Fairlight FAQ:

New Arrival at the Guild Training Room
by Jayme Parker

The Guild Training Office recently acquired a new Fairlight, so in this issue we’re going to step back from the more advanced topics of recent articles and introduce Fairlight to new users.

Most sound editors use Pro Tools, and Studio-frame/Waveframe still has a following, as well. But the Fairlight is an elegant machine, uniquely designed to emulate the look and feel of film editing. One can make a good case for its superior stability, D-to-A conversion and efficiency in a production environment. All prejudices aside, it is the only truly dedicated sound editing system to have established itself in the industry, and with good reason.

At First Blush

When users of other systems sit down at a Fairlight, the first things they notice are:

• There is no mouse.
  
• The keyboard has a lot of extra keys and a jog/shuttle wheel.
  
• The screen interface is very different from any drop-down menu-driven system.
  

If you are familiar with a mouse or trackball, you’ll have to learn to maneuver with the jog/shuttle wheel, the From and To keys, the Enter key, the Jump Keys and the Track Keys. (There is a mouse, but it is used only for the system configuration page.)

Figure 1. Keyboard Focus — The Jog/Shuttle Wheel and Surrounding Keys.

There are no cumbersome drop-down menus, no right- or double-clicks, nothing to drag. The keyboard is actually a separate computer with a jog wheel and a built-in LCD display. It sports a host of dedicated keys, each with its own menu. While the screen interface does change according to function, there are only four major pages, and although many functions have graphics that appear at the top of the screen, the main window rarely changes. There are no virtual buttons to click; everything originates with the keyboard.

This is truly a dedicated system, driven by the jog/shuttle wheel, the keyboard and keyboard macros. Fairlight operates on five 386 processors, each assigned its own specific functions and, in many cases, secure from collision with the others. The operating system is Unix-based, ready for networking.

Getting Started

My advice is to look first at the Fairlight Manual, available for download at http://www.fairlightusa.com. Familiarize yourself with the screens and keyboard by checking

Figure 2. Correct Right-Hand Position.

out the sections entitled: “The MFX3 Console,” “The Device and File Pages,” and “The MFX3 Recording and Editing Screen.” Later on, these will help you locate the various keys and functions, so keep them handy for future reference. But for now, focus on the keyboard area around the jog wheel, as shown in Figure 2, which includes many important keys that you will use all the time.

Next, go to “Starting a Project” and create one for practice. Then you can review “The MFX3 Recording and Editing Screen” with the actual screen in front of you. If you are using video, check out “Machine Control” in the manual.

Now, you should be ready to drive this thing. Read through “The Jogger Wheel” and “The Jump Keys,” but before you develop bad habits, read Andy Somers’ articles in the Guild Magazine. Check out “Fairlight’s Mouseless Interface” (May/June ’97) to learn proper hand positioning, and “Jogging and Machine Control” (July/August ’97) to learn the ins and outs of Zoom and Jog.

Working the Project

By now, you’ve probably noticed that the Fairlight has a fixed cursor (Sync Point), much like

Figure 3. Mode Keys allow the user to access various editing functions

film synchronizer or tape recorder sound heads. Tracks and their clips pass under this stationary Sync Point.

To start editing, read “Solo, Mute, Disable and Safe” and “Edit Menu (Cut & Paste)” in the Fairlight Manual, and get used to using the Track Keys, which represent your audio tracks, and the Mode keys, which relate to different editing actions.

In order to make changes to a clip, that clip and its track must be selected. You choose tracks by pressing the Track Keys on the keyboard; once a track is selected, its key will light up. You have two ways to choose clips, depending on which menu you are using. In some menus, including Grab and Fade, clips must be touching the cursor to be affected by commands. In others, such as Track and Block, you use the From and To keys to set a range of audio. The clips or ranges that can be changed will always be shown in red.

The Fairlight also has the advantage of layers. What this means is that clips can be “stacked” up to approximately 900 deep in every track, if so desired. Only the top-most clip is audible. Cross-fades are efficiently accomplished by placing one clip atop another and fading between them.

Another tip: A flashing light on any key requires further action on your part to complete that function (e.g., Track selection, Menu selection, etc.).

Macros

After the individual keyboard commands become second nature, you will be ready to explore another unique feature of Fairlight — its elaborate macro system. The system can record any sequence of keystrokes, and the resulting macro can be stored in a file for later use.

To learn more about them, see Andy’s columns, “A New Way to Lift & Hold, and More About Macros” (May/June ’99) and “Developing Macros to Improve Your Workflow” (July/August ’00).

Final Tips

The GoTo Key offers handy ways to maneuver quickly within your Project. See “The GoTo Command” in the Fairlight Manual. And finally, the Fairlight does indeed have a panic button. It’s called Undo. Holding it down brings up an Undo menu, which gives you an almost unlimited of undos, as you’ll learn in the manual under “Undoing Edits.”