Audio Regions And Waveforms - DigiDesign Pro Tools Reference Manual

User Time Stamp Displays the User Time Stamp
for each region. The User Time Stamp, which
defaults to the Original Time Stamp, can be re-
defined with the Time Stamp command.
Display enabled for region names, Overlap, and times
Region and region group Sync Points can be dis-
played on regions in playlists (see "Sync Points"
on page 344). This is useful when visually spot-
ting to time code or in arranging in Grid mode.
Region Overlaps can be displayed on regions in
playlists. This is useful for arranging and when
working with tick-based audio tracks (see "Re-
gion Overlap and Underlap" on page 330).
Channel Name and Scene And Take informa-
tion can be displayed in regions in playlists and
in the Region List. This is useful for working
with multichannel recordings and metadata
made by field recorders.
See the Field Recorder Workflow Guide for
detailed information on workflows for field
recorders.

Audio Regions and Waveforms

When the Track View for audio tracks is set to
Waveform, Pro Tools draws a waveform dia-
gram of the audio. Audio waveforms tell you
several things about the recorded sound.
Figure 8. Audio waveform of a drum track
260 Pro Tools Reference Guide
In Figure 8, the "peaks" represent places in the
recording where the attack of the sound causes
the volume to increase momentarily. These are
followed by "valleys," where the volume de-
creases.
Different types of sounds produce different
types of waveforms. Drums, for example, gener-
ally produce waveforms with sharp transients
(peaks of short duration) that are clearly de-
fined. A drum hit has a loud, sharp attack and a
rapid decay.
Other sounds, such as vocals or sustained key-
board sounds, produce very different wave-
forms, ones that have less pronounced peaks
and valleys. That's because these sounds gener-
ally have softer attacks and longer decays.
Draw Waveforms Rectified Preference
When the Display preference for Draw Wave-
forms Rectified is selected (in the Display Prefer-
ences page), audio waveforms are displayed so
that their positive and negative waveform ex-
cursions are summed together and viewed as a
single positive-value signal. However, even
when this preference is enabled, zooming in be-
yond a certain point will cause the waveforms to
be displayed normally.
Audio displayed in Rectified mode
Audio displayed in Normal mode