For most musical sequences, the Sequencer can display a waveform or spectrogram of the audio at the top of the sequence grid. This can be useful for visually matching up timings and events to the sound. The Waveform Display supports a wide range of media types, including video media. However, not all types of media or media containers are supported (for example, midi files are not supported).
In addition to the waveform itself, a vertical bar is displayed in the waveform area at the time corresponding to your mouse location.
Note that control of the waveform or spectrogram display is done from the Audio Settings window. You can quickly open the Audio Settings windows by double-clicking on the waveform.
Right-clicking timeline will open a menu that allows you to:
•Show the Audio Settings window
•Change the playback marker
The right-click menu of the timeline
When a freeform play range has been selected, the menu changes: you can now zoom to the play range or clear the play range. Setting the start or end of the range here modifies the existing range.
Menu with play range selected
Zooming In And Out
The first 2 options on the menu allow you to zoom the time scale in and out.
The next 3 options zoom to a fixed time scale: 5, 10, or 15 seconds wide. These can quickly take you to a reasonable time scale if you have zoomed in too far.
If you have created a freeform play range, you can use this menu to zoom to that range.
See the Zoom topic for more ways to zoom the sequence grid in and out.
Setting The Freeform Play Range
The "Set Play Range Start" and "Set Play Range End" menu items can be used to create or extend a freeform play range.
Showing The Audio Settings Window
This menu item makes the Audio Settings window visible (if it isn't already); although it is faster to just double-click on the waveform, which does the same thing. From Audio Settings, you can control the content, colors, and filtering of the audio display area. It can give you valuable insight on how to align your lighting effects to the music.
Change The Playback Marker
This sub-menu item provides a quick way to change the playback marker style without having to open Sequencer Preferences.