First, let's place the ambient location sound and the narrator in the timeline. Import the file cows and the file announcer at 00:00:00:00 to get started. Since our imaginary documentary is about Mad Cow Disease (don't ask), our location sound is mostly cows rustling about, with the occassional mooing noises. You might also want to import the music files at this time: synth, piano_A, piano_B, and piano_C. Insert the region synth on an empty track at 00:00:00:00. I used the piano to augment the chord changes in the synthesizer, with piano_B at 00:00:00:04, piano_A at 00:00:06:14, and piano_C at 00:00:12:12. You might want to try experimenting with placing the piano notes at different locations. Before we go any further, let's audition what we've got so far. Define the tracks to be used for playback (by clicking on the speaker icon at the left of the track) and hit Play.

It sounds ok, but could be better, and since ProStationAudio makes experimentation so easy, let's try punctuating the narrator's statements using the sound of the mad cows in the background audio. There is a natural gap in the narration that will fit nicely around the loud 'moo' that occurs at around 00:00:08:00 in the object 'cows'. Grab the 'announcer' object and drag it over a bit, so that it looks something like the image below.

By inspecting the waveforms, you can see that the gap in the announcer's voice is a bit shorter than the length of the cow's moo (see circled area in image). It would be nice if we could somehow make this gap in the voice track longer - and luckily, there's an easy way to do this.

First, move the cursor to a location somewhere near the circled area as shown in the image above.

Choose the menu selection Audio > Split Object at Cursor as shown in the image below. This command will split the selected object into two objects.

Being a non-destructive process, this is a very safe procedure and does not change the original audio file stored on disc.

Using HotSpots

So how do we go about syncing our new object? Well, we could just yank the thing over a bit in the timeline, but there's a more accurate way (of course), and it's one of the coolest features in ProStationAudio. It's called a Hotspot, and generating one in our new object will make this part of our work a bit easier. What's a Hotspot, you ask? It's a cursor position defined within an object that serves as a visual aid - it can help especially in post-production synchronization among various tracks of audio.

Defining a Hotspot is simple. First, select the object in which you'd like to define the Hotspot. Objects indicate that they are selected by activating their handles, and displaying them (as indicated by 1 in the image above. After selecting the object, drag the cursor by clicking on the section of cursor in the time indicator area of the timeline (as shown by 2above) and place the cursor where you'd like your Hotspot in relation to your selected object. In this case, we'll define our Hotspot at the moment the announcer begins to speak, as seen in the image above.

Next, choose Audio > Set Object Hotspot. Now, when dragging the object announcer, the Hotspot will be visible (as shown at right, indicated by a 1), allowing for more accurate object placement. Looking at the image to the right, it's easy to see that we've placed the object announcer so that the announcer's voice begins just as the loud sound in the track above it quiets down, which is exactly what we wanted. Hotspots are very useful for post-production work. Syncing drum loops, dialogue, anything really - it's all made easier with this feature. And remember, once a Hotspot is defined within an object, it is saved into the session data and remembered for use at any time. Hotspots can be removed or changed as needed, and every object in a session can have its own Hotspot defined.

Take a moment to examine your region list - it should look something like the image at left. Notice the regions ending in .01 and .02 and so on. These are regions that PSA automatically creates as you crop, split, and edit your audio objects in the timeline, which makes it very simple to recall all the various edits you've performed on a given region. Note that these child regions are not copies of the original region - they do not take up extra space on your hard drive - they are merely edit points to be used within the parent (known as the 'root') region. This does not change the way PSA treats it however - nor should it change they way you the user treat it.