MIOConsole3d Session
338
Record Trigger Control block
The Record Trigger block manages recording Preroll and Postroll settings, and the various recording trigger
modes and controls.
Preroll, Postroll (and how that Ring Buffer thing fits in)
So have you ever been recording sound for an event and just missed hitting “Record” when the band or
the announcer snuck in their intro earlier than scheduled? ...or maybe the crowd started singing “Louie,
Louie” really loud but somehow in perfect pitch? Ladies and gentlemen, please say hello to Preroll in MH
3d Session.
In a nutshell, the Session
Preroll
lets you capture the audio immediately
before recording is triggered
in
any record mode... up to a full minute (60 seconds) before you hit record.
When any new recording (i.e., a “Take”) is triggered, the contents of the Ring Buffer are immediately
written to the record target drives at the head of the new Take files, thereby seamlessly capturing the
audio just before you hit Record.
Selecting a Preroll duration merely tells the record engine
how much
ring buffered audio to write to the
beginning of each new Take file.
During active recording, the ring buffer continues working in the background, so when you trigger new
Takes manually by hitting the Record button without stopping in-progress recording, the Preroll option
can kick in to automatically overlap the end of the previous Take at the beginning of the new Take.
Since the ring buffer is always operating at the full 60-second capacity, you can adjust the Preroll setting
on the fly, lengthening or shortening the preroll duration to best suit the program being captured. The
new preroll setting will be applied to the beginning of the next Take.
Remember, if you set Preroll to 10 seconds, it requires 10 seconds of pre-loading from the moment you
record-enable your tracks to fill that preroll memory allocation. If you start recording a take befoer that
buffer is full, it will work fine, but the amount of preroll will be a bit short of the full 10 seconds, is all.
Please be aware that in the Session Track overview of your recorded files, the Take fade-in is placed at
the location that “Record“ was triggered. Preroll audio will be hidden in the file
before
(to the left of) the
Take fade-in.
Drag the Take fade-in to the left to expose the preroll audio.
Important Note:
The
Ring Buffer
will only cache audio from record-enabled tracks (because it‘s
silly to use a ton of memory to store data that will not be used). This means that
changing the
record-enable state of any Track at any time will clear and re-start the ring buffer.
In practice this is rarely an issue, because in most cases it only takes a few seconds to re-fill
the Preroll allocation. However, in cases where very long Preroll settings will be applied, this
is something to keep in mind.
The Preroll setting is also an option for both the “Auto-Break Overlap” and “Manual Break Overlap” pref-
‘MIOConsole3d Preferences: Recording’
, and described in context below.
