Playback, navigation and zooming

In this tour, you will learn how to navigate through Melodyne’s blobs, play them back, and zoom the display to suit your wishes. 

Resizing the window

To change the size of the window, click and drag the bottom right-hand corner. The procedure is the same for both Melodyne Stand-Alone and Plugin.

Controlling playback using the keyboard and transport bar

Melodyne Plugin is integrated into the DAW and keeps perfectly in step with its playback. When you reposition the DAW, this information is conveyed to Melodyne, which mirrors the new position. As soon as the DAW starts, Melodyne also starts. The Melodyne plug-in is, so to speak, forever the ‘slave’ of your DAW. It is not possible to start, stop or reposition the DAW’s playback cursor from within Melodyne.

With Melodyne Stand-Alone, you start and stop the playback using the transport keys at the top left of the window or by pressing the space bar. If you hold the [Alt] key at the same time, playback will be confined to the current selection.

You can also, however, control the playback of Melodyne Stand-Alone using your keyboard’s number keypad: [Enter] to begin playback; [Zero] to stop it. Pressing [Zero] twice returns the playback cursor to the last start position. Pressing [Zero] three times positions the cursor at the start of the file. 

With both Melodyne Stand-Alone and Plugin, you can select successive blobs by stepping through them with the arrow keys. When the playback is stopped, as each blob is selected, the tone it represents will sound.

Controlling playback, scrubbing and zooming using the bar ruler

These playback functions are available in both Melodyne Stand-Alone and Plugin. In Plugin, however, only when the DAW is stopped. As soon as it starts again, Melodyne Plugin reverts to the ‘slave’ status described above and resumes its shadowing of the DAW.
 
Double-click in the bar ruler (or alternatively directly on the editing background) to commence playback from the position in question. If you hold down the [Alt] key as you double-click, playback will be confined to the current selection.

Click somewhere in the bar ruler to move the playback cursor to the position in question, at the same time halting the playback.

Click and drag in the bar ruler to scrub through the audio material.

By dragging upwards/downwards, you can zoom the display at the current position. Scrubbing and zooming can be used in combination, allowing you to navigate and position the cursor intuitively whilst setting the zoom factor at the same time.

Scrolling and zooming in the edit pane

Select the scroll tool (the hand icon) from beneath the main tool or hold down the [Command] key to move the display area with the mouse.

Select the zoom tool (the magnifying glass) or press [Command]+[Alt] to zoom the display with the mouse. You can zoom horizontally or vertically – in each case, though, with different levels of intensity.

[Command]+double-click zooms in on one blob, or several (if several are selected). Double-click in the editing background to return to the previous zoom level.

Drag the horizontal or vertical scrollers (i.e. the scroll boxes or ‘thumbs’)  to move the display. The horizontal scroller contains a miniaturized image of the contents as an orientation aid.

Drag the ends of the scroller to zoom the display.

If you are editing a particularly long audio file, you may find the reduced size of the scroller makes it difficult to achieve the desired zoom resolution. In that case, you can zoom in further by holding down the [Ctrl] and [Alt] keys whilst dragging in the edit pane or else by dragging vertically in the bar ruler.

If you pull one end of the horizontal or vertical slider as far as it will go and hold it, you can increase the vertical or horizontal size of the area displayed. This can be useful in the plug-in, for example, when you have only transferred the first three bars (measures) of your material but wish to insert something at bar 20.

Double-click in the center of the scroller to zoom in or out just enough to ensure that all the blobs are displayed.

Use the slider in the bottom right-hand corner to alter the height of the blobs. This does not alter their volume. Your likely motive will be to obtain a clearer view of material containing a lot of particularly quiet or particularly loud notes.

Playback functions in Melodyne Stand-Alone and Plugin (when the DAW is stopped)

* Click in the bar ruler to position the playback cursor.

 
 Playback functions in Melodyne Stand-Alone:

Navigation and zoom functions