Trimming Beginnings and Endings ------------------------------- The "head" function removes (ignores) a specified number of seconds of audio from the mix file. The command is added to the prefs.txt file with a tab between the command and the number of seconds, for example head 7.4 means to remove the first 7.5 seconds of audio. This is helpful for removing a countoff or talking at the start of a recording. It is best to use it as last step since the automation entries still refer to the source tracks with their full beginnings. So, if you are adding automation entries, but referring to the mix file with its beginning trimmed, you must add the trimmed time onto where the automation should start. Similarly, the "tail" function removes a specified number of seconds from the end of the mix file. For example, tail 3.1 If preview mode is on then head and tail do not function. Extract and Offset Functions: ----------------------------- If you are working with a long set of audio files such as from a concert recorded in one or several large sections, the extract function will be very useful. In the preferences file, use "xin" followed by minutes, seconds, and milliseconds all tab separated to start reading the wavefiles from that point onward. Similarly, "xout" will determine where to stop reading from the files. The offset function is used to offset the time values in the fader file. This is useful if the beginning of the files you have been working with were trimmed in another program, and would result in your automation time entries being out of sync. To set an offset, in the prefs.txt file type "offset" followed by minutes, seconds, and milliseconds all tab separated. It also can be used to compensate for using the extract function above. In this case. you can link the two by typing "offset" and then instead of entering a time value, type "xlink", tab separated. The result will be that the offset value will equal whatever value you use for "xin". This means that time zero for automation values correspond to your time value at xin so that when working with long wave files you can be working with time values relative to the rendered mix and not the large source files. Note that the "head" and "tail" functions still work the same way such that they do not change when automation occurs, but simply remove time at the start and end of the mix. As mentioned, it is recommended to use the head and tail functions as one of the very last steps. You can change the number of time fields used in the xin and xout commands from the default of 3, to 2 or 1. If using 2 fields, the time fields are minutes and then seconds. If 1 field is used, only seconds are entered. In this same preferences file, start a line with "xfields" followed by a tab and a number from 1 to 3 for the number of fields.