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7 <section id="sn-working-with-playlists">
8 <title>Working with Playlists</title>
10 As described earlier <link linkend="gt-playlist">playlists</link> are
11 one of the central objects in a digital audio workstation. A playlist is
12 a list of <link linkend="gt-region">regions</link> ordered in time. It
13 defines which parts of which source files should be played and when.
17 Each track in Ardour is really just a mechanism for taking a playlist
18 and generating the audio stream that it represents. As a result, editing
19 a track really means modifying its playlist in some way. Since a
20 playlist is a list of regions, most of the modifications involve
21 manipulating regions: their position, length and so forth. This is
22 covered in <xref linkend="sn-working-with-regions"/>. Here, we cover
23 some of the things you can do with playlists as objects in their own
27 <section id="tracks-are-not-playlists">
28 <title> Tracks are not Playlists </title>
30 It is important to understand that a track is <emphasis>not</emphasis>
31 a playlist. A track is a mechanism for generating the audio stream
32 represented by the playlist and passing it through a signal processing
33 pathway. At any point in time, a track has a single playlist
34 associated with it. When the track is used to record, that playlist
35 will have one or more new regions added to it. When the track is used
36 for playback, the contents of the playlist will be heard. Old tape
37 operators will feel comfortable thinking of the playlist as the tape,
38 and the track as the tape machine.
42 However, you can change the playlist associated with a track at
43 (almost) any time, and even share playlists between tracks. There is
44 more on this <link linkend="playlist-operations">below</link>.
48 <section id="playlists-are-cheap">
49 <title> Playlists are cheap </title>
51 One thing you should be clear about is that playlists are cheap. They
52 don't cost anything in terms of CPU consumption, and they have very
53 minimal efforts on memory use. Don't be afraid of generating new
54 playlists whenever you want to. They are not equivalent to tracks,
55 which require extra CPU time and significant memory space, or audio
56 files, which use disk space, or to plugins that require extra CPU
57 time. If a playlist is not in use, it occupies a small amount of
58 memory, and nothing more.
62 <section id="playlists-as-takes">
63 <title> Playlists as "Takes" or "Virtual Tracks" </title>
65 If you have a background in audio engineering, then it might be
66 easiest for you to think of playlists as "takes". This isn't a
67 particularly useful analogy by itself, and it can be misleading. But
68 if you are working with music where most tracks feature single-pass
69 recordings of a single instrument, then the idea of using one playlist
70 per "take" can make life very convenient. Each time you need to record
71 another take, create a new playlist list first. You will then end up
72 with a simple way of switching back and forth between each version, or
73 even listening to several at the same time.
77 If you have some experience of other DAWs, then you might have come
78 across the term "virtual track", normally defined as a track that
79 isn't actually playing or doing anything, but can be mapped/assigned
80 to a "real track". This concept is functionally identical to Ardour's
81 playlists. We just like to be little more clear about what is actually
82 happening rather than mixing old and new terminology ("virtual" and
83 "track") into confusing terminology.
87 <section id="playlist-operations">
88 <title> Playlist Operations </title>
90 At this point, all operations on playlists start by clicking on the
91 playlist button (labelled <guibutton>p</guibutton>) in the control
92 area of a track in the editor. Clicking the button will popup a menu
93 with the following choices:
99 <term><guilabel>Current</guilabel></term>
102 shows the name of the current playlist used by this track
108 <term><guilabel>Rename</guilabel></term>
111 pops up a dialog that allows the current playlist to be renamed
117 <term><guilabel>New</guilabel></term>
120 creates a new <emphasis>empty</emphasis> playlist, and switches
127 <term><guilabel>New Copy</guilabel></term>
130 creates a new playlist that is a copy of the current playlist,
131 and switches this track to use it
137 <term><guilabel>Clear Current</guilabel></term>
140 removes all regions from the current playlist
146 <term><guilabel>Select</guilabel></term>
149 pops up a playlist browser to manually choose which playlist
150 this track should use
156 <section id="renaming-playlists">
157 <title>Renaming Playlists</title>
159 Playlists are created with the name of the track of which they are
160 associated, plus a version number. So, the first playlist for a
161 track called "Cowbell" will be called "Cowbell.1". This name will be
162 used to define the names of any regions added to the playlist by
163 recording. You can change the name at any time, to anything you
164 want. Ardour does not require that your playlist names are all
165 unique, but it will make your life easier if they are. Suggested
166 examples of user-assigned names for a playlist might include "Lead
167 Guitar, 2nd take", "vocals (quiet)", and "downbeat cuica". Notice
168 how these might be different from the associated track names, which
169 for these examples might be "Lead Guitar", "Vocals" and "Cuica". The
170 playlist name provides more information because it is about a
171 specific version of the material that may (or may not) end up in the
172 final version of the track.
176 If you are going to rename your playlists, do so before recording
177 new material to them.
181 <section id="selecting-playlists">
182 <title>Selecting Playlists</title>
184 If you click on the "Select" choice of the playlist button menu, a
185 dialog will appear that displays all playlists in a tree-structure
186 (many will be hidden). Playlists will be grouped by the track for
187 which they were created, with all those created for the current
188 track displayed. Other tracks are hidden in a collapsed tree that
189 can be expanded as you wish to find other playlists.
193 <section id="sharing-playlists">
194 <title>Sharing Playlists</title>
196 It is entirely possible to share playlists between tracks. The only
197 slightly unusual thing you may notice when sharing is that edits to
198 the playlist made in one track will magically appear in the other.
199 If you think about this for a moment, its an obvious consequence of
204 You might not want this kind of behaviour, even though you still
205 want two tracks to use the same (or substantially the same)
206 playlist. To accomplish this, select the chosen playlist in the
207 second track, and then use <guilabel>New Copy</guilabel> to generate
208 an independent copy of it for that track. You can then edit this
209 playlist without affecting the original.
213 <section id="using-playlists-for-takes">
214 <title>Using playlists for takes</title>
216 You have several choices here. You can obviously record new takes
217 directly over an existing one, because of the non-destructive nature
218 of digital audio editing. You can also use the <guilabel>Clear
219 Current</guilabel> operation each time you want to start a new take.
220 This is a non-destructive operation that removes all existing
221 regions from the current playlist. Although you won't lose any
222 information doing this, its probably not appropriate unless the last
223 take was so awful that you want to discard it (although without the
224 finality of <emphasis>Remove Last Capture</emphasis> ). Finally, and
225 probably most useful, you can use the <guilabel>New</guilabel>
226 operation in the playlist button menu to create a new empty
227 playlist, ready for the next take. Later, you can
228 <guilabel>Select</guilabel> your way back to previous or later takes
229 as desired, either in this or some other track.