05 Basic Navigation Video Lecture | Tracktion 5 Tutorial: Master Music Editing - Video & Sound Editing

in this video I'm going to give you a
general overview of how to operate
traction as well as how to set it up to
best follow along with this video series
so I have traction open you can see the
project's tab in the Settings tab easily
enough you can switch back and forth
between those two things you might
notice there's no menus there's really
nothing much up here in the menu section
like you'd have with a lot of programs
the menus actually handled down here in
the controls panel in the lower left
corner and the only thing you'll find up
here on the traction menu that you
really would ever use is quit traction
you can also do the same thing by
clicking here to close the program
another thing you'll quickly notice as
you explore traction is pop-up help so
if we point to things will get pop-up
help messages all over the place
different objects that we point to will
have both pop-up and rollover help
rollover help appear is over here if I
go over here to this item you'll see
that we get a little line of text that
helps us identify what that is sometimes
we'll also get pop-up help now the
pop-up help can get annoying and it gets
old really fast you can always get that
pop-up help with a key command by
default f10 later in this video I'm
gonna reassign that to f1 so I'll show
you how that's done as well but for now
we're gonna disable that so you go down
here to the left corner where it says
help and turn off pop-up help so we'll
leave it off for now if you ever want
pop-up help to come up then just point
at the thing you want help on like this
and hit f10 and there the pop-up help
comes right back
right now we see projects and settings
tab if we open and edit
basically click on a project double
click on the edit which is like an
arrangement for a song we'll get
additional tabs for each edit that we
currently have open any of these tabs
can be undocked for example let's undock
this edit by just pulling it free like
that now we have it as a separate
floating panel I can move it off to
another screen if I want to I can drag
it back on to this screen and I can
redock it we could do the same thing
with any tabs to redock it you grab it
by the name of the tab and then
if you get it near the tab you'll see
this red mark that's the insert point
where we want to drop it
tabs can also be rearranged in this way
there's also a plus here if you click
that you can create a new project or you
can quickly jump to a tab or create a
new edit back on the projects page the
active projects area really acts like a
recent projects anything that you open
and will actually stick here you can
rearrange what's here you can add
folders to these and these are not
really open in the normal sense they're
really just bookmarks into those
projects when you click on them you'll
see the resources for those projects I
would suggest that as you get started
with traction just open the edit and
leave all of these files alone now
here's an important thing about the
design of traction when you click on
just about any object on the screen the
properties for that object appear down
here in the property section of the
controls panel the controls panel is the
lower section of the screen down here
including the menu and the transport
will appear when we look at an actual
edit but down here we'll get properties
and this changes in the context of what
you click so if I click on an edit
you'll see that this completely changes
to match that if I click on a wave file
then you can see it changes to match
that this is just generally the way
traction works it's the same for clips
it's the same for effects and plugins
throughout traction the details of
whatever you have selected appears right
down there in the lower center part of
the screen next I want to show you how
to create a new project just click a new
project right here on the projects tab
that pops up this dialog box I'm just
going to call this hello world and we're
gonna navigate to our traction projects
folder so I'll click right here and then
navigate down to my music Drive my
traction folder and then my projects
folder and click open and that will set
the path to save this new project so
I'll create the project
and what that does on the disc is it
creates a folder named with the name of
that project and it creates what's
called an
this Trk edit file is created inside
there and if we open that you can see
that we've got a few tracks set up
there's really nothing recorded in there
but actually we're ready to record at
any point you can see that my audio
interface is actually picking up my mics
if I enable this for recording and hit R
to record I actually can start recording
audio right away so attraction is really
ready to go as soon as you open it it's
ready to record and it's one of the kind
of cool things about tracks I'm gonna
just hit the spacebar to stop that
recording you'll see my waveform appear
in there so as you can see you can have
more than one song open at the same time
or more than one edit I'm going to
switch back to this sample project or a
demo tune so I just want to show you the
basics of how to navigate within an edit
we can start and stop playback over here
in the transport section in the lower
right by clicking play clicking again
will stop it you can do the same thing
with the spacebar
now you can reposition the cursor by
clicking on any empty space within the
project like between these clips so if I
click here you'll see the cursor goes to
this point here if I hit play again and
when I hit stop you see it tips back to
the point at which I started playing
there's an option in here that says
return cursor to start position when
play stops if I turn that off then the
spacebar will work more like play and
pause
meaning that it doesn't wind back to the
point where you started playback most
the time I like to have that off so that
the cursor doesn't jump back also the
cursor represents the playhead or the
playback time and I just call it the
cursor you can reposition it if you go
into the time bar just above the cursor
and grab right in this area
you can see that you can freely position
the cursor wherever you want and as I
said before if you click anywhere in the
background then you can also position it
there's other ways to position it as
well one is to use the left and the
right arrow keys that will move it along
the other way is to hold down the option
key that's on Mac or alt on a PC and
click on the time bar area that will
also position the cursor now in order to
zoom in you can use the up and down
arrow keys like this that's we'll zoom
in and out in a horizontal dimension or
you can do dragging from the time bar
just above the cursor actually could
move the cursor around and then drag
down and up to zoom in and out you can
adjust a track height by grabbing in
this area right here and stretching the
track height now in the lower right
there are also additional tools for
zooming you can zoom in here or you can
zoom in here and this F will reset the
zoom back to where the whole edit will
fit on screen once you get playback
going you can adjust the overall volume
right here by grabbing on this volume
slider in the transport section so I'll
play back
now that is an extremely basic
introduction to the operation of
traction you can now operate the
transport you can open the demo files
you can create a new blank project and
you can adjust the playback volume but
that is enough to start exploring
traction and playing around with the
features on the screen and we're going
to start getting into more details in
the next video thanks for watching