Managing Batch Processes

You can delete and rename created batch processes in the Manage Batch Processes dialog.

Freeze Edits

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.

• If there is only one edit version of the clip (no other clips refer to the same audio file), the following dialog will appear:

•Open the Audio menu and select “Manage…” from the Batch Processes submenu to open the Manage Batch Processes dialog.

The created batch processes are listed in the left column, and the operations each batch process contains are listed in the right column.

•To remove a batch process, just select it in the list and click “Delete”.

•To change the name of a batch process, select it in the list and click “Rename” and enter the new name.

If you select “Replace”, all edits will be applied to the original audio file (the one listed in the clip’s Path column in the Pool). If you select “New File”, the Freeze Edits operation will create a new file in the Audio folder within the project folder (leaving the original audio file unaffected).

• If the selected clip (or the clip played by the selected event) has several edit versions (i.e. there are other clips referring to the same audio file), the following alert will appear:

As you can see, you don’t have the option to Replace the original audio file in this case. This is because that audio file is used by other clips. Select “New File” to have a new file created in the Audio folder within the project folder.

After a Freeze Edits, the clip refers to a new, single audio file. If you open the Offline Process History dialog for the clip, the list will be empty.

Detect Silence

The Detect Silence function on the Advanced submenu of the Audio menu 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 nonsilent sections. Proceed as follows:

1.Select the event in the Project window or the Audio Part Editor.

You can select several events if you like, in which case you will be allowed to make separate settings for each selected event.

2.Select “Detect Silence” from the Advanced submenu of the Audio menu.

The Detect Silence dialog appears.

3.Adjust the settings in the Detection section to the left.

They have the following functionality:

4. Click the “Compute” button.

The audio event is analyzed, and the waveform display is redrawn to indicate which sections will be considered “silent”, according to your settings. Above the Compute Button the number of detected regions is displayed.

• If you activate the “auto” checkbox next to the Compute button, the audio event will be analyzed (and the display will be updated) automatically every time you change the settings in the Detection section of the dialog.

Please note that you should not activate this option when you are working with very long files, as this process might take some time.

• You can use the Preview function to listen to the result.

The event is played back repeatedly in its entire length, but with the “closed” sections silenced.

5.Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you are satisfied with the result.

6.Select the desired result, by activating either the “Add as Regions” or the “Strip Silence” checkbox, or both.

“Add as Regions” will create regions according to the non-silent sections. “Strip Silence” will split the event at the start and end of each nonsilent section, and remove the silent sections in between.

7.If you activate “Add as Regions”, you can specify a name for the Regions in the Region Name field.

In addition to the name, the regions will be numbered, starting with the number specified in the Auto Number Start field.

8.Click “Process”.

The event is split and/or regions are added.

The result of the “Strip Silence” option.

• If you selected more than one event in step 1 above, you can activate the “process all” checkbox to apply the same settings to all selected events. If you don’t activate this, the dialog will appear again, allowing you to make separate settings for each event.

The Spectrum Analyzer

This function analyzes the selected audio, computes the average “spectrum” (level distribution over the frequency range) and displays this as a two-dimensional graph, with frequency on the x-axis and level on the y-axis.

1.Make an audio selection (a clip, an event or a range selection).

2.Select “Spectrum Analyzer” from the Audio menu.

A dialog with settings for the analysis appears.

The default values give good results in most situations, but you can adjust the settings if you like:

Setting Description

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.

Size of Overlap The overlap between each analysis block.

3. Click the “Process” button.

The spectrum is computed and displayed as a graph.

4. You can adjust the display with the settings in the display window:

5. If you move the mouse pointer over the graph, a crosshair cursor follows the graph curve and the display in the upper right corner shows the frequency/note and level at the current position.

To compare the level between two frequencies, move the pointer to one of the frequencies, right-click once and move the pointer to the second frequency. The delta value (the difference in level between the current position and the right-click position) is displayed in the upper right corner (labeled “D”).

• If you analyze stereo audio and selected the “Stereo” option in the first dialog, the graphs for the left and right channel are superimposed in the display, with the left channel graph in white and the right channel graph in yellow.

The display in the upper right corner shows the values for the left channel

– to see the right channel values, hold down [Shift]. An “L” or “R” is displayed to indicate which channel values are shown.

6. You can leave the window open or close it by clicking the “Close” button.

If you leave it open and the “Active” checkbox is ticked, the result of the next Spectrum Analysis will be displayed in the same window.

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:

Peak Amplitude The largest sample value (in absolute numbers) in the selection, in dB.