AV News 200 - May 2015
Doing things numerically
Double-click one of the waveforms to open the Audio tab . In the track list on the left , the audio file corresponding to the audio clip is highlighted . On the right of the tab are a series of numerical settings for this clip . The ones we are interested in at the moment are labelled Offset , Start time and Duration and are in minutes , seconds and decimal of seconds as shown below
Offset is the time between the beginning of the audio clip and either the start of the track or the end of the previous audio clip in this track . If the audio clip is linked to a slide ( see later ) the offset is the time between the beginning of the slide and the beginning of the clip .
Start time is measured from the beginning of the original audio file and determines when to start playing the audio .
Duration is the length of the audio clip , the section of the file we want to hear . For reference the length of the complete audio file is shown as Original duration .
When you drag the audio clip the offset value is adjusted automatically . Adjusting the left end of the clip changes both start time and duration whilst adjusting the right end changes duration only .
Conversely it is possible to set these values directly by typing a value in the box . This can be useful to accurately align two audio clips . However don ' t worry too much about these settings as the big advantage of PTE version 8 over previous versions is that they can be adjusted graphically . To see the settings for another audio clip , just select its file name in the list on the left .
Fade in and out
On the timeline look closely at the top corners of the waveform and you should see two ' angle ' markers . By dragging these into the body of the waveform you can create a fade in or out . Try this and listen to the result . As you drag the marker , the length of the fade in seconds is displayed . In Figure 3 , a fade out is highlighted .
Add two audio files in different tracks . By dragging the angle markers , create a fade out on one and a fade in on the other . Then position the audio clips in different tracks so the fades overlap , and listen to the resulting cross-fade .
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