TRACKTION QUICKSTART GUIDE
This section gives a high-level run-through of some of the main tasks you might want to perform.
For more detailed information about specific parts of the interface, the integrated popup help is a good place to look for answers. (If this is turned off, you can turn it back on by clicking the 'help' button at the bottom-left). For more help about 'how to do things', have a look at the detailed help pages.
Opening a Project
When Tracktion first runs up
it takes you to the Projects page - shown here. This page shows
all the currently available Projects, Edits and audio/midi clips.
In the top left-hand panel is the "Projects list": this shows all the Projects currently open - there are four in the example opposite. Clicking on one of these will select it, and show a list of all its audio clips and edits in the main window.
Whenever you select an item in the current Project, its details are shown in the information window at the bottom of the screen. In the example here, the selected item is an audio clip, so the information window shows its waveform - the clip can be previewed by clicking the play button at the right of the waveform (or using the spacebar) or by double-clicking it in the list.
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To open up a particular edit, just double-click it; to create a new empty edit, select the project you want it to belong to, and click the green "create new edit" button at the bottom of the screen. This will take you into the wonderful world of...
The Edit Page
This page is where most of
the action happens..
The centre section of the page shows the tracks - in this example, there are eight - which contain the audio/midi clips. Tracktion doesn't limit the number of tracks you can have in an edit - you can add more at any time by clicking the "tracks" button at the bottom-left of the screen.
The green, pointy boxes at the right-hand side of each track are the plug-in filters - by default each track has a level/pan control, a level meter and a mute/solo filter - but you can add more filters to a track's output by clicking-holding-and-dragging the "new filter..." control at the top right-hand corner of the screen, and dropping it where you want the new filter to appear. This will pop up a treeview to let you choose which filter to use.
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Handy Hint:
These plug-in filters can also be applied to each individual
clip, rather than a whole track, by simply dragging the green
"new filter..." control onto a clip instead of a track
output. This way, the plug-in effect will apply to only
that clip, and its parameters can be selected by clicking on the
small filter inside the clip (shown right).
Navigating the Edit Page
Virtually all movement around the edit page can be achieved using just the mouse - ideally one with a mouse-wheel, which is handy for zooming and scrolling.
Somewhere in the middle of the screen, there should be a thin, vertical purple line, running from the top track down to just above the information window - this is your cursor, the Tracktion equivalent of a tape-recorder's 'play head'. This cursor is your 'current position' and indicates the position at which Tracktion is currently playing, or where it will play from when you press play.
To scroll around your edit, simply left-click and drag left or right with your mouse. When the cursor hits the edge of the track area, you will see the tracks scroll left or right.
To zoom in or out of the tracks, use the mouse-wheel. The zoom axis is centred around the mouse position, so by cunning use of click-and-drag and wheeliness, it is possible to scroll and zoom at the same time! Practice this a little, as you'll be doing this a lot!
If you don't have a mouse wheel, you can also use the right mouse button to zoom in or out. First, place the cursor where you want the "centre of zoom" point to be. Then, click-and-drag somewhere else (not too near the cursor) with the right mouse button to zoom.
Tracktion also has several useful keyboard shortcuts for navigating the edit - a full list can be seen (and modified) by clicking on the yellow "keys..." button at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, but here are the main navigation keys:
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The Home key jumps to the beginning of any currently-selected clip, and a second press jumps to the beginning of the edit |
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The End key jumps to the end of any currently-selected clip, and a second press jumps to the end of the edit |
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The Page Up key moves between edit points in an edit, stopping at the start and end of every clip, moving earlier with each keypress |
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The Page Dn key moves between edit points in an edit, stopping at the start and end of every clip, moving later with each keypress |
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The Left & Right arrow keys move the NowLine left or right, in the style of fast-forward or rewind |
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The Shifted Left & Right arrow keys move the edit left or right, in the style of fast-forward or rewind, but keeping the NowLine position the same |
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The Up & Down arrow keys zoom in or out around the current NowLine position (but don't let that stop you buying a wheelie-mouse...) |
Playback
Now you can happily move
around your edit, zooming in and out and scrolling around, and we
can now look at the transport controls, and play back some audio:
The transport controls (shown right) consist of the standard tape-style controls (in green), with a position counter (in white) and BPM/tempo information next to it. As with most things in Tracktion, these controls have shortcuts - their functions, and keyboard shortcuts, are listed below;
The white position counter panel, just above the transport controls, shows where the cursor is currently 'parked' (or playing, whilst in play). By default, the position is shown as "Bars & Beats" - in the example above, the current position is shown as 8 Bars, 2 Beats and 106 100ths of a Beat from zero.
To change this setting to show minutes and seconds, use the yellow "Timecode" button in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen to change the timebase. Options include "Hours / Minutes / Milliseconds" and "Hours / Minutes / Frames" for film/TV use, with a number of framerate options.
Also on the Timecode button is the Tempo option, which will allow you to speed things up, slow them down, or change the time signature of the edit.
To play back your edit, simply locate to the start - either using the mouse, the green "Rewind to start" transport control, typing "zero" into the position counter, or using the [Home] key - and press play (either the transport control, or simply hit the spacebar). The edit should start scrolling, and you should hear audio and midi clips as they pass the NowLine. The level meters on each track - the green plug-in next to "Mute/Solo" - should illuminate, as should the master level meters in the bottom right-hand corner. Possibly you had the volume turned up too high and have blasted out your windows, in which case you want to read on whilst brushing off the broken glass...
Level Controls
The overall level of
the mixed audio coming out of Tracktion is set in a number of
places. Assuming your overall Windows Volume Level is set to
something sensible (if not, then everything you've ever
played will be coming out too loud or too quiet) the best way to
adjust the level of things being played back is via the Master
Faders at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
As can be seen from the picture on the right, the Master Faders panel consists of two master outputs (labelled 'a', 'b' and 'c', right) and a small pair of PPM-style level meters. Clicking on the level meters will turn the Master Faders panel red - as shown here - and a larger pair of horizontal PPMs will be displayed across the bottom of the information panel in the centre of the screen.
To adjust the overall level
of the mix, click on the master faders to display the large
slider, and change the level using that. To adjust just the
left-hand side of the stereo pair, click-and-drag where the
letter 'a' is displayed on the image above, to adjust the
right-hand side, click-and-drag where 'c' is displayed and click
and drag in the centre - 'b' - to adjust both channels
simultaneously. If the two channels get 'out of sync' level-wise,
you can match them back up by using the green "Reset Level
to 0db" button on the information window (just above the
large PPM meters) and then adjust both faders to the desired
level by click-and-dragging in the middle.
By now, you should have been able to load up an edit from the Projects page, navigate around it and play it back. This section deals with Tracktion's most powerful features - editing clips.
Now don't be scared... it's not as bad as it looks... The diagram above shows a mono audio clip in detail. To view a clip in an edit in detail, simply click on it - it will gain a red bar across the top, and several icons (as shown above) for editing. The waveform of the audio can be turned on or off by clicking on the yellow "options" button in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen as selecting "show/hide waveforms". By using the editing icons on the red bar, the start and ends of the clip can be moved or trimmed, or the two square icons in the centre of the bar allow the entire clip to be adjusted. Rather than explain in detail the difference between these operations, it really is much quicker to just try it and see what each icon does!
Note: Tracktion has an almost-unlimited 'Undo' capability, so you can undo/redo any editing changes by clicking on the blue "Undo/Redo" buttons (or using the standard [Ctrl-Z] / [Ctrl-Y] Windows keyboard shortcuts)
In normal use, the most
common operation will be slipping a
clip - that is, moving the clip earlier or later in the track.
There are several ways to achieve this - the easiest being
'picking it up' (by click-and-holding on its red bar when you see
the
cursor) and dragging it to its new location. Alternatively, you
can 'nudge' a clip forwards and backwards by holding down the
CTRL key and nudging using the left and right arrow keys.
To move a clip to another track you can either click-and-drag it (holding down [Shift] whilst doing this constrains it to its start time, so it doesn't move out of sync).
Each audio clip has a fade-in
and a fade-out control - these are the
small white boxes with diagonal lines through them located at the
start and end of each clip. There are two methods for adding a
fade to a clip. The first is to type the fade duration in on the
fade box (shown right) which is located in the clip information
window at the bottom of the screen.
The second, somewhat easier
method, is to simply click-and-drag the small icon at the
beginning or end of the selected clip to 'draw out' a fade. The
clip example above shows a fade-out, represented by a long
diagonal line towards the right-hand side of the clip. The fade
shape can be altered by clicking on one of the eight fade-shape
buttons (shown on the fade box, above).
Crossfading between two adjacent clips is also outstandingly easy... To crossfade between two clips, first overlap them (on the same track) by the desired amount, and press the green "auto-crossfade" button (as shown on the panel above). This will apply a simultaneous fade-out to the first clip, and a similar-length fade-in on the second, creating a perfect crossfade in one, easy mouseclick. Once again, the blue fade-shape buttons (above) can be used to change the shape of this auto-crossfade, and if the clips are slipped or separated, they simply retain their individual fades.
To time-stretch a clip rather than trimming its in and out-positions, hold down the ALT key when dragging the triangles that trim the start or end of the clip. This will stretch the clip to fit the position you move to - either by slowing down or speeding up the clip, or by time-stretching if you've pressed the 'keep original pitch' button (in the clip's properties panel).
Marking Regions
Some edit operations apply not to individual clips, but to a region of the edit. A region can be set by pressing the "i" key on the keyboard (to set the region's in-point), then moving the cursor and pressing the "o" key (to set the region's out-point). Two vertical red lines will be displayed across the edit, similar to the purple cursor line, but red. The region is defined as the area between these lines, and these in- and out-points can be adjusted by either dragging the red lines, or by moving the cursor to a new position and re-pressing "i" or "o".
Cutting, Pasting & Copying Clips
Clips can be cut, copied, pasted and deleted using either the dedicated blue "edit" button on the screen, by using the standard Windows keyboard shortcuts ( [Ctrl-X], [Ctrl-C], [Ctrl-V] etc.) or by using the pop-up menu of edit commands which appears when you right mouse-click on a selected clip.
The Cut and Copy commands are fairly self-explanatory, but here are some examples using Paste;
Clips can be split in two simply by positioning the cursor at the point where the clip is to be cut, selecting the clip and using the green "split clips" button on the properties panel. If a region has been defined (as explained above) then many of these cut, copy, paste operations can be made to act on anything in the region, rather than on selected clips.
It
is now time to make your first recording into a Tracktion edit...
First - a quick word about Devices. On Tracktion's settings screen, there's a section for 'audio devices' where all of the computer's available input and output devices can be enabled/disabled and their properties adjusted. For a fuller explanation of this, see the detailed help pages, but you should see a list of inputs and outputs for both audio and midi, with each device being either enabled or disabled.
Exactly which devices appear
on this page depend on the exact configuration of your soundcard,
drivers and various other system-specific parameters, but you
should have at least one audio input and one audio output marked
as active for a recording to take place.
Returning to the main
edit page, you should have at least one audio record
input device (similar to the one below) on the left-hand
side of the screen, over the vertical word 'TRACKTION'.
By clicking-and-dragging this record icon over to a
track, it should sprout a red arrow, which 'sticks' to
the left-hand edges of the tracks as you drag the icon up
and down. Go on, drag it up and down - it's fun...
To begin recording,
simply move the cursor to where you want to start, and
press the record transport button ( When you have
finished recording, press the spacebar or the 'stop'
transport control (
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Making a MIDI recording is done in the same way as for audio, but using a MIDI input device.
The only other consideration is to do with how you intend to replay this midi information: there are two ways of playing midi in Tracktion - using the midi synthesiser facility built-into most PC soundcards, or by using a VST plug-in 'soft-synth'.
If you are using the
GM midi facilities of your soundcard to record and playback, you
need to ensure that the track is set to be a 'midi track'. The
individual track destinations can be seen by clicking on the
track names (to select the track) and a list of destination
outputs appears in the properties panel. To select the midi
output for your recording/playback, click a midi device in the
list (as shown, right).
If you attempt to add VST
plug-ins to this track, or place audio clips or recordings on it,
a warning symbol () will be displayed next to the track
name, warning that these elements will not be heard, since the
destination for that track is the midi output of the
soundcard, rather than the audio output.