Lock the position of events

Lock the position of events in the Piano Roll Editor

Sometimes you may want to protect some events in MIDI regions from being moved; for example, when they are synchronized to visual events in a movie. You may have already created the music for the scene, but are then asked to increase the tempo to match several cuts of different camera angles in the corridor. Changing the tempo will move the events, resulting in their being out-of-sync. Instead, you can lock the events to an absolute (SMPTE) time position, to protect their position and keep them in sync with the tempo.

To lock the time position of events, Advanced Editing Options must first be selected in the Advanced preferences pane.

Lock the position of one or more selected events

  • Choose Functions > Lock SMPTE Position in the Piano Roll Editor menu bar (or use the corresponding key command).

    This command ensures that events that fall at a particular absolute time position—1 hour, 3 minutes, 15 seconds, 12 frames, for example—remain at this exact position regardless of tempo changes.

Unprotect protected events

  • Choose Functions > Unlock SMPTE Position in the Piano Roll Editor menu bar (or use the corresponding key command).