Vertical Zooming
Vertical Zooming
Vertical zooming can be useful on occasions. You can zoom vertically whichever of the tools in Tools Toolbar are selected. Hover the mouse over the vertical scale of a track, and the pointer changes to a magnifying glass, indicating you can zoom vertically:
- Left-click once to zoom in at the position on the vertical scale you are interested in. This point will then be centered on the vertical scale.
- Hold Shift then left-click (or just right-click) to zoom out incrementally.
- Hold Shift then right-click to zoom out immediately to normal zoom level.
- Ctrl + Shift with left-click can also be used to zoom out to normal on Mac.
Alternatively, click once and hold down the mouse button, then drag to select a vertical region:
When you release the mouse button, exactly the range you selected will be zoomed in so as to fit vertically inside the track height:
If you commence a drag to zoom in by mistake, you can press Esc before releasing the mouse to cancel the zoom operation.
In default Waveform view set in the Track Dropdown Menu you can zoom in to a minimum display range of 0.001 linear extending from top to bottom of the scale.
Simple mode vertical zooming with the Vertical Scale
The vertical scale (the vertical ruler to the left of the waveform can be used to control the vertical zoom level. Right-click in the Vertical scale will bring up a dropdown context menu enabling: - Zoom Reset - resets the waveform to normal zoom level
- Zoom x 1/2 - zooms out to half normal zoom level
- Zoom x 2 - zooms in to twice normal zoom level
- Half wave - displays the top half of the waveform only, can be useful when working with many tracks
- Zoom In - zooms in, can be used repeatedly
- Zoom Out - zooms out, can be used repeatedly
All the above zooms are in the vertical direction, as opposed to a horizontal zoom on the Timeline.
- Hold Shift and rotate the mouse wheel to scroll up and down at the same zoom level, using the same visible range of amplitude or frequency.
- Hold Ctrl (⌘ on Mac) and rotate the mouse wheel to zoom in or out at the mouse pointer's position.
- In Waveform (dB) view view only - Hold Ctrl (⌘ on Mac)and Shift and rotate the mouse wheel to vary the lower dB limit of the scale at the same zoom level, irrespective of the limit set at "Meter dB range" in Tracks Preferences. This only takes effect if the horizontal midline between positive and negative samples is visible, so has no effect if you are zoomed in on a portion of the vertical range that does not include the midline.
Peter 13Dec17: ToDo-1 Consider showing an image of the context menu.
Advanced mode vertical zooming with the Vertical Scale
You can turn on advanced mode for vertical zooming from from the Tracks Behaviors pane and selecting Enable Vertical Zooming. This will enable you to used left-click gestures in the Vertical Scale to control zooming (this is in addition to the Simple mode commands as above).
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The vertical scale displays amplitude when showing the waveform, or frequency when showing the spectrum or pitch. The amplitude scale shown to left is the default linear scale, with 1.0 being the maximum value of positive signals and -1.0 the maximum of negative signals. If the display is changed to Waveform dB in the Audio Track Dropdown Menu, the scale shows dB values for positive signals only, ranging from maximum 0 dB to the minimum dB level set in Interface Preferences, or as varied using the mouse wheel (see below). With advanced mode activated, when the mouse pointer is over the scale it changes to a magnify icon
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- Left-click in the Vertical Scale for any Waveform or Spectrogram view to zoom in. The range displayed on the scale will be centered at the value you clicked at.
- Left-click and drag a region up or down then release to zoom into that region. You can press Esc to cancel the zoom operation if you commence a drag by mistake.
- Hold Shift and left-click to zoom out progressively. When the Shift key is held down the plus sign on the magnify icon changes to a minus icon. Using either of these methods you can zoom out in the final step from a range of 1.0 to -1.0 to 2.0 to -2.0 on the linear waveform scale (or to +6 dB when in Waveform (dB) view). This allows you when in 32-bit float sample format to see any samples that are above the 0 dB clipping level.
- Hold Shift and right-click to reset the waveform to normal zoom level
- Right-click in the Vertical scale will bring up the dropdown context menu as above.
