Editing with a Screen Reader

Source-destination (S-D) editing is fully keyboard-driven, and every marker and edit action is announced. This chapter follows the editing workflow; the full descriptions of each function are in Editing.

Placing Markers and Making an Edit

Select the folder where you want to place the marker pair (moving to it with Alt+↓, Alt+↑ or D selects it), then:

  1. Place the destination IN and OUT markers with 1 and 2
  2. Place the source IN and OUT markers with 3 and 4
  3. Press 5 for the source-destination edit, F4 for a time-stretched edit (all four markers) or F3 for a 3-point insert edit
  4. Hear the result with the audition keys in Auditioning with a Screen Reader: 6 to 9 play around each marker and Alt+6 / Alt+7 play between a pair

Each marker announces its position, for example "Added source in @ 1 minute 23 seconds". If you place a marker on the wrong side of its partner (a source OUT before the existing source IN, say), the stale partner is deleted and you are told so, which stops an edit silently taking far more material than you intended.

To move the edit cursor to a marker use Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+4. Ctrl+, and Ctrl+. nudge a marker left or right by the nudge amount after you have auditioned it; set the amount with the Terminal command nudge=10 (in milliseconds). Ctrl+Delete deletes all S-D markers.

You can also set both source markers to the edges of the selected items with F12, or the destination markers with Ctrl+F12.

Deleting

Backspace deletes the material between the source IN and OUT markers and ripples later material back with a short crossfade. Ctrl+Backspace deletes it and leaves the silence in place.

Fixing Up the Crossfade

With the right-hand item of the crossfade selected, press F to enter crossfade mode, the keyboard version of REAPER's two-lane editor. It gives you slip, nudge, shift, widen and narrow, fade length and shape, volume, audition and reset and revert, all announced. See Crossfade Mode for the keys. Alt+Q and Alt+W jump between crossfade groups.

If items that should be grouped have become misaligned across the tracks of a folder (for example because ripple-per-track was switched off by accident while dragging items), select any one of them and press Shift+X (Fix Crossfade Sequence Edits). Use ↑ and ↓ to pick which track has the correct edits, Enter to run the fix and Escape to cancel.

Working on a Single Item

Item Edit Mode (V) edits one item's fades, edges and volume from the keyboard. See Item Edit Mode. Shift+R opens the accessible Playback Rate window, which changes an item's rate (rippling the following items) or its pitch. Press H in it for examples.

Nudging

Ctrl+, and Ctrl+. nudge the selected marker left and right (each audition from or to a marker selects it automatically), and Alt+, and Alt+. nudge the selected items. Each nudge is announced, for example "Mozart take 3 nudged 10 milliseconds left". The larger "x modifier" versions are Ctrl+Alt+, and Ctrl+Alt+. for markers and Alt+< and Alt+> for items. Set the nudge amount with the Terminal command nudge=10 (milliseconds) and the multiplier with mod=10, or under Other Settings in Accessible Preferences. In crossfade mode, the crossfade nudge keys are used instead and you are reminded of that.

Other Editing Functions

  • Ctrl+H heals a patch edit, restoring the underlying material without splits ("Edit healed")
  • Ctrl+F finds the source material of an edited item and places a source IN and OUT marker pair there, announcing "Source found" with the take
  • X crossfades two overlapping items when the edit cursor is in the overlap
  • Shift+F removes the fades from items whose edges are not part of a crossfade ("Non-overlapping item fades removed"), Ctrl+V pastes and announces how many items were pasted, and Ctrl+Alt+A selects all items in the folder
  • Ctrl+Alt+C and Ctrl+Alt+M copy or move the destination material into a new source folder, and Ctrl+Alt+P promotes a source folder to the destination
  • Shift+K re-applies the automatic item colors; with a screen reader, colors matter less, but take numbers are still extracted for Enter (find take)
  • Multi-project-tab editing uses Ctrl+Alt+1 to Ctrl+Alt+4 to set project markers in other tabs; see Multi-Project Tab S-D Editing

Note

The Source Audition Manager (Z) is a mouse-driven window and is blocked while the accessible windows are active. A keyboard version has not been written; use the S-D marker keys and the audition keys to compare alternative source takes.