Reference Guide

172
Controlling Playback
The Now time and how to use it
The Now time and how to use it
Every project has a current time, known as the Now time, which keeps track of where you are in a
project. The Now time appears as a vertical line in the Track view and is displayed in both the Large
Transport toolbar and the Position toolbar, in two formats.
The measure, beat, and tick number (MBT) identifies the Now time in musical time units. Ticks are
subdivisions of quarter notes and indicate the timebase of the project. For more information about
the timebase, see “Setting the MIDI timing resolution” on page 241. The other time format is the
SMPTE format, expressed in hours, minutes, seconds, and frames.
Figure 17. The Large Transport toolbar
A. The current measure, beat, and tick B. The current time in hours, minutes, seconds, and frames C. Meter
Key Signature display
Here are some examples of times expressed in measure, beat, and tick (MBT) format:
The hours-minutes-seconds-frames format is commonly referred to as the SMPTE time. SMPTE is
the acronym for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. In this format, time is
measured in hours, minutes, seconds, and frames. It’s not necessary for a project to begin at time
zero in this format—any time can be used to represent the start of a project. If you are synchronizing
SONAR with an external device whose start time is not 0, you must offset SONAR to match the
external device’s start time. For more information, see Synchronizing Your Gear.
Time What it means
1:01:000 First beat of the first measure
9:04:000 Fourth beat of the ninth measure
4:02:060
The 60
th
tick of the second beat of the fourth measure
Table 21.
BAC