Quickly measure region/selection length in milliseconds

[Peter Inouye]

Hi All, is there a way to quickly measure region length in seconds/milliseconds? For my workflow, I constantly need to measure time from one sound to another for implementation or to send to my engineer (e.g. Start File1, wait 870 ms, start File2 at volume 0 and fade in 1250ms, wait 500ms, start File3).

For example, if you highlight a region, the "export" menu shows the project and selection in frames. This number format is not affected by the time ruler format. Sometimes I'll just quickly use that and calculate it (5:15 = 5.500 sec)  but it's not always accurate enough at 1/30 of a second (33 ms chunks).

For the last 10 years, my normal go-to is just to drop a marker at the two spots, set my time view to time in ms, and just do the math in a calculator (33625-32000=1625ms between markers).

I would love just to shift-select the time bar and see the length in milliseconds.  Thought I'd ask here to make sure I didn't miss something simple. Thanks!

[Glenn Stanton]

ah yes!

set timeline to millisecond, then place the markers to align on clips etc - helps to define the spacing, then just drag in the timeline from marker 1 to marker 2 and you can read out the duration. in the example 00:00:14.732 between the 2 markers (ignore the now time)

Edited May 21 by Glenn Stanton

[Glenn Stanton]

one way i've been doing it - click on the clip and look at the length in the inspector -> properties. you have the same set of selections as the main clock. the only downside is if you select several clips, it just shows "multi" which is not helpful ? 

 

Edited May 20 by Glenn Stanton

[Peter Inouye]

Ahhh, thank you. Most of my clips will overlap, this won't work without just creating "dummy" clips just for that. It is a possible workaround though. Thank you for pointing this one out! Still hoping for something I've overlooked.

[Bill Phillips]

I'm not at my daw. So I can't verify this. But add a milliseconds ruler to the time line if it's not already there. The place a marker at the desired location (end/middle/start/etc) of the first clip. Then move the now time marker to desired location of the second sound. The distance between the two sounds is the difference between the now time marker and the placed marker.

 

Hope this helps. It's way easier to do than describe. 

[Andres Medina]

On 5/21/2024 at 2:16 PM, Glenn Stanton said:

ah yes!

set timeline to millisecond, then place the markers to align on clips etc - helps to define the spacing, then just drag in the timeline from marker 1 to marker 2 and you can read out the duration. in the example 00:00:14.732 between the 2 markers (ignore the now time)

Glenn, I can't find the elapsed time that your picture shows. How do you get it?

This is what I got:

[Tom B]

Andres,

As Glenn wrote, did you set the timeline to milliseconds?   That seems to be needed to display the elapsed time.
Right-click on the  timeline, menu: Time Ruler Format > Milliseconds.

[Base 57]

4 hours ago, Andres Medina said:

How do you get it?

"Show Aim Assist Time" has to be selected. If you right-click the timeline it is under 'Aim Assist".

[Glenn Stanton]

as Base said:

then as you drag on the millseconds time ruler, you'll see the duration shown ± time

note: the aim assist time shows the duration in whatever time ruler format you've selected.

Edited May 23 by Glenn Stanton
added note

[Andres Medina]

Thank you all.

Didn't know about this feature. Never used before...!

Now  I can read the aim assist time... but ... apparently it's displaying the time of the cursor, not the elapsed time of the selection.

May be I'm missing something?

[Glenn Stanton]

you have to hold the button down while dragging. if you let up, then you drop the duration...

[Andres Medina]

Yes, that was it!

I've been hoping for this feature for ever... and it was already there.

Very useful to track duration of sections or the whole project...!

Thanks a lot, very helpful!

[Peter Inouye]

Thank you all, this is great! I still wish there was just a way to highlight a region and see it in something like the selection bar, so I wouldn't have to keep switching my time ruler format and also lose my duration if I let go of the mouse to type the length into my spreadsheets.

But this is still moderately faster than the math I was doing in a calculator. So thank you!

[OutrageProductions]

Use the little 'plus' sign at the right end of the numeric ruler and add another ruler type.

No need to then ever change measurement metrics.

Edited May 24 by OutrageProductions

[Glenn Stanton]

never knew that, i guess i need to spend some more time clicking on things that aren't obvious ? definitely nice to "stack" the time ruler.

[Andres Medina]

22 hours ago, Peter Inouye said:

Thank you all, this is great! I still wish there was just a way to highlight a region and see it in something like the selection bar, so I wouldn't have to keep switching my time ruler format and also lose my duration if I let go of the mouse to type the length into my spreadsheets.

But this is still moderately faster than the math I was doing in a calculator. So thank you!

Not sure if this is what you need:

The elapsed time is always diplayed inside the export module (weird...), but is very handy.

I think the time is displayed in SMPTE time always, but can't be 100% sure.

[Glenn Stanton]

interesting. yeah, the export seems to show it as "hh:mm:ss:ff"

and the selection box shows it in the "M:B:T" format:

neither seems to change with the time ruler format or the larger now time setting.