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Ruler

Ardour's Ruler
Ardour's Ruler

The Ruler scales the session along time, allows navigating, and can be marked for different uses.

One of its main uses is to move the playhead: clicking anywhere on the timeline will bring the playhead at this location in time. Also, using the mouse's scrollwheel while hovering the Ruler will zoom in or out (/ ).

The Ruler is made of a succession of rows, each having a special role related to time. Adding or removing rows can be done by right clicking anywhere in the ruler's header on the left, and ticking any of:

Mins:Secsscaling the session with the Mins:Secs:mSec notation
Timecodescaling the session with the Hours:Mins:Secs:Frames notation
Samplesscaling the session with the sample number notation
Bars:Beatsslicing the time according to the time signature ot the Meter
Metershows the time signature. It can be changed along the timeline, by Right click > New Meter. The Bars:Beats ruler will reflect the change.
Temposhows the BPM. It can be changed along the timeline, by Right click > New Tempo. The Bars:Beats ruler will reflect the change.
Range Markersallow to create and modify ranges directly on the Ruler.
Loop/Punch Rangesare special kind of ranges designed to be played as a loop and to do punch recording, i.e. recording on a precise section of time, respectively.
CD Markersare markers designed to be used while creating a recording that has to be split in time, as an audio CD
Location Markersis meant to receive any kind of marker, user generated or from Ardour itself.
Video Timelineshows thumbnails of the video in the timeline

Most of the operations on the markers are described in Working with Markers, while the Meter, Tempo, Bars:Beats and Timecode use are described in Tempo and Meter.