Steinberg Cubase 4 Getting Started Manual

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Tutorial 9: Media management 

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Tutorial 9: Media management
Background
The MediaBay is an area in Cubase that helps to find, 
identify, tag and organize your sounds (VST 3 Presets and 
track presets), audio/MIDI loops, video and project files.
You’ll hear and read about two different terms associated 
with the MediaBay: SoundFrame and MediaBay.
SoundFrame is the overall concept of managing the ever-
growing number of plug-ins, instruments, presets, etc. The 
tool that links all of the plug-ins, instruments and presets 
together is...

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Tutorial 9: Media management
1.On the Media menu, select “Open MediaBay” and 
click on the Category tab or press [F5] on your computer 
keyboard.
The MediaBay by default opens with the Details tab activated. For the 
purpose of this tutorial, the Category tab will be needed.
Making visible the different sections of the 
MediaBay
At the bottom left hand side of the MediaBay window 
there are 3 buttons allowing you to show/hide the different 
MediaBay sections. These are:



1.Hide the Browser, Scope...

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Tutorial 9: Media management
3.Show the Scope section.
The Scope section allows you to view and play back files selected in the 
Viewer section.
4.Show the Tag Editor section (Cubase only).
When a file is selected in the Viewer section, you can view and/or assign 
tags to the file to make organizing and searching for the file easier.
Scanning with the browser
When you open the MediaBay, the Loop Browser or the 
Sound Browser, a scan for the media files is performed. 
Specify which folders or...

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Tutorial 9: Media management
1.Click the plus symbol on File system to reveal its scan-
ning locations.
These are the physical locations on your computer that you can specify 
so that MediaBay will search for media content. Be sure to check the ar-
eas/folders that you want the MediaBay to scan.
2.Click the plus symbol on SoundFrame to reveal the 
scanning locations found there.
There are many locations that do not need to be checked. 
Spend the time un-checking the locations you feel do not 
need to...

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Tutorial 9: Media management
Scanning indicator and status
When the MediaBay is scanning for media on your com-
puter, a visual indicator in the upper right hand corner of 
the Viewer section will be displayed.
The scanning status for the individual folders in the 
Browser section is indicated by the color of the icons:
 A red icon means that this folder is currently being scanned.
 A light blue icon means this folder has been scanned.
 Orange folder icons are displayed when a scanning process 
was...

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Tutorial 9: Media management
2.Choose a sub category if appropriate (like “Beats”).
This allows us to narrow down our search even more.
There is a list of drum loops that are now available to us in 
the Viewer display with our filter criteria. We can simply 
drag and drop any of these audio files into our project. Al-
ternatively we could use the Text Search field and search 
for a media file by name.
Auditioning media with the Scope
We have narrowed down our search to just drum beats 
and now we want...

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Tutorial 9: Media management
Tagging
You are able to add musical tags to your media files so 
that you are able to quickly organize and find your media 
files for later use. Tagging also helps you to group large 
amounts of media into a more usable and searchable for-
mat.
1.Show the Tag Editor section and select one or multiple 
files in the Viewer section.
2.Select the Managed tab.
You can apply tags by clicking (double-clicking for Char-
acter) in the field next to the attribute name.
The next time...

Index 

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Index
A
Adding
EQ 61
Loops 52
Mono Track 26
Adding a fade 39
Advanced settings 22
All MIDI Inputs 20
ASIO 2.0 18
ASIO Direct Monitoring 18
ASIO driver
About 10
DirectX 10
DirectX Setup 10, 17
Installing 11
Audio
Editing 33
Processing 40
Recording 23
Audio buffer size 22
Audio hardware
Connections 14
Setup application 15
Automation
About 64
B
Browser
Scanning 84
Bus
Surround 69
C
Click
Activating 27
Close
Project 25
Connecting
Audio 14
MIDI 18
Controller lane 50
Copying 37
Events 53
MIDI notes 49Cycle...