Defining A Beat Detective Selection - DigiDesign Pro Tools Reference Manual

Defining a Beat Detective
Selection
Whether you will be generating Bar|Beat Mark-
ers, extracting a DigiGroove template, or sepa-
rating regions to be conformed, you must al-
ways define the audio or MIDI selection to be
analyzed. The Beat Detective window provides
tools to define and capture the selection range,
time signature, and swing (sub-division) con-
tent for the selected audio.
To ensure the best possible results with Beat
Detective, make sure the selected passage
starts exactly on the attack of the first beat.
For Beat Detective to generate beat triggers that
are metrically accurate, the length and meter of
the selection must be correctly defined. In addi-
tion, the selection should not contain any meter
or tempo changes.
Use Loop playback to check the accuracy of
your selection.
To define a selection for Beat Detective:
In the Edit window, select a range of audio or
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MIDI material in a single track or in multiple
tracks.
Pro Tools LE does not support using Beat
Detective across multiple tracks. When
Beat Detective is applied to multiple tracks,
only the top track is edited.
To keep the Edit selection intact while play-
ing or looping from any location, deselect
Options > Link Timeline and Edit Selection.
440 Pro Tools Reference Guide
Making an audio selection for Beat Detective
Make sure the selection's start and end points
fall cleanly on the beat. To zero in on an audio
region's start and end points, zoom to the sam-
ple level and use the Tab to Transients option
(see "Tabbing to Transients" on page 319).
To avoid losing an existing selection, save
and recall an Edit selection by saving it as a
Memory Location. See "Memory Locations
and Markers" on page 428.
Choose Event > Beat Detective.
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You must define or capture the selection every
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time you make a new selection or change the
tempo map. To define the selection range, do
one of the following:
• If the tempo and meter of the audio selec-
tion do not match the session's default
tempo and meter, enter the Time Signa-
ture, and Start Bar|Beat and End Bar|Beat
locations. For a four-bar selection that
starts on beat 1, enter 1|1 and 5|1.
• If the tempo and meter of the audio selec-
tion do not match the session's default
tempo and meter, and you are unsure of
the length of the material, enter the Time
Signature and the Start Bar|Beat location;
then start playback, and click the Tap but-
ton repeatedly to automatically calculate
the End Bar|Beat. When using Tap with
long selections, continue to tap until the
End Bar|Beat stabilizes. Once stabilized,
you may need to manually adjust the num-
ber to the nearest bar boundary.