livetrax/manual/xml/working_with_playlists.xml

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<section id="sn-working-with-playlists">
  <title>Working with Playlists</title>
  <para>
    As described earlier <link linkend="gt-playlist">playlists</link> are
    one of the central objects in a digital audio workstation. A playlist is
    a list of <link linkend="gt-region">regions</link> ordered in time. It
    defines which parts of which source files should be played and when.
  </para>

  <para>
    Each track in Ardour is really just a mechanism for taking a playlist
    and generating the audio stream that it represents. As a result, editing
    a track really means modifying its playlist in some way. Since a
    playlist is a list of regions, most of the modifications involve
    manipulating regions: their position, length and so forth. This is
    covered in <xref linkend="sn-working-with-regions"/>. Here, we cover
    some of the things you can do with playlists as objects in their own
    right.
  </para>

  <section id="tracks-are-not-playlists">
    <title> Tracks are not Playlists </title>
    <para>
      It is important to understand that a track is <emphasis>not</emphasis>
      a playlist. A track is a mechanism for generating the audio stream
      represented by the playlist and passing it through a signal processing
      pathway. At any point in time, a track has a single playlist
      associated with it. When the track is used to record, that playlist
      will have one or more new regions added to it. When the track is used
      for playback, the contents of the playlist will be heard. Old tape
      operators will feel comfortable thinking of the playlist as the tape,
      and the track as the tape machine.
    </para>

    <para>
      However, you can change the playlist associated with a track at
      (almost) any time, and even share playlists between tracks. There is
      more on this <link linkend="playlist-operations">below</link>.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="playlists-are-cheap">
    <title> Playlists are cheap </title>
    <para>
      One thing you should be clear about is that playlists are cheap. They
      don't cost anything in terms of CPU consumption, and they have very
      minimal efforts on memory use. Don't be afraid of generating new
      playlists whenever you want to. They are not equivalent to tracks,
      which require extra CPU time and significant memory space, or audio
      files, which use disk space, or to plugins that require extra CPU
      time. If a playlist is not in use, it occupies a small amount of
      memory, and nothing more.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="playlists-as-takes">
    <title> Playlists as "Takes" or "Virtual Tracks" </title>
    <para>
      If you have a background in audio engineering, then it might be
      easiest for you to think of playlists as "takes". This isn't a
      particularly useful analogy by itself, and it can be misleading. But
      if you are working with music where most tracks feature single-pass
      recordings of a single instrument, then the idea of using one playlist
      per "take" can make life very convenient. Each time you need to record
      another take, create a new playlist list first. You will then end up
      with a simple way of switching back and forth between each version, or
      even listening to several at the same time.
    </para>

    <para>
      If you have some experience of other DAWs, then you might have come
      across the term "virtual track", normally defined as a track that
      isn't actually playing or doing anything, but can be mapped/assigned
      to a "real track". This concept is functionally identical to Ardour's
      playlists. We just like to be little more clear about what is actually
      happening rather than mixing old and new terminology ("virtual" and
      "track") into confusing terminology.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="playlist-operations">
    <title> Playlist Operations </title>
    <para>
      At this point, all operations on playlists start by clicking on the
      playlist button (labelled <guibutton>p</guibutton>) in the control
      area of a track in the editor. Clicking the button will popup a menu
      with the following choices:
    </para>

    <variablelist>
      <title></title>
      <varlistentry>
        <term><guilabel>Current</guilabel></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            shows the name of the current playlist used by this track
          </para>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry>
        <term><guilabel>Rename</guilabel></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            pops up a dialog that allows the current playlist to be renamed
          </para>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry>
        <term><guilabel>New</guilabel></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            creates a new <emphasis>empty</emphasis> playlist, and switches
            this track to use it
          </para>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry>
        <term><guilabel>New Copy</guilabel></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            creates a new playlist that is a copy of the current playlist,
            and switches this track to use it
          </para>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry>
        <term><guilabel>Clear Current</guilabel></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            removes all regions from the current playlist
          </para>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry>
        <term><guilabel>Select</guilabel></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            pops up a playlist browser to manually choose which playlist
            this track should use
          </para>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>
    </variablelist>

    <section id="renaming-playlists">
      <title>Renaming Playlists</title>
      <para>
        Playlists are created with the name of the track of which they are
        associated, plus a version number. So, the first playlist for a
        track called "Cowbell" will be called "Cowbell.1". This name will be
        used to define the names of any regions added to the playlist by
        recording. You can change the name at any time, to anything you
        want. Ardour does not require that your playlist names are all
        unique, but it will make your life easier if they are. Suggested
        examples of user-assigned names for a playlist might include "Lead
        Guitar, 2nd take", "vocals (quiet)", and "downbeat cuica". Notice
        how these might be different from the associated track names, which
        for these examples might be "Lead Guitar", "Vocals" and "Cuica". The
        playlist name provides more information because it is about a
        specific version of the material that may (or may not) end up in the
        final version of the track.
      </para>

      <para>
        If you are going to rename your playlists, do so before recording
        new material to them.
      </para>
    </section>

    <section id="selecting-playlists">
      <title>Selecting Playlists</title>
      <para>
        If you click on the "Select" choice of the playlist button menu, a
        dialog will appear that displays all playlists in a tree-structure
        (many will be hidden). Playlists will be grouped by the track for
        which they were created, with all those created for the current
        track displayed. Other tracks are hidden in a collapsed tree that
        can be expanded as you wish to find other playlists.
      </para>
    </section>

    <section id="sharing-playlists">
      <title>Sharing Playlists</title>
      <para>
        It is entirely possible to share playlists between tracks. The only
        slightly unusual thing you may notice when sharing is that edits to
        the playlist made in one track will magically appear in the other.
        If you think about this for a moment, its an obvious consequence of
        sharing.
      </para>

      <para>
        You might not want this kind of behaviour, even though you still
        want two tracks to use the same (or substantially the same)
        playlist. To accomplish this, select the chosen playlist in the
        second track, and then use <guilabel>New Copy</guilabel> to generate
        an independent copy of it for that track. You can then edit this
        playlist without affecting the original.
      </para>
    </section>

    <section id="using-playlists-for-takes">
      <title>Using playlists for takes</title>
      <para>
        You have several choices here. You can obviously record new takes
        directly over an existing one, because of the non-destructive nature
        of digital audio editing. You can also use the <guilabel>Clear
        Current</guilabel> operation each time you want to start a new take.
        This is a non-destructive operation that removes all existing
        regions from the current playlist. Although you won't lose any
        information doing this, its probably not appropriate unless the last
        take was so awful that you want to discard it (although without the
        finality of <emphasis>Remove Last Capture</emphasis> ). Finally, and
        probably most useful, you can use the <guilabel>New</guilabel>
        operation in the playlist button menu to create a new empty
        playlist, ready for the next take. Later, you can
        <guilabel>Select</guilabel> your way back to previous or later takes
        as desired, either in this or some other track.
      </para>
    </section>
  </section>
</section>