Quicker Story Editing - Help me save time

T

Tileeba

New member
Hello, everyone!

Could you help me save a LOT of time?

I am editing some stories (radio style - with dialogues, sound effects, music, and all), using Sonar 3 Producer Editions.

Let's say I want to add a sound effect at a certain point in the story. How can I move EVERYTHING (to the right of what I am adding) over in a "speedier" way (is that a word "speedier"? :))

What I usually do now is drag-select each track one by one (there are several), and then nudge everything to the right to fit the new addition (sound effect or something). Is there a quicker way of moving ALL THE TRACKS over at once?

The same goes for when I want to add a certain sound effect, or music, right in the middle of my story. How do I move everything (on all tracks) over?

Your help will be MUCH appreciated! Thank you!
 
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You should be able to do this as follows:

Go to Edit > Select > All (All your tracks should be now highlighted)

Go to the time ruler, and right click and drag your mouse where you want to place the inserted material. If you did it right, all of your tracks should now show a highlight where the inserted material will go.

Now go to Insert > Time/Measures. You will get a pop-up dialog box. In the dialog box you can choose whether you want to insert a measure(s), a specific amount of time (in seconds), or even ticks (very small increments).

Make your selection, and all the tracks should slide to the right to provide the space you need for your new material.
 
That's a great tip, dachay2tnr's! Thank you so much!

Now, let's say that everything to the right of that part that I just inserted needs to come over a little (because I added too much empty space, for example). How would you go about bringing everything to the right back to the left a little?
 
You can try this:

Put you cursor at the beginning of the section you want to move.
Then go to Edit > Select > All
Then go to Edit > Select > From Now

Once you do this, all the tracks to the right of your cursor should be selected (highlighted).

Now go to Process > Slide

You will get a pop-up dialog box which allows you to choose by Measures, Ticks, Seconds or Frames. Choose which you want, and then in the window labeled "By" you can enter the appropriate number (negative numbers will slide things to the left, positive numbers will slide things to the right).

I will forewarn you that you can only choose whole numbers. Therefore, if you want to move something less than a full second (assuming you chose Time increments), you will have to use Ticks instead. Ticks are a little tricky and are used to move things in small increments. Depending on how you have Sonar configured, you can have as many as 960 ticks to each beat (or 3840 ticks to a measure in 4/4 time).

You will probably have to play with it a little to get comfortable. Just remember if you move something more (or less) than you wanted, you can always use the Undo command and try again. Once you get used to it, it should become relatively easy.

Of course, instead of the Slide command, you can also use the Nudge command to move in small increments.
 
That's exactly what I wanted!! Thank you so much, dachay2tnr! I really appreciate your taking the time to help me out!
 
Glad to help. Hope it worked out OK for you.

BTW, depending on how you prefer to work, you can also use keyboard commands in place of some of the menu instructions I gave you above.

For example, to select all your tracks instead of "Edit > Select > All" you can simply type "Ctrl+A"

Or instead for "Menu > Select > From Now" you can use the F9 key.

It'll work either way, just depends on how you like to work.
 
I love to use the shortcuts! Now I can really get some work done - without having to select everything manually! Thanks so much again!!
 
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