Protect the position of events

There are situations when you will want to protect certain events from being moved. For example, several note events may be used to trigger footstep samples that match an actor walking down a corridor, in a movie soundtrack.

You have already created the music for this scene, but have been asked to increase the tempo to match several cuts of different camera angles in the corridor. A change in the project tempo will move the events, resulting in out-of-sync footsteps. Logic Pro X has a feature that preserves the absolute time position of events.

The protect and unprotect functions are available only when Advanced tools and additional options is selected in the Advanced preferences pane.

Protect the position of one or more selected events

  • Choose Functions > Lock SMPTE Position (or use the corresponding key command).

This function ensures that events that fall at a particular absolute time position—1 hour, 3 minutes, 15 seconds, 12 frames, for example—remain at this position when tempo changes are made.

Unprotect the position of one or more events

  • Choose Functions > Unlock SMPTE Position (or use the corresponding key command).