Little tiny imported clips

[Paul_Ferguson]

Hi.  It's coming up Christmas and they're cutting down trees...  Oh sorry - if you could take a minute out of your runup to Christmas and enlighten me on this one, I'd be postively festive.

I just imported some three-minute clips into a new session of Audition.  The clips appear tiny and the zoom navigator up top defaults to 21 min. If I expand the clips to fill the screen, the zoom navigator almost disappears.

How do I adjust the relationship between the size of the clip onscreen and the time duration for the zoom navigator?

I thought it might be in Preferences>Multitrack Clips, but no.  Is it something I do to the clip or is it something I do to the zoom navigator?

[Paul_Ferguson]

That's interesting... if I highlight a clip and then Shift>\ or Shift>/, the zoom navigator now displays at 4 min 30 seconds for the 3 min 30 second clips.  Not ideal, but much better.  What did I do?  heh

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Paul_Ferguson  wrote

That's interesting... if I highlight a clip and then Shift>\ or Shift>/, the zoom navigator now displays at 4 min 30 seconds for the 3 min 30 second clips.  Not ideal, but much better.  What did I do?  heh

I don't know why that is - on this system Shift \ and / alter a track's vertical visibility, and have no effect on the time displayed at all.

[ryclark]

Are these the only Clips in this session? You must have something else way up the timeline if the default zoomed out defaults to that length. Pressing the \ key on it's own should zoom the Multitrack view out to the session length.

Also remember that in Audition CC 2019 you also have the new Zoom to Time option for preset Zoom levels.

[Paul_Ferguson]

Paul: That's interesting... if I highlight a clip and then Shift>\ or Shift>/, the zoom navigator now displays at 4 min 30 seconds for the 3 min 30 second clips.  Not ideal, but much better.  What did I do?  heh

Steve: I don't know why that is - on this system Shift \ and / alter a track's vertical visibility, and have no effect on the time displayed at all.

On my system, Shift / and Shift \ altered the track's height, as on yours.  But it also had the knock-on effect of correcting the size of the zoom navigator somewhat.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Paul_Ferguson  wrote

How do I adjust the relationship between the size of the clip onscreen and the time duration for the zoom navigator? 

You can't - this relationship is set by the length of your clip relative to the length of your session. The most effective way of dealing with the zooming issue isn't to use the zoom navigator because as you have observed, both ends of it merge into one and it's hard to grab, even on a large monitor. Personally I think that this is a bit of poor design - the function would be much better served if the handles didn't actually disappear when zoomed right in, but remained available and correspondingly easier to grab. The other thing you might notice also is that zooming right in doesn't by any means get you zoomed right in on a waveform,  either.

Fortunately there is a solution that works for most people, even though it isn't ideal. And that's to put your mouse on the timeline numbers and use the scroll-wheel. This is the equivalent of using the - and = key in terms of resolution, but if you don't like it you can alter the relationship in Edit>Preferences>General - the first item is Zoom factor, and by default I think it's set to 33%. Personally I prefer it with a lower number than that - YMMV. The reason that I don't think it's ideal is that I think it should work with the cursor anywhere on the display, not just on the timeline - I can't see any reason why that shouldn't at least be an option. And of course if you want to zoom in all the way down to sample level, you have to do it this way - the handles on the zoom navigator don't go all the way.

So by and large, I think it's best to use the Zoom navigator as just an indicator. It's marginally less frustrating like that...

[Paul_Ferguson]

Paul: How do I adjust the relationship between the size of the clip onscreen and the time duration for the zoom navigator? 

Steve: You can't - this relationship is set by the length of your clip relative to the length of your session.

Then there must be something about the clips I'm importing that makes Audition thinks they're longer than the 3 min 20 sec length they are.

I recorded them with a Zoom H6 recorder (a lovely bit of kit).  Perhaps there's something in the Zoom wav files that Audition reads as being longer than the actual length of the clip.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

You've probably imported them with time-of-day code... put the clips back near the beginning of the session so nothing's at the far end, and hit the 'zoom out full (all axes)' button (Ctrl + \). You should now have a much shorter session displayed on the screen, and the clips should appear correspondingly larger.

[Paul_Ferguson]

@ Steve and ryclark:

I think both of you put your finger on something.  I can now both replicate and avoid the problem.

* How to replicate the problem: The problem occurs when I select all the files at the same time I want to import into Audition.  (Doing it this way duplicates each file for some reason, placing one clip at the beginning of the track, and a copy 30 minutes along the timeline at the end of the track.  Deleting the clips at the end of the track doesn't correct the issue with the zoom navigator.)  I believe this is happening because when I select all the files I want at once, it includes a Zoom H6 file with a .hprj suffix.  This .hprj file is visible in Windows Explorer, but not the in the windows I use to import files, so I'm guessing that's how it gets itself included with the audio files.

* How to avoid the problem: I avoid the problem when I carefully import ONE FILE AT A TIME from the Zoom folder.  The clips then occupy about 90% of the Multitrack screen space like I want them to, and the zoom navigator works the way I want it to.  Lovely.

And yes, it's a Christmasy line from Joni's Blue album.  Thanks to both of you.  And Merry Christmas, of course!

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Paul_Ferguson  wrote

It's coming up Christmas and they're cutting down trees... 

Sounds like the first line of a Joni Mitchell song!