]>
<section id="sn-working-with-playlists">
- <title>Working with Playlists</title>
- <para>
- As described earlier <link linkend="gt-playlist">playlists</link> are one of
- the central objects in a digital audio workstation. A playlist is a list of
- <link linkend="gt-region">regions</link> ordered in time. It defines which
- parts of which source files should be played and when.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Each track in Ardour is really just a mechanism for taking a playlist and
- generating the audio stream that it represents. As a result, editing a track
- really means modifying its playlist in some way. Since a playlist is a list
- of regions, most of the modifications involve manipulating regions: their
- position, length and so forth. This is covered in
- <xref linkend="sn-working-with-regions"/>. Here, we cover some of the things
- you can do with playlists as objects in their own right.
- </para>
-
- <section id="tracks-are-not-playlists">
- <title> Tracks are not Playlists </title>
- <para>
- It is important to understand that a track is <emphasis>not</emphasis> a
- playlist. A track is a mechanism for generating the audio stream
- represented by the playlist and passing it through a signal processing
- pathway. At any point in time, a track has a single playlist associated
- with it. When the track is used to record, that playlist will have one or
- more new regions added to it. When the track is used for playback, the
- contents of the playlist will be heard. Old tape operators will feel
- comfortable thinking of the playlist as the tape, and the track as the tape
- machine.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- However, you can change the playlist associated with a track at (almost)
- any time, and even share playlists between tracks. There is more on this
- <link linkend="playlist-operations">below</link>.
- </para>
- </section>
-
- <section id="playlists-are-cheap">
- <title> Playlists are cheap </title>
- <para>
- One thing you should be clear about is that playlists are cheap. They don't
- cost anything in terms of CPU consumption, and they have very minimal
- efforts on memory use. Don't be afraid of generating new playlists whenever
- you want to. They are not equivalent to tracks, which require extra CPU
- time and significant memory space, or audio files, which use disk space, or
- to plugins that require extra CPU time. If a playlist is not in use, it
- occupies a small amount of memory, and nothing more.
- </para>
- </section>
-
- <section id="playlists-as-takes">
- <title> Playlists as "Takes" or "Virtual Tracks" </title>
- <para>
- If you have a background in audio engineering, then it might be easiest for
- you to think of playlists as "takes". This isn't a particularly useful
- analogy by itself, and it can be misleading. But if you are working with
- music where most tracks feature single-pass recordings of a single
- instrument, then the idea of using one playlist per "take" can make life
- very convenient. Each time you need to record another take, create a new
- playlist list first. You will then end up with a simple way of switching
- back and forth between each version, or even listening to several at the
- same time.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If you have some experience of other DAWs, then you might have come across
- the term "virtual track", normally defined as a track that isn't actually
- playing or doing anything, but can be mapped/assigned to a "real track".
- This concept is functionally identical to Ardour's playlists. We just like
- to be little more clear about what is actually happening rather than mixing
- old and new terminology ("virtual" and "track") into confusing terminology.
- </para>
- </section>
-
- <section id="playlist-operations">
- <title> Playlist Operations </title>
- <para>
- At this point, all operations on playlists start by clicking on the
- playlist button (labelled <guibutton>p</guibutton>) in the control area of a track in the
- editor. Clicking the button will popup a menu with the following choices:
- </para>
-
- <variablelist>
- <title></title>
- <varlistentry>
- <term><guilabel>Current</guilabel></term>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- shows the name of the current playlist used by this track
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </varlistentry>
-
- <varlistentry>
- <term><guilabel>Rename</guilabel></term>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- pops up a dialog that allows the current playlist to be renamed
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </varlistentry>
-
- <varlistentry>
- <term><guilabel>New</guilabel></term>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- creates a new <emphasis>empty</emphasis> playlist, and switches this
- track to use it
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </varlistentry>
-
- <varlistentry>
- <term><guilabel>New Copy</guilabel></term>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- creates a new playlist that is a copy of the current playlist, and
- switches this track to use it
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </varlistentry>
-
- <varlistentry>
- <term><guilabel>Clear Current</guilabel></term>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- removes all regions from the current playlist
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </varlistentry>
-
- <varlistentry>
- <term><guilabel>Select</guilabel></term>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- pops up a playlist browser to manually choose which playlist this track
- should use
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </varlistentry>
- </variablelist>
-
- <section id="renaming-playlists">
- <title>Renaming Playlists</title>
- <para>
- Playlists are created with the name of the track of which they are
- associated, plus a version number. So, the first playlist for a track
- called "Cowbell" will be called "Cowbell.1". This name will be used to
- define the names of any regions added to the playlist by recording. You
- can change the name at any time, to anything you want. Ardour does not
- require that your playlist names are all unique, but it will make your
- life easier if they are. Suggested examples of user-assigned names for a
- playlist might include "Lead Guitar, 2nd take", "vocals (quiet)", and
- "downbeat cuica". Notice how these might be different from the associated
- track names, which for these examples might be "Lead Guitar", "Vocals" and
- "Cuica". The playlist name provides more information because it is about a
- specific version of the material that may (or may not) end up in the final
- version of the track.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If you are going to rename your playlists, do so before recording new
- material to them.
- </para>
- </section>
-
- <section id="selecting-playlists">
- <title>Selecting Playlists</title>
- <para>
- If you click on the "Select" choice of the playlist button menu, a dialog
- will appear that displays all playlists in a tree-structure (many will be
- hidden). Playlists will be grouped by the track for which they were
- created, with all those created for the current track displayed. Other
- tracks are hidden in a collapsed tree that can be expanded as you wish to
- find other playlists.
- </para>
- </section>
-
- <section id="sharing-playlists">
- <title>Sharing Playlists</title>
- <para>
- It is entirely possible to share playlists between tracks. The only
- slightly unusual thing you may notice when sharing is that edits to the
- playlist made in one track will magically appear in the other. If you
- think about this for a moment, its an obvious consequence of sharing.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- You might not want this kind of behaviour, even though you still want two
- tracks to use the same (or substantially the same) playlist. To accomplish
- this, select the chosen playlist in the second track, and then use
- <guilabel>New Copy</guilabel> to generate an independent copy of it for
- that track. You can then edit this playlist without affecting the
- original.
- </para>
- </section>
-
- <section id="using-playlists-for-takes">
- <title>Using playlists for takes</title>
- <para>
- You have several choices here. You can obviously record new takes directly
- over an existing one, because of the non-destructive nature of digital
- audio editing. You can also use the <guilabel>Clear Current</guilabel>
- operation each time you want to start a new take. This is a
- non-destructive operation that removes all existing regions from the
- current playlist. Although you won't lose any information doing this, its
- probably not appropriate unless the last take was so awful that you want
- to discard it (although without the finality of <emphasis>Remove Last
- Capture</emphasis> ). Finally, and probably most useful, you can use the
- <guilabel>New</guilabel> operation in the playlist button menu to create a
- new empty playlist, ready for the next take. Later, you can
- <guilabel>Select</guilabel> your way back to previous or later takes as
- desired, either in this or some other track.
- </para>
- </section>
- </section>
+ <title>Working with Playlists</title>
+ <para>
+ As described earlier <link linkend="gt-playlist">playlists</link> are
+ one of the central objects in a digital audio workstation. A playlist is
+ a list of <link linkend="gt-region">regions</link> ordered in time. It
+ defines which parts of which source files should be played and when.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Each track in Ardour is really just a mechanism for taking a playlist
+ and generating the audio stream that it represents. As a result, editing
+ a track really means modifying its playlist in some way. Since a
+ playlist is a list of regions, most of the modifications involve
+ manipulating regions: their position, length and so forth. This is
+ covered in <xref linkend="sn-working-with-regions"/>. Here, we cover
+ some of the things you can do with playlists as objects in their own
+ right.
+ </para>
+
+ <section id="tracks-are-not-playlists">
+ <title> Tracks are not Playlists </title>
+ <para>
+ It is important to understand that a track is <emphasis>not</emphasis>
+ a playlist. A track is a mechanism for generating the audio stream
+ represented by the playlist and passing it through a signal processing
+ pathway. At any point in time, a track has a single playlist
+ associated with it. When the track is used to record, that playlist
+ will have one or more new regions added to it. When the track is used
+ for playback, the contents of the playlist will be heard. Old tape
+ operators will feel comfortable thinking of the playlist as the tape,
+ and the track as the tape machine.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ However, you can change the playlist associated with a track at
+ (almost) any time, and even share playlists between tracks. There is
+ more on this <link linkend="playlist-operations">below</link>.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="playlists-are-cheap">
+ <title> Playlists are cheap </title>
+ <para>
+ One thing you should be clear about is that playlists are cheap. They
+ don't cost anything in terms of CPU consumption, and they have very
+ minimal efforts on memory use. Don't be afraid of generating new
+ playlists whenever you want to. They are not equivalent to tracks,
+ which require extra CPU time and significant memory space, or audio
+ files, which use disk space, or to plugins that require extra CPU
+ time. If a playlist is not in use, it occupies a small amount of
+ memory, and nothing more.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="playlists-as-takes">
+ <title> Playlists as "Takes" or "Virtual Tracks" </title>
+ <para>
+ If you have a background in audio engineering, then it might be
+ easiest for you to think of playlists as "takes". This isn't a
+ particularly useful analogy by itself, and it can be misleading. But
+ if you are working with music where most tracks feature single-pass
+ recordings of a single instrument, then the idea of using one playlist
+ per "take" can make life very convenient. Each time you need to record
+ another take, create a new playlist list first. You will then end up
+ with a simple way of switching back and forth between each version, or
+ even listening to several at the same time.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ If you have some experience of other DAWs, then you might have come
+ across the term "virtual track", normally defined as a track that
+ isn't actually playing or doing anything, but can be mapped/assigned
+ to a "real track". This concept is functionally identical to Ardour's
+ playlists. We just like to be little more clear about what is actually
+ happening rather than mixing old and new terminology ("virtual" and
+ "track") into confusing terminology.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="playlist-operations">
+ <title> Playlist Operations </title>
+ <para>
+ At this point, all operations on playlists start by clicking on the
+ playlist button (labelled <guibutton>p</guibutton>) in the control
+ area of a track in the editor. Clicking the button will popup a menu
+ with the following choices:
+ </para>
+
+ <variablelist>
+ <title></title>
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term><guilabel>Current</guilabel></term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ shows the name of the current playlist used by this track
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term><guilabel>Rename</guilabel></term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ pops up a dialog that allows the current playlist to be renamed
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term><guilabel>New</guilabel></term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ creates a new <emphasis>empty</emphasis> playlist, and switches
+ this track to use it
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term><guilabel>New Copy</guilabel></term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ creates a new playlist that is a copy of the current playlist,
+ and switches this track to use it
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term><guilabel>Clear Current</guilabel></term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ removes all regions from the current playlist
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term><guilabel>Select</guilabel></term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ pops up a playlist browser to manually choose which playlist
+ this track should use
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+ </variablelist>
+
+ <section id="renaming-playlists">
+ <title>Renaming Playlists</title>
+ <para>
+ Playlists are created with the name of the track of which they are
+ associated, plus a version number. So, the first playlist for a
+ track called "Cowbell" will be called "Cowbell.1". This name will be
+ used to define the names of any regions added to the playlist by
+ recording. You can change the name at any time, to anything you
+ want. Ardour does not require that your playlist names are all
+ unique, but it will make your life easier if they are. Suggested
+ examples of user-assigned names for a playlist might include "Lead
+ Guitar, 2nd take", "vocals (quiet)", and "downbeat cuica". Notice
+ how these might be different from the associated track names, which
+ for these examples might be "Lead Guitar", "Vocals" and "Cuica". The
+ playlist name provides more information because it is about a
+ specific version of the material that may (or may not) end up in the
+ final version of the track.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ If you are going to rename your playlists, do so before recording
+ new material to them.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="selecting-playlists">
+ <title>Selecting Playlists</title>
+ <para>
+ If you click on the "Select" choice of the playlist button menu, a
+ dialog will appear that displays all playlists in a tree-structure
+ (many will be hidden). Playlists will be grouped by the track for
+ which they were created, with all those created for the current
+ track displayed. Other tracks are hidden in a collapsed tree that
+ can be expanded as you wish to find other playlists.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="sharing-playlists">
+ <title>Sharing Playlists</title>
+ <para>
+ It is entirely possible to share playlists between tracks. The only
+ slightly unusual thing you may notice when sharing is that edits to
+ the playlist made in one track will magically appear in the other.
+ If you think about this for a moment, its an obvious consequence of
+ sharing.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ You might not want this kind of behaviour, even though you still
+ want two tracks to use the same (or substantially the same)
+ playlist. To accomplish this, select the chosen playlist in the
+ second track, and then use <guilabel>New Copy</guilabel> to generate
+ an independent copy of it for that track. You can then edit this
+ playlist without affecting the original.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="using-playlists-for-takes">
+ <title>Using playlists for takes</title>
+ <para>
+ You have several choices here. You can obviously record new takes
+ directly over an existing one, because of the non-destructive nature
+ of digital audio editing. You can also use the <guilabel>Clear
+ Current</guilabel> operation each time you want to start a new take.
+ This is a non-destructive operation that removes all existing
+ regions from the current playlist. Although you won't lose any
+ information doing this, its probably not appropriate unless the last
+ take was so awful that you want to discard it (although without the
+ finality of <emphasis>Remove Last Capture</emphasis> ). Finally, and
+ probably most useful, you can use the <guilabel>New</guilabel>
+ operation in the playlist button menu to create a new empty
+ playlist, ready for the next take. Later, you can
+ <guilabel>Select</guilabel> your way back to previous or later takes
+ as desired, either in this or some other track.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+ </section>
</section>
projects / ardour.git / blobdiff