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Tempo Editor

To open the tempo editor, you can right click on an audio file, and click [Edit tempo and signature].

This opens the tempo editor. We enlarge the window of the application, to be able to see the whole timeline. In this example, we are using an audio file that contains tempo metadata, exported by Logic Pro. Since the file contains tempo information, the [Show metadata lines] option on the left sidebar is enabled.

The lines that are displayed indicate the lines you can draw yourself as well. We zoom in to be able to analyze the lines better. To calculate the tempo and signature points straight away from the meta data, click [Copy from metadata].

There are three types of lines:

  1. First beat in bar: This line has to be drawn at the start of the tempo data, and the start of a new signature part
  2. Next beat in bar: The next beat after the 'First beat in bar' line has to be marked.
  3. Next bar: The next bar after a 'First beat in bar' and 'Next beat in bar' has to be marked. With these three markers, the first bpm and the signature can be calculated. You can mark more 'Next bar' lines. These are helpful for improving the bpm calculation, as well as extending the tempo data range.

You do not have to select all bars, the bars in between two markers will be calucated automatically by the bpm and signature information available.

You can delete markers by right clicking on them, and move them by draging. To recalculate the tempo information, you can click [Calculate], or enable [Auto-calculate] in the left sidebar. You can select several tolerance levels:

  • High tolerance
  • Mid tolerance
  • Low tolerance

A higher tolerance will cause the tempo editor calculations to group markers together more. A higher tolerance should be selected, if you know the bpm to be steady, recorded to a click track for example. A lower tolerance should be selected in case the bpm should be more volatile.

Click track

In case the audio file you are using is a click track, where all the ones are panned to one side, and the other ticks are panned to the other side, you can use the [Analyze click track] functionallity, to automatically construct the track's bpm and signature points.

Apply the audio file's tempo to the project

If you are satisfied with the audio file's tempo information, we can go back into the main timeline, by clicking [back] at the top right of the window. The portion of the audio file that contains tempo information is marked green at the bottom of the waveform.

To apply the the audio file's tempo to the project, we right click on the audio file, and click [Apply tempo and signature]

If the start of the signature of the audio file is currently not perfectly alligned with a bar of the project, the audio file has to be moved to the nearest bar.

After clicking [OK], the tempo and signature is applied on the project.