Creating and Using Markers and Regions

Peak has a very powerful set of features to control the placement and modification of markers. Markers are locations in an audio document that you define as important. By marking specific locations in a recording, you can navigate easily to a location for selection, editing or playback purposes.

Markers can also be defined as loops. Loops are used to sustain or repeat a section of audio. They can be used for material that you intend to transfer to a sampler, or simply for playback within Peak itself. Peak allows you to create one loop per audio file. Loops are covered in greater detail  in the "Editing Audio with Peak" section of Online Help.

Creating Markers
There are two ways to create markers: by dropping them “on the fly” during playback, or by defining them with the mouse when playback is stopped. Of the two, the mouse method is perhaps the more precise. However, since it is possible to fine tune the location of a marker at any time by dragging it (or by using the Edit Marker dialog, explained later), in practice both methods work equally well.

Once you have defined a marker, you can assign or edit a number of its attributes through a special dialog which appears when you double-click the triangular base of the marker. This dialog and the attributes contained within are explained below.

Name
You may wish to give markers meaningful names based on their locations in an audio document. Peak gives markers default numeric names based on the name of the audio document and the order in which the marker was defined. To name or rename a marker, simply type the new name in to the Name field of the Edit Marker dialog.

Position
The Position field allows you to move a marker to a specific time location in an audio document by entering the desired value. The pop-up menu to the right of this field allows you to choose a time format (samples, seconds or milliseconds) for the value that you enter in the Position field.

Marker, Loop Start, and Loop End
These three radio-style buttons allow you to define whether the marker is a regular marker or a loop marker. If you choose to designate the marker as loop marker, you can define it as either the loop start or the loop end by clicking on the corresponding radio button. Peak allows one loop per audio file.

Anchor
When you insert or delete audio that is near a marker, you may want the marker to move with that particular location on the waveform. This will compensate for the insertion or deletion, so that the marker remains with the particular portion of audio you want it to be associated with. By enabling the Anchor feature for a marker, you can assure that Peak will “tie” the marker to a location on a waveform, causing it to stay with that location even when audio is inserted or deleted into the document. By default, Peak enables this feature for markers and loops.

Reference Point
By defining a marker as a reference point, you can use the marker as a reference when you make selections or move other markers. Selecting or dragging the marker will then automatically display the distance to the closest reference marker in whatever time format (samples or seconds) is currently selected in the Peak application. This may be useful, for instance, if you know that you want a particular sound event (such as a car door slam) to happen a certain number of seconds before or after another sound event (such as a tire squeal).

Delete
The Delete button allows you to remove the currently selected marker from an audio document.

To create a marker when playback is stopped:
1. Click the mouse at the desired location in the audio document. A dotted vertical line appears, indicating the insertion point.
2. Press Command-M on your computer keyboard or choose New Marker from the Edit menu. Peak drops a marker at that location.

To create a marker during playback:
1. Begin playback of an audio document.
2. At the desired point during playback, press Command-M on your computer keyboard. Peak drops a marker at that location.
3. Repeat as desired as playback continues. Each marker will appear at the appropriate location in the audio document window.

To create a marker using dynamic scrubbing:
1. Hold down the Control key (or Control-Option for jog-type scrubbing) and drag the mouse across the desired location to scrub playback.
2. At the desired point during playback, release the mouse to stop scrubbing.
3. Press Command-M on your computer keyboard. Peak drops a marker at that location.

To name a marker or set other marker attributes:
1. Double-click on the triangular base of the marker that you wish to edit. The Edit Marker dialog appears.
2. Enter a name for the marker.
3. Change other attributes of the marker as desired. For an explanation of each of these attributes, refer to the beginning of this section.
4. When you have finished, click OK to close the Edit Marker dialog. The marker now has the attributes you selected.

To move a marker to a new location:
1. Click on the triangular base of the marker and drag it to the desired location.
2. To make a marker’s position snap to a zero-crossing (the point at which a waveform crosses the center phase line) as you drag it, hold down the Shift key while you drag.

To move a marker to a new location numerically:
1. Double click on the triangular base of the marker. The Edit Marker dialog appears.
2. Choose the desired time units (samples, seconds, or milliseconds ) from the time format pop-up menu.
3. In the Position field, enter the precise time location that you wish to move the marker to.
4. Click OK to close this dialog. Peak moves the marker to the location you entered in the dialog.

To delete a marker:
1. Double-click the triangular base of the marker. The Edit Marker dialog appears.
2. Click the Delete button. The marker is deleted from the audio document.

Regions

Audio events that are played back in a Playlist are Regions, which are portions of an audio document defined using the New Region command from the Action menu or Toolbar. All Regions defined in the frontmost audio document window will also appear under the Region menu. Regions can be saved only into AIFF and Sound Designer II files created by Peak. However, Peak will also read Regions stored from other programs in Sound Designer II files. The method Peak uses to store Regions in AIFF files is specific to Peak and is not supported by other software applications. If you are using Regions with other programs, you will want to store your files as Sound Designer II files.

To define a new Region:
1. Make a selection in an opened audio document.
2. Choose New Region from the Action menu or Toolbar.
3. Type the name of the Region and click OK. The new Region will appear in the audio document.

To modify the length of the Region by changing the start or end:
1. Drag the start or end marker of the Region in the audio document window.

To change the name of a Region:
1. Double-click on either the start or end marker of the Region in the audio document window. The Edit Region dialog will appear.

The Edit Regions dialog
2. Type the new name of the Region into the dialog and click OK.

To move a Region without changing its length:
1. Hold down the Option key and drag either the start or end marker of the Region.

To edit a Region’s start, end, or length manually:
1. Double-click on either the start or end marker of the Region in the audio document window. The Edit Region dialog will appear.
2. Enter new values for Start, End, or Length times, then click OK.

To locate a Region:
Command-click on audio document’s Title bar to display a popup menu listing all regions, markers and loops.