User Manual

PREFERENCES AND SETTINGS
74
Pitch Display
The Pitch Display preference lets you choose how
note octaves are numbered. Also lets you control
how pitches are displayed. Your choices are by note
spelling/octave (C3) or by MIDI note number (60).
Tempo Display
Digital Performer can display tempos throughout
the program in beats per minute or in clicks per
frame (i.e. “frame clicks”). Frame click tempos can
be displayed with either a slash (/) or a dash (-).
Frame-clicks have their origin in the days of film
before computers where a click track was created
by physically punching holes in the film. As the
hole passed over the projector’s sound head, a pop
or click was heard. The interval between the holes
would determine how fast the click track would be.
Frame-clicks are expressed in two numbers. The
first represents the number of whole frames
between punches. The second represents fractions
of a frame; as there are four sprocket holes in a
frame of film, a punch could be made at each of the
holes or the space between them, making eight
total sub-frame placements. So for example, 12-0
means that a punch would be made every 12
frames; since film runs at 24 frames per second,
this equals two clicks per second, or 120 beats per
minute. If you wanted the tempo to be a bit slower,
you could punch holes at every 12 frames plus a
sprocket or the space in between: 12-1, 12-2, etc.
Figure 7-10: Set the Temp Display preferences as desired to determine
how tempos are displayed throughout Digital Performer.
Regardless of how the tempos are displayed, you
can type them in using either format and Digital
Performer will convert between the formats at an
extremely high degree of resolution (well beyond a
hundredth of a bpm).
Rectified waveform display
Rectified waveforms provide twice the detail in the
same vertical space as regular waveforms. They are
especially useful when the vertical size of an audio
track is very small.
Figure 7-11: Rectified waveforms in the Track Overview.
As shown in Figure 7-9, rectified waveforms can be
enabled or disabled separately for the Sequence
Editor, Track Overview and POLAR window to
suit your tastes. In the Sequence Editor, the choices
are Off, Mini, Small, Medium and Always. The
Mini, Small and Medium choices refer to the
vertical size of a track that causes it display rectified
waveforms. For example, if you prefer to see
normal waveforms most of the time, but prefer to
see rectified waveforms only for fairly small vertical
track sizes, choose Mini or Small. Rectified
waveform display is temporarily suspended when
you zoom into the sample level.
Figure 7-12: In this example, the ‘JF #1 Scat.2’ track is rectified because
it is vertically smaller than the other tracks.