# Editing Concepts

In Ardour, "editing" describes the process of

- making modifications to playlists. Recall that playlists are nothing more than lists of regions arranged over time.

- recording/modifying automation data

## Cut/Copy/Paste

## Snap Settings

By default, when you move objects around, they move freely. There is a "granularity" to the motion, but it is a single audio frame (so typically on the order of 1/48000'th or 1/96000'th of a second), and at most zoom levels it will not be apparent in any way.

However, this is not always the way you want to move some kinds of objects. If you are working with structured compositions that utilize traditional concepts of bars, beats, rythmn and so forth, you will often want to move regions so that that they always align to specific periodic time points that correspond to the start of a bar, or a beat etc. If you are working on a movie soundtrack, you may prefer to have regions always align to SMPTE frames, or perhaps even to whole seconds.

Ardour provides a wide variety of "snap" settings. If any but "None" is selected, they define a grid of timepoints which will be used to "snap" object positions as they are dragged. The grid can be regular (as is the case if you choose "Beats", for example), or it can be completely irregular (if you choose "Marks", for example). It can even consist of a single timepoint (if you choose "Edit cursor", for example).

Regions are a somewhat special case in that they may contain sync points. If a region contains a sync point, the region start position is ignored and the sync point is aligned to the grid. This allows you to align a 'hit point' to the desitred grid.

### Possible Snap Settings

None

  no alignment used at all

CD Frames

  align to 1/75th of a second intervals, as defined by the "Redbook" Audio CD standards

SMPTE Frames

  align to whatever the current SMPTE frame interval is (defined in the options editor)

SMPTE Seconds

  align to whole seconds, adjusted to account for any SMPTE start offset

SMPTE Minutes

  align to whole minutes, adjust to account for any SMPTE start offset

Seconds

  align to whole seconds

Minutes

  align to whole minutes

Beats/32

  align to 1/32 divisions of the beat

Beats/16

  align to 1/16 divisions of the beat

Beats/8

  align to 1/8 divisions of the beat

Beats/4

  align to 1/4 divisions of the beat

Beats/3

  align to 1/3 divisions of the beat

Beats

  align to beats

Bars

  align to the start of bars

Marks

  align to the nearest mark of some kind

Edit Cursor

  align to the current position of the edit cursor

Region starts

  align to the nearest start of a region in the (first) selected track

Region ends

  align to the nearest end of a region in the (first) selected track

Region syncs

  align to the nearest region sync point in the (first) selected track

Region bounds

  align to the nearest region start or end in the (first) selected track

### To change snap settings

Move the mouse pointer to the toolbar panel of the editor window. Click on the "expansion arrow" of the "Snap setting" chooser. This will popup a list of available snap settings. If necessary, scroll down to see your desired choice. Click on your choice in the list to dismiss it and make Ardour switch to the new setting.

Changing snap settings has no effect on the position of any existing region. Its effect is only on objects being moved.

The snap setting also affects moving the playhead, the edit cursor, loop/punch and location markers, and dragging/moving range selections.

### Snap Mode

There are two subtly different ways in which the snap setting can affect region motion:

####

normal snap mode

  regions can only be moved to positions defined by the snap setting. It is not possible to move them to intermediate positions.

magnetic snap mode

  regions can still be moved to positions not defined by the setting, but they "stick" to the timepoints that are when dragged across them. Imagine that the timepoints and the regions are magnetic - or just try it and see.

However, you can press the snap modifier key while dragging, and the snap setting will be ignored. By default, this is the key on your keyboard that generates Mod3 , but you can modify this from the Options Editor keyboard tab.

### To change snap mode

Move the mouse pointer to the toolbar panel of the editor window. Click on the "expansion arrow" of the "Snap mode" chooser. This will popup a list of available snap settings. If necessary, scroll down to see your desired choice. Click on your choice in the list to dismiss it and make Ardour switch to the new setting.