition of video material, proceed as follows: 1. Locate the insertion point where the video has been added. This information comes from the video editor’s change notes. 2.
Using standard Nuendo tools for postproduction purposes In this section the Nuendo editing tools related to video postproduction techniques are described. After importing sound effects from a library or field recordings, they can be placed in the project using the Insert at Cursor option, moving the cursor to each marker by double-clicking in the very left column of the Marker window next to the desired number.
Event envelopes For even more control, the event envelope provides another type of volume control over the audio event. Instead of controlling only fade ins and outs or the overall volume of the event, envelopes can alter the volume of audio anywhere within the event. To access the event envelope, select the Pencil tool and simply click within any audio event. A volume envelope line appears with a new curve point. Unity gain (no change) is where the envelope line is at the very top of the event.
There are also functions that let you alter the range selection using the cursor, event boundaries, left and right locators, and the start and end of the project. These functions are found in the Edit menu–Select submenu. When these operations are assigned to key commands, the increase in speed and efficiency for creating range selections can be considerable. The various options of the Select submenu are described in detail in the section “Range editing” on page 77.
comes this problem by allowing you to reference another point in the audio event. By moving the snap point to the end of the skidding sound, Edit Mode can be used to line that point with the stopped car on screen.
Text editing can be useful when conforming audio to edit decision lists (EDLs) created by video editors. A list of audio files will be shown with source and destination timecode values that can be used to place audio events in Nuendo. An EDL with source and destination timecode values. For further information, please refer to the chapter “Using markers” on page 136.
41 ReWire
Introduction Launching and quitting ReWire and ReWire2 are special protocols for streaming audio between two computer applications. Developed by Propellerhead Software and Steinberg, ReWire provides the following possibilities and features: When using ReWire, the order in which you launch and quit the two programs is very important: • Realtime streaming of up to 64 separate audio channels (256 with ReWire2), at full bandwidth, from the “synthesizer application” into the “mixer application”. 1.
Activating ReWire channels ReWire supports streaming of up to 64 separate audio channels, while ReWire2 supports 256 channels. The exact number of available ReWire channels depends on the synthesizer application. Using the ReWire Device panels in Nuendo, you can specify which of the available channels you want to use: 1. Pull down the Devices menu and select the menu item with the name of the ReWire application. All recognized ReWire compatible applications will be available on the menu.
How the ReWire channels are handled in Nuendo Routing MIDI via ReWire2 ! When you activate ReWire channels in the ReWire Device panels, they will become available as channel strips in the Mixer. The ReWire channel strips have the following properties: • ReWire channels appear to the right of the other audio and MIDI channel strips in the Mixer. • ReWire channels may be any combination of mono and stereo, depending on the synthesizer application.
42 File handling
Importing audio To import one or more tracks, proceed as follows: In Nuendo audio can be imported in a variety of different formats. For example, you can import tracks from audio CDs, or import audio files saved in different formats (compressed and uncompressed). For information on audio file import preferences, see “Audio file import options” on page 64. For information on how to import audio files into the Pool and import options, see “About the Import Medium dialog” on page 329. 1.
Column Description Importing Audio from video files CD Track as shown When you import an audio CD track, the file is named according to this column. The names are pulled automatically from CDDB, if possible. You can rename a track by clicking in the CD Track column and typing a new name. You can also apply a generic name to all audio CD tracks, if no name was available in CDDB.
3. On the file type pop-up menu in the file dialog, select REX File or REX 2 File. 4. Locate and select the file you want to import, and click Open. The file is imported and automatically adjusted to the current Nuendo tempo. Unlike a regular audio file, the imported REX file will consist of several events, one for each “slice” in the loop. The events will automatically be placed in an audio part on the selected track and positioned so that the original internal timing of the loop is preserved. 5.
Exporting and importing OMF files Open Media Framework Interchange (OMFI) is a platform independent file format intended for the transfer of digital media between different applications. Nuendo can import and export OMF files (file extension “.omf”), allowing you to use Nuendo in conjunction with other audio and video applications.
Exporting and importing AAF files Importing OMF files 1. Pull down the File menu, open the Import submenu and select “OMF…”. 2. In the file dialog that opens, locate the OMF file and click Open. • If there is already an open project, a dialog opens in which you can select whether a new project is created for the file. If you select “No”, the OMF file will be imported into the current project. 3. If you choose to create a new project, a file dialog opens in which you can select the project folder.
6. In the Options section, you have the choice of exporting all data to one file or to create media references to files from within the AAF file. Exporting only one file makes transfers simpler, but, at the time of writing of this manual, certain applications cannot handle single AAF files. Check with each software manufacturer for up-to-date information regarding AAF support in other applications. 7. You can specify the Sample Size by using the pop-up menu.
Exporting and importing OpenTL files OpenTL is a file exchange format originally developed for Tascam hard disk recording systems. OpenTL facilities also exist in a variety of DAWs, making Nuendo project transfer reliable and solid. For example, a common use of OpenTL is to convert hassle free between Nuendo and Pro Tools.
Importing OpenTL files 4. You will be asked if you wish to create a new project. 1. Select “OpenTL…” from the Import submenu of the File menu. 2. Navigate to the location of the OpenTL file, select it and click Open. 3. You are prompted to select or create a project folder for the new project. After specifying the name and location of the project folder, the new project opens containing all the audio files stored in the OpenTL file and their associated edits. Save the imported file as a Nuendo project.
The dialog contains the following options: Option Description Option Description Export Inspector Patch If this is activated, the MIDI patch settings in the Inspector – Bank Select and Program Select (used for selecting sounds in the connected MIDI instrument) are included as MIDI Bank Select and Program Change events in the MIDI file. Export includes Delay If this is activated, the delay of the MIDI track will be included in the MIDI file.
Option Description Import to Left Locator If this is activated, the imported MIDI file will be placed so that it starts at the position of the left locator – otherwise it will start at the beginning of the project. Note that if you choose to have a new project created automatically, the MIDI file will always start at the beginning of the project. Nuendo can also export XF data as part of a MIDI file of type 0.
• Click Reference to include merely a reference to the files in the export. 5. Click OK. The tracks are imported, complete with all contents and settings. A file dialog opens in which you can choose an existing folder for saving the track archive (as single XML file). 4. Click OK to save the track archive. Importing tracks from a track archive The Import Track Archive function lets you import tracks exported from another Nuendo project.
To split a multi-channel track, proceed as follows: 1. If you only want to split particular multi-channel tracks, select them in the Project window. If you want to split all multi-channel tracks of your project, you do not have to make a selection. 2. On the Project menu, open the Convert Tracks submenu and select “Multi-Channel to Mono…”. A dialog opens. • Deactivate this if you want the file and track names to be followed by letters, denoting the corresponding speaker channels, e. g.
• If you have recorded a stem of multi-mono surround tracks. Saving the recordings in one interleaved file allows you to assign this “stem” to one single channel in the Mixer (facilitating editing as well as giving you a better overview). ! ! You cannot convert mono tracks containing audio parts. Only audio events are supported. Ö This function always combines the “raw” audio into new files. Therefore, the source tracks must have the same channel settings, otherwise the result would sound differently.
5. On the Destination Format pop-up menu, select the format for the multi-channel file or files. Note that the number of selected tracks must match this format. If you have selected fourteen mono tracks, for example, you can select Stereo or one of the 7-channel surround formats. If the number of tracks and the destination format do not match, a warning message is displayed and the process is aborted. However, groups are not reflected in the Pool or the MediaBay.
Creating (exporting) clip packages When you have created the desired sound in the Project window, you can transform it into a clip package. Proceed as follows: 1. Select the audio that makes up the sound. You can either select audio events and parts or create a selection range. If you create a selection range which includes empty space before the audio, this is included in the file.
Importing Clip packages can be imported as follows: • You can drag and drop clip packages from the Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder, from the MediaBay or from the Pool into the Project window. • You can double-click on a clip package in the MediaBay to insert it at the Project cursor.
Clip packages in the Pool In the Pool, clip packages are available in a separate folder (see the chapter “The Pool” on page 320). • The Pool functions “Prepare Archive”, “Export Pool”, “Import Pool”, and “New Library” will include any clip packages you created or imported. • The Info column displays the length of the clip package and the text you entered for the “Content Summary” attribute (if any). Ö Contrary to other file types, clip packages do not have a direct counterpart in the Project window.
43 Customizing
Background Workspaces The user can customize the appearance and functionality of Nuendo in various ways. A configuration of Nuendo windows is called a “workspace”. A workspace stores the size, position and content of all windows, allowing you to quickly switch between different working modes via the menu or by using key commands. For example, you may want as large a Project window as possible when you are editing, whereas you may want the Mixer and effect windows open during mixdown.
5. Set up the windows you want to include in the new workspace. This may include opening, moving and sizing windows, and adjusting zoom and track height. Activating a workspace • Normally, when you use key commands to activate workspaces, they relate to the order in the workspace list, e. g. the key command for “Workspace 1” selects the first workspace on the list and so on. However, if you activate the Use IDs checkbox, you can enter a number (1–9) in the ID column for each workspace.
• “Setup…” opens the Setup dialog (see below). If presets are available, they can be selected on the lower half of the menu. • You can change the current show/hide status by selecting items in one section and then use the arrow buttons in the middle of the dialog to move them to the other section. Changes are applied directly. • By selecting items in the “Visible Items” list and using the Move Up and Move Down buttons, you can reorder the items list. Changes are applied directly.
• Click the arrow in the bottom right corner of the track list and select “Track Controls Settings…”. Removing, adding, and moving track controls The dialog is divided into two sections. The left section displays controls currently visible in the track list, and the right section displays the controls currently hidden. • You can hide controls from the track list by selecting them in the list to the left and clicking the Remove button.
Configuring the main menu items About Wrap Controls This is activated by default. Wrap Controls allows the controls to be dynamically repositioned when resizing the track list. That is, as many controls as possible will be displayed depending on the current size of the track list. If you deactivate Wrap Controls, the positions of the controls are fixed, regardless of the size of the track list.
• In the Menu column you can decide which File menu items to hide from view, by clicking in the column beside the corresponding menu item you wish to hide. If you click the “On” item in the Menu column for an item, it changes to “Off” and vice versa. All menu items set to “Off” will be hidden when you click Apply or OK. • Certain essential menu items on the File and Edit menus cannot be hidden, such as Save, Open, Close, Undo/Redo, etc. For these items there is no entry in the Menu column.
• The default setting has two color handles. Each color handle has a unique color that gradually shifts as the meter moves toward the next color handle. You can click on any color handle and move its position on the meter scale. If you hold down [Shift] while moving the handle with the mouse, it will move ten times slower for more precise positioning. You may also nudge the color handle’s position with the Arrow Up/Down keys. Holding [Shift] while nudging will move the color handle ten times faster.
This option affects the display of events in the Project window. About the Color tool 1. Open the Select Colors pop-up menu and select a color. • When this is activated, the events and parts in the event display will have the selected background color. 2. On the toolbar, select the Color tool. • When this is deactivated, the event “content” (e. g. MIDI events or audio waveforms) is displayed in the selected color and the event background is gray. 3.
3. Use the Standard Colors or Modify Color sections to specify a new color. Where are the settings stored? To do this, pick a different color from the color palette, drag the cursor in the color circle, move the handle in the color meter, or enter new RGB values as well as values for hue, saturation, and luminosity manually. As you have seen, there are a large number of ways in which you can customize Nuendo.
44 Key commands
Introduction Setting up key commands Most of the main menus in Nuendo have key command shortcuts for certain items on the menus. In addition, there are numerous other Nuendo functions that can be performed via key commands. These are all default settings. Adding or modifying a key command You can customize existing key commands to your liking, and also add commands for many menu items and functions that currently have no key command assigned.
4. In the list, select the item to which you want to assign a key command. Already assigned key commands are shown in the Keys column as well as in the Keys section in the top right corner. Turning key commands off Nuendo also gives you the option of turning key commands off, meaning that even if a function has a key command assigned to it, you can disable the key command. To turn off a key command, proceed as follows: 1.
4. Click in the “Command” column beside the item to set the status to “Off”. Now it will not be possible to use any key command assigned to that menu item or function. 5. Repeat this for all items or functions for which you want to disable key commands. Ö Note that if you set an entire subfolder to “Off” in this way, all the items or functions it contains will automatically be set to “Off” as well. If this is not what you want, you can reset separate items in the subfolder to “On”. 6.
After you have closed the Key Commands dialog, all macros you have created appear at the bottom of the Edit menu in the Macros submenu, available for instant selection. You can also assign key commands to macros. All macros you have created appear in the upper section of the Key Commands dialog under the Macros category – just select a macro and assign a key command as with any other function. Saving partial key commands settings It is also possible to save partial key commands settings.
Loading saved key command settings About the “Reset” and “Reset All” functions To load a key command preset, simply select it from the Presets pop-up menu. Ö The key command settings you load will replace the current key command settings for the same functions (if any). If you have macros of the same name as those stored in the preset you load, these will be replaced too.
Saving an Alternative Key Set Here’s how to create and save an Alternative Key Set: 1. Open the Key Commands dialog from the File menu. 2. Set up the key commands and macros the way you want them. 3. Decide whether you want to save complete or partial settings by activating/deactivating “Store Selected Items Only”. 4. Click the Store Alternative Set button (the disk icon) in the Alternative Key Sets section.
2. Select an option in the Categories list, and locate the action for which you want to edit the modifier key. Automation category Option Key command Open Panel [F6] 3. Select the action in the Action list. Redo Pass [Ctrl]/[Command]-[Alt]/[Option][Shift]-[Z] 4. Hold down the desired modifier key(s) and click the Assign button.
Option Key command Media category Paste [Ctrl]/[Command]-[V] Option Key command Paste at Origin [Alt]/[Option]-[V] Open MediaBay [F5] Paste Time [Ctrl]/[Command]-[Shift]-[V] Preview Cycle On/Off [Shift]-Pad [/] Record Enable [R] Preview Start [Shift]-[Enter] Redo [Ctrl]/[Command]-[Shift]-[Z] Preview Stop [Shift]-Pad [0] Repeat [Ctrl]/[Command]-[K] Search MediaBay [Shift]-[F5] Right Selection Side to Cursor [D] Select All [Ctrl]/[Command]-[A] Select None [Ctrl]/[Command]-[Shif
Nudge category Transport category Option Key command Option Key command End Left [Alt]/[Option]-[Shift]-[Left Arrow] Auto Punch In [I] End Right [Alt]/[Option]-[Shift]-[Right Arrow] Auto Punch Out [O] Left [Ctrl]/[Command]-[Left Arrow] Cycle Pad [/] Right [Ctrl]/[Command]-[Right Arrow] Exchange time formats [.
Option Key command To Left Locator Pad [1] To Marker 1 [Shift]-[1] To Marker 2 [Shift]-[2] To Marker 3 to 9 Pad [3] to [9] or [Shift]-[3] to [9] To Right Locator Pad [2] Use External Sync [T] Windows category Option Key command Inline: Key Commands [Shift]-[F4] Inline: Settings [Shift]-[F3] Inline: View Layout [Shift]-[F2] Lock/Unlock Active Workspaces [Alt]/[Option]-Pad [0] New [Ctrl]/[Command]-Pad [0] Organize [W] Workspace 1 to 9 [Alt]/[Option]-Pad [1] to [9] Workspace categ
Index
A AAF files 537, 557 ACID® loops 294 Acoustic Feedback 410 Sample Editor 288 VariAudio 311 Activate next Marker Track 144 Activate Next/Previous Part 405 Activate previous Marker Track 144 Activate Project button 52 Active (Activating network) 484 ADAT Lightpipe 499 Add Track 61 Add WAN Connection 486 Adjust Fades to Range 113 Adjusting audio events to picture 541 Advanced Quantize 395 Advanced settings 25 AES/SPDIF Digital Audio 499 AES31 files 537, 558 Aftertouch Deleting 421 Editing 419 Recording 106 AIF
AudioWarp About 293 Musical mode 293 Tab 285 Unstretch Audio 313 Auditioning Acoustic Feedback 288 Audio Part Editor 317 MIDI editors 410 Pool 329 Project window 67 Sample Editor 288 Speaker tool 288 Using key commands 288, 317 Auto Adjust Sample Editor 294 Auto Edit (9-Pin) 508 Auto Fades 120 Global settings 120 Track settings 121 Auto Monitoring modes 97 Auto Quantize 105 Auto Save 54 Auto Select Events under Cursor MIDI editors 412 Project window 68 Automatic MIDI Record Quantize 105 Automation Auto-Latc
Control Room About 180 Configuring 180 Disabling 183 Exclusive port assignment 182 Features 180 Main Mix 188 Operations 180 Preferences 190 Suggested settings 189 Control Room channels About 181 Creating 181 External inputs 182, 188 Inserts 187 Monitor sources 181 Monitors 181, 188 Phones 182 Studios 182 Talkback 182, 188 Control Room Mixer Configuring 187 Monitor sources 188 Overview 184 Studio Sends 190 Control Room Overview 193 Controller display About 408 Adding and removing lanes 417 Controller lane pr
Direct Routing About 171 Multiple destinations 172 Switching destinations 172 Disable Pitch Changes 311 Disable sends 206 Disable Track 87 Disable Warp Changes 298 Disk meter 25 Display format 47 Dissolve Part Audio 65 MIDI 398 Dithering 201 Dividing the track list 63 Drag Delay 69 Draw Hitpoints 300 In Sample Editor 292 MIDI controllers 419 MIDI notes 410 Parts 65 Drop-Frame Video 536 Duplicate Events and parts 71 MIDI notes 413 Tracks 62 E Edit Active Part Only 405 Edit button Audio channel strips 163 Au
F Fade handles 113 Fade In to Cursor 113 Fade In/Out functions 114 Fade Out to Cursor 113 Fades Apply defaults 114 Auto Fades 120 Creating 113 Editing in dialog 115 Presets 115 Processing 114 Removing 114 With Range Selection tool 113 Feet and frames 536 Fill Loop 71 Film frames, see “Frames” Film Transfers About 529 Filter (MIDI) 107 Filter (Project Browser) 468 Filter bar 426 Find missing files 328 Find Selected in Pool 326 Firewall 483 FireWire DV Output 522 Fixed Lengths 400 Fixed Tempo 453 Fixed Veloci
Info line Customizing 572 Key Editor 407 Pool 322 Project window 45 Sample Editor 284 Initialize Channel 167 Input busses About 28 Adding 30 Mixer 153 Input gain About 158 Setting record level 96 Input levels 18, 96 Input phase About 159 Input ports 21 Input selection Multiple audio channels 169 Multiple MIDI channels 103 Input Transformer 440 Inputs Audio 29 MIDI 103 Insert effect combinations Saving 211 Insert effects (Audio) 197 Insert into Project 328 Video 543 Insert pop-up menu 425 Insert Silence Proj
Loop Audio Part Editor 317 MIDI editors 409 M M button 75 Mac OS X Port activation 30 Port selection 30 Retrieving channel names 30 Machine control About 497 Input source 506 Output destinations 504 Output settings 504 Preferences 506 Macros 583 Magnetic Area 393 Magnetic Cursor (Snap mode) 49 Magnifying Glass tool 58 Main Mix Control Room 183 Setting up 31 Manual Adjust Sample Editor 295 Map Input Bus Metering to Audio Track (in Direct Monitoring) 97 Marker IDs Assigning to key commands 141 Reassigning 14
MIDI Channel Settings 174 Extract from Audio 311 MIDI Channel Settings 104 MIDI channel “Any” 104 Selecting for tracks 104 Send effects 378 MIDI clock Destinations 507 Synchronization 500 MIDI Controller Automation Setup 262 MIDI Device Manager 381 MIDI devices Defining new for patch selection 382 Editing patches 384 Installing 382 Selecting patches 384 MIDI effects About 377 Deactivating 379 Inserts 377 Presets 378 Sends 378 MIDI files 560 MIDI filter 107 MIDI Input MIDI editors 416 Sample Editor 308 MIDI
Multiple marker tracks About 143 Activate next Marker Track 144 Activate previous Marker Track 144 Focussed track 143 Insert and name Marker 144 Locking 144 Naming 143 Selected track 143 Using 144 Multiple routing destinations 172 Musical Mode Pool 293 Sample Editor 293 Musical time base 63 Mute Events in Project window 75 MIDI notes 414 Mixer 159 Pre-Send 205 Surround channels 232 Tool 75 Tracks 75 My Shared Projects 491 N NAT 484 Navigating Marker list 139 NEK (Nuendo Expansion Kit) 10 Network name 484 N
Pitchbend Deleting 421 Editing 419 Recording 106 Virtual Keyboard 89 Placing audio events to picture About 539 Four-point editing 540 Play tool Project window 67 Playing back video 525 On computer screen 526 On external output device 525 Plug and Play ASIO devices 19 Plug-in delay compensation 197 Plug-in Information window MIDI plug-ins 379 VST plug-ins 213 Plug-ins Applying 273 Getting info 213 Installing VST 2.
Reconstruct 328 Record Catch Range 107 Record enable 91 Record file type 93 Record folder 95 Record format 93 Record mode Audio 98 Lock 111 MIDI 104 Unlock 111 Record Time Max display 111 Recording From busses 95 In MIDI editors 107 Levels 18 RAM limitation 24, 94 Tempo changes 456 Recovering recordings 111 ReCycle files 554 Redo Net Update 494 Redo Zoom 60 Regions About 291 Auditioning 291 Create from Hitpoints 291, 301 Creating 291 Creating from events 79 Creating with Detect Silence 279 Editing 291 Expor
Selecting Events in Project window 67 MIDI notes 412 Send effects (Audio) 203 Set Pool Record Folder 331 Set Record Folder 95 Set root key for unassigned events 131 Share project 490 Shared copy 71 Show All Used Automation 245 Show Audio Event 292 Show Controllers 61 Show Data on Small Track Heights 61 Show Event Names 60 Show Event Volume Curves Always 113 Show Filter View 426 Show Part Borders 405 Show Timecode Subframes 536 Shuffle (Snap mode) 49 Side-Chain Drag & drop 208 Using 207 Signal levels 96 Sile
Suspend Auto-Scroll 50 Sample Editor 293 Suspend VST3 plug-in processing when no audio signals are received (VST3) 196, 221 Swing 393 Sample Editor 296 Sync Selection 466 Synchronization 9-Pin devices 502 About 497 Audio to picture 537 Nuendo SyncStation 503 Operation (Sync mode) 508 Phase 500 Recording in Sync mode 92 Setting up 500 Speed references 499 Timecode 497 Timecode preferences 503 Timecode source 502 System Exclusive About 427 Bulk Dumps 428 Editing 429 Recording parameter changes 429 T Tap Temp
Transpose Info line 46 MIDI function 396 MIDI Modifier 374 Transpose track About 130 Triangle mode Automation 242 MIDI editing 420 Trim buttons 73 Trim tool 408 Tuplet Quantize Setup 393 Type pop-up menu 138 U UDP 483 Undo Processing 275 Quantize 395 Recording 98 Zoom 60 Undo Net Update 494 Ungroup 74 Unlock 74 Unlock Record 111 Unshare Selected Project 491 Unstretch Audio 313 Update Origin 322 USB-eLicenser About 14 Use File Extension in File Dialog 53 Use Mouse Wheel for Event volume and Fades 113 Use Se
VST Input ports 21 Output ports 21 VST 3 Suspend VST3 plug-in processing when no audio signals are received 196, 221 VST Audio System 19 VST Channel Settings 163 VST Connections 28 About 28 Editing 36 Exclusive port assignment 182 Presets 31 Studio tab 181 VST instrument channel Setting up 216 VST instruments Activating 217 Browsing for sounds 222 Channels 217 Freezing 220 Presets for instruments 221 Saving presets 224 Using VST System Link 518 VST Performance window 25 VST plug-ins Getting info 213 Install
