Setting All Your Defaults The first step is to go into the Default Settings pulldown area and choose your default settings. They include your default sound card and file format, switcher input and output if you are using a switcher, and your startup settings. All are described below. Under the Default Settings pulldown menu, move your mouse over "Device" and choose a sound card you wish to make your "System Default." There are the two ways to proceed. Choose what is best for your situation: By "System Default" "Default" causes TimeTracker to use whichever sound card input you have set as the default in your BeOS Media Preferences. "Default" frees up the input channel for use by other programs, including TuneTracker™, when it is not being used by TimeTracker. The down side is that TimeTracker's VU meters will only be active during recordings, so it is less useful when setting levels. By "Sound Card Name" If, rather than "Default," you specify a sound card by name (or by the name of the sound card's chipset, if that is the option presented to you), TimeTracker is given sole use of that input channel, thus providing you with a full-time VU readout, which is useful when setting levels, and serves as reassurance you are getting a signal the rest of the time. Keeping this option selected works great, but do NOT do so if you wish to use the line input in TuneTracker. It will cause a collision and very possible a system crash if you use the Live button or the Live-For feature in TuneTracker™ while TimeTracker is reserving that input channel. However if you don't plan to use line-input in TuneTracker, it's an excellent choice. Under the File Format pulldown menu, choose the file format you want to use when doing your background recordings. Whichever format you choose will be used for all recordings you schedule, unless you manually specify a different file format for some of them. You may see a number of "exotic" options listed, depending on your BeOS setup. Try any you like, but we only officially support WAV, AIFF, ADPCM, and if listed for your BeOS setup, MP3. MP3 will only be an option if you have BeOS 5 Pro installed on your system. It is not available with BeOS 5 Personal Edition/BeOS Max. If you are using a switcher to select which audio file will be sent to the line input of your sound card, you can specify the input and outputs you normally want to use by picking them from the lists available in "Switcher Input" and Switcher Output." Be careful to only select inputs and outputs actually available on your switcher. Choosing to put a checkmark next to "Launch at System Startup" assures TimeTracker will start up automatically if your computer is rebooted. Putting a checkmark next to "Launch Minimized" (recommended) assures the TimeTracker window won't leap up over the top of other windows when it is launched, but instead, will politely hide itself in the deskbar. You can pull it up at any time by choosing "Show all" from the TimeTracker entry in the deskbar. Adding a Recording Event in TimeTracker: Click "Add." The "Event Editor" window will appear If you want this recording event to use a different file format than the default one, specify the one you want used. Type in an "Event Name" that describes the audio you'll be recording. Set the day, month, year, hour, minute, and second when your event must first occur. Set the length of time the recording should last, in hours, minutes, and seconds. Set the frequency of the recording from the "Repeat Every" dropdown list. Specify the recording format you want to use. Depending on your BeOS version, you may choose from among all available audio formats, including WAV, AIFF, ADPCM (four-times compression), even real-time MP3 recordings (ten-times compression) using BeOS 5 Pro or BeOS. Some other exotic formats might also listed, but we only recommend the ones listed above. Indicate how long the repeat recordings should go on, using the "Repeat" dropdown list. Specify the hard drive location and filename you will be using, by either typing it in, or by clicking "Select," and browsing-to the path and file. In the case of repeat recordings, tell TimeTracker whether to overwrite the existing file, add sequential numbers to the filenames, timestamp the filenames, or fail to record if the file already exists. *If you are using a switcher, specify the input source you wish to access, and the output it should be sent to. This information will be fed to TuneTracker, which will do the actual switching for TimeTracker. Therefore, you must have TuneTracker running for this feature to be available. Without it, an error message will pop up at recording time. Requires TuneTracker 3.4 and TimeTracker 2.0 or above. Click "Apply." Your event will be added to the list. Close the Event Editor Some Useful Things to be Aware of... Any event can be re-edited by simply double-clicking on it. If you need to create another recording event that's similar to one you have already entered, you can use the "Clone" button to duplicate the event, Then, double-click on the newly-cloned event and make whatever changes are necessary to differentiate it from the original. Recording events can be removed using, you guessed it, the "Remove" button. You can clear the entire list with, you're catching on, the "Clear List" button. You can choose which columns you wish to display from the Show pulldown menu at the top. Just put checkmarks next to the ones you want. You can sort the list by any of the columns, by clicking on the headers at the top of the columns. You can use multiple sound cards if you have spare PCI slots, and assign their inputs to specific recording events. You can also wire your switcher's outputs to the line-in jacks of the various sound cards on your TuneTracker computer for even more flexibility. Or, assign a switcher output to one sound card's line-in, while assigning an audio line unassociated with your switcher to another card's line-in. Table of Contents