The Ruler scales the session along time, allows navigating, and can be marked for different uses. The main use of the Ruler is to move the playhead: clicking anywhere on the timeline will bring the playhead at this location in time.
It is made of a succession of rows, each having a special role related to time.From top to bottom, those rows are:
- Timecode
- scaling the session whith the traditionnal Hours:Mins:Secs:Frames notation
- Bars:Beats
- slicing the time according to the time signature ot the Meter
- Meter
- shows the time signature. It can be changed along the timeline, by Right click > . The Bars:Beats ruler will reflect the change.
- Tempo
- shows the BPM. It can be changed along the timeline, by Right click > . The Bars:Beats ruler will reflect the change.
- Range Markers
- allow to create and modify ranges directly on the Ruler.
- Loop/Punch Ranges
- are special kind of ranges designed to be played as a loop and to do punch recording, i.e. recording on a precise section of time, respectively.
- CD Markers
- are markers designed to be used while creating a recording that has to be split in time, as an audio CD
- Location Markers
- is meant to receive any kind of marker, user generated or from Ardour itself.
Most of the operations on the markers are described in Working with Markers, while the Meter, Tempo, Bars:Beats and Timecode use are described in Tempo and Meter.