Introduction; Regions - Mackie HDR24 Editing Manual

Introduction

Non-destructive editing is one of the capabilities that distinguishes the HDR24/96
from your old tape recorder. It's easy, it's fun, and you won't cut your fingers
learning how to do it. This guide will introduce you to the editing tools and
concepts.
All the editing operations are performed on screen through the Graphical User
Interface (GUI), so all the discussion in this section applies to GUI operations and
displays only. See page 13 of the Quick Start Guide for details on installing a
monitor, mouse and keyboard.
Once you are ready, sit down in front of your screen, take a deep cleansing breath,
reach for the mouse and let's get started.

Regions

Regions are graphic representations of audio files — or portions of audio files —
stored on the hard drive. The HDR24/96 editor displays regions as boxes within a
track, each containing a waveform display of audio. It's important to understand
the difference between regions — which just represent audio — and the actual
audio files: A region is information which tells the player at what time, relative to
the start of the audio file, to start playing a portion of the audio file, and when to
stop playing.
After a recording pass, a new region appears along a track, representing the new
audio file in its entirety. The region's start and stop times are the same as the
beginning and end of the audio file. From this point, the region can be chopped up,
moved, copied & pasted, transferred to other tracks and more; completely
changing the song as it is heard, but without changing the original corresponding
audio file. Each piece becomes a new region, with new information as to where
along the audio file to start playing and where to stop.
If a region is deleted, it won't play back (because there's nothing telling the
HDR24/96 when to start playing the file) but its corresponding audio data is still
on disk. Even if all its regions are deleted, the audio file remains. That audio file
can be called back as a new region or erased from the disk.
If you've laid some tracks that you really don't want disturbed, right-click on their
regions and select Lock from the pulldown menu.
An editing note regarding regions within Virtual Takes: Each track can contain up
to seven inactive virtual takes. These are safe from global editing operations only
when the tracks are collapsed so that only the active take is visible. If you are
performing global selections and chopping and plopping regions here'n'there,
make sure that only the virtual take that you want chopped is visible. Select it as
the active take, then collapse the track to keep the others safe from this Borg type
activity.
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Editing Guide