Steinberg Nuendo 3 Getting Started Manual

							NUENDOTutorial 11: Customizing 18 – 231
5.Finally, on the Appearance–Work Area page, you can adjust the 
brightness and grid contrast in the Project window and editors. 
Adjust the sliders to your liking and click Apply to apply your settings.
6.Click OK to close the Preferences dialog.
Applying track colors
You can use color scheming for easier overview of certain tracks and 
events in the Project window. Applying colors is divided into two areas; 
track and event colors.
•A track color is reflected in the Inspector, Track list, in the correspond-
ing channel in the Mixer, and in all parts and events for the track in the 
event display.
Track colors can be switched on or off globally.
•Event colors are reflected in parts and events in the event display and 
are independent from the track colors.
An applied event color “overrides” the track color, if both are used.
To apply a color for a track, proceed as follows:
1.Make sure that the Inspector is visible to the left of the Track list.
Click here to show the Inspector.
2.You activate track colors by clicking the color strip at the top of the 
Track list.   
						

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In the Inspector, the track name bar at the top becomes light grey and 
a small arrow appears to the right of the track name.
3.Click the arrow to bring up the color palette.
This palette or color set can be edited in the Event Color dialog.
4.Pick a color to apply it to the selected track.
•As you can see, the chosen track color is reflected in the Inspector title 
bar, in the Track list, and in any parts or events on the selected track.
Click here to bring up the color palette.    
						

							NUENDOTutorial 11: Customizing 18 – 233
•If you open the Mixer, the track color is reflected in the field above the 
name for the corresponding channel. 
You can also set the track color from the Mixer by clicking in this field.
Colorizing parts and events
There is a Color tool (the paint bucket icon) on the Project window 
toolbar that can be used to colorize parts and events.
The Color tool.
Just below the Color tool there is a small strip. Click this to bring up 
the standard color palette. If you double-click this strip, the Event 
Color dialog opens, where you can define new colors for the standard 
palette, add more colors etc.
•To colorize one or several selected events, select the Color tool, 
choose a color from the palette, and click on an event.
The color is applied to all selected events and overrides the track color (if used).    
						

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•If you press [Alt]/[Option] the Color tool cursor becomes a pipette, 
which can be used to select a color by clicking on a part/event.
•An alternative way to colorize parts and events is by selecting them, 
and then picking a color from the Color selector on the toolbar.  
						

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Creating a template
If you often work with the same types of Projects, it might be a good 
idea to set up a track layout and then save it as a template. That way, 
you can select the saved template from the New Project dialog each 
time you create a new project, and start with your preferred layout and 
settings.
Let’s say for example that you work with movie post production projects 
a lot and want to create a template with a convenient track layout. You 
could set things up as follows:
Creating a new, empty project
1.Select New Project from the File menu.
It doesn’t matter which Project folder you select.
2.Pull down the Project menu and select “Project Setup…”.
The Project Setup dialog appears.
3.Make settings according to your needs and click OK.
The settings here include sample rate, record format (resolution), display format, frame 
rate, etc.
You should also set up the required input and output busses. Let’s 
say you are working with surround sound in 7.1 format:
Setting up the bus configuration
4.Open the VST Connections window from the Devices menu.
5.Select the Outputs tab and click the Add Bus button.
A dialog appears.
6.Select the desired 7.1 format from the Configuration pop-up menu 
(“More...” submenu) and click OK.
7.Use the Device Port column to select audio outputs on your audio 
hardware for the different speaker channels.
8.If needed, click the Inputs tab and set up input busses in the same way.
9.Close the VST Connections window.
Now you need audio tracks for the soundtrack. Since you work with 
7.1 surround soundtracks, let’s create eight mono audio tracks: 
						

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Adding tracks
1.Right-click (Win) or [Ctrl]-click (Mac) anywhere in the Track list, and se-
lect “Add Multiple Tracks…” from the pop-up menu that appears.
A dialog appears, allowing you to specify the type of tracks, the track configuration and 
the number of tracks.
2.Pull down the respective pop-up menus in the dialog, set “Track” to 
Audio, “Configuration” to “Mono” and “Count” to 8.
3.Click OK.
Eight mono audio tracks are now added to the project.
•By default, all audio tracks will be routed to/from the first output/input 
busses – if you want to change the routing you can do that with the 
“in:” and “out:” pop-up menus in the Inspector or the Mixer.
A tip: to change the input or output routing of several tracks in one go, select the tracks 
by [Shift]-clicking in the track list, press [Alt]/[Option] and change the routing in the In-
spector. This changes the setting for all selected tracks.
The next thing to do is to add a video track. A convenient layout to use 
when working with video and multi-track audio is to place the video 
track in a separate, fixed Track list above the regular Track list. This 
makes it possible to scroll and zoom the Track list containing the au-
dio tracks without affecting the Track list containing the video track.
4.Click the “Divide Track List” button in the top right corner of the Track 
list.
The Track list is now divided into two parts. The lower part, as you can see, contains 
the audio tracks we added. The upper part is a separate fixed list. It is fixed in the 
sense that it is not affected by vertical scrolling and zooming in the lower Track list. It is 
however possible to resize tracks vertically by dragging the dividers in the track lists.
The Divide Track List button.
5.Right-click in the upper part of the Track list to open the context 
menu, and select “Add Video Track”.
A video track is added to the upper, fixed track list.  
						

							NUENDOTutorial 11: Customizing 18 – 237
•To move a track from the lower track list to the upper (or vice versa), 
right-click (Win) or [Ctrl]-click (Mac) it in the track list and select 
“Toggle Track List”.
Now, let’s see, what else do we need for a movie post production 
project? We could use a Marker track and a Ruler track, both of which 
should also be placed in the upper track list.
•Marker tracks can contain Markers, which can be used for locating and jump-
ing to certain positions.
•Ruler tracks are additional rulers that show the timeline. A Ruler track can 
show a different format than the main ruler. For the video track you might want 
to use a ruler that displays a film format, like Feet+Frames 35 mm while hav-
ing another format in the main ruler, like Seconds.
6.To add these two tracks, follow the procedure described above, and 
select them in turn.
7.Now, you can resize the upper track list to “close any gaps” and make 
it just high enough to show the three tracks it contains.
Do this by clicking and dragging the divider between the track lists.
Now you need to select the format for the Ruler track:
1.Click in the left part of the Ruler track in the Track list, and from the 
pop-up menu that appears, select “Feet+Frames 35mm”.
This is a format that displays feet, frames and 1/4 frames, with 16 frames per foot.
This should make a useful movie post production template. There’s 
one final thing to do before we save it:  
						

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Setting up your work space
Before saving the template, you should position the windows the way 
you want them. You may want to hide unwanted windows from view, 
position the Transport panel, maximize the Project window, etc. The 
open windows and their positions will be included in the template.
Saving the template
To create the template, pull down the File menu and select “Save as 
Template…”. A dialog appears, asking you to name the template. This 
could be a descriptive name such as “Movie Post Production”.
•If you now select “New Project” from the File menu, your template will 
be listed in the dialog that appears.
Selecting it will create a new project with the track layout you’ve created. 
						

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Setting up Zoom presets
When working in the Project window and the editors, you will typically 
need to zoom in and out depending on what you’re doing. In the Project 
window, zooming can be done with the zoom sliders to the right, with 
the Zoom submenu on the Edit menu or with the magnifying glass tool 
(see page 73 for more about zooming).
Zoom presets are a handy way to toggle between different zoom set-
tings. In this example we will set up two presets: One that displays the 
whole project for a good overview, and one with a high zoom factor for 
detailed editing. We will continue working with the track layout you 
set up for the template.
1.Locate the vertical zoom slider in the lower right corner of the project 
window.
Just above the slider is a small arrow button – this opens the vertical zoom menu.
2.Pull down the vertical zoom menu and select the option “Zoom Tracks 
Full”.
The project is zoomed vertically so that the eight tracks we added before take up the 
entire project window (or rather, the entire lower track list area). This way, we get a 
nice, compact layout.
3.Use the horizontal zoom slider to set a suitable horizontal zoom.
Check the rulers to see how much of the project will be visible at different zoom factors.
4.When you’re satisfied, pull down the horizontal zoom menu and select 
“Add”.
A dialog appears, allowing you to type in a name for the preset, e.g. “Overview”.
Vertical zoom menu.
Horizontal zoom menu. Horizontal zoom slider.
Vertical zoom slider.  
						

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5.Click OK to save the zoom preset.
This will now be available on the horizontal zoom menu, from which it can be selected 
and applied.
6.Use the vertical and horizontal zoom sliders to zoom in for a detailed 
view, and repeat the procedure of saving the zoomed factor as a preset.
The preset could be called “Detailed”.
Now it will be possible to toggle between these two zoom factors 
simply by selecting the corresponding preset from the zoom menu.
Setting up workspaces
The final task in this tutorial will be to set up workspaces. A workspace 
is a configuration of windows and their properties – their sizes and po-
sitions etc. This makes it possible to quickly switch between different 
working modes.
In the following example, we will work with two workspaces: The Main 
(default) workspace, with the Project window and the Project Browser 
displayed, and one for mixing purposes, with the Mixer and the VST 
Performance window displayed.
1.Let’s start by opening the Project Browser, which lets you view and 
edit the events of a project in list form.
This is opened from the Project menu.
2.Now arrange the Project window and the Project Browser next to 
each other, so that they fill the whole screen but don’t overlap. 
If you are using Nuendo for Windows, you can quickly do this by selecting “Tile Hori-
zontally” from the Window menu.
You will probably also want to move the Transport panel so that it 
doesn’t obscure the view.
OK, now you set up your Main workspace for editing. Let’s now create 
a workspace for mixing purposes:
3.From the Workspaces submenu on the Window menu, select “New 
Workspace” and type in a name for the workspace (e.g. Mixing).
The number in brackets displayed next to the Window menu name indicates that a dif-
ferent Workspace is now active.