Quickly Change Delay Settings in the Play List

There may be times when you want to globally want change the delay settings in a playlist. If the playlist is really long, it could be very time consuming (and boring) to change the delay setting of each individual song.

A playlist file (.SET) is really only a text file (ASCII), which you can edit in a text editor. When modifying a .SET file, you should use a plain text editor, and not a word processor. The reason is because a word processor can add non-ASCII characters and formatting codes. For this example, we'll use the Windows 95 WordPad program. WordPad is a word processor, but we're only using it for convenience sake, and to demonstrate the correct procedure (and Notepad doesn't have a search-and-replace feature). The best solution is to use a plain text editor with a search-and-replace feature. Make a backup of the original playlist file before continuing. Here is a little trick that should make your work a little easier:

[1] Make sure the playlist you want to edit is not loaded in Cakewalk.

[2] Open WordPad (in the Accessories folder).

[3] Load the playlist (.SET) you want to edit.

[4] You will now see the files that are included in the playlist set, followed by two numbers (ex. 0 0, 3 0, -1 0, etc.)

This is a description of what the numbers mean:

First number (kind of delay):

-1 Wait for Key Press

0 No Delay

1-32767 Amount of Seconds

Second number (not implemented):

0 Should always be zero

To change the delay settings:

[5] Go to Edit | Replace.

[6] In the Find what box, type the first two numbers you currently see in the playlist (for example: 0 0 (zero space zero), if there is no delay set for any of the songs).

[7] In the Replace with box, type the numbers you want to replace the current delay settings with (for example: -1 0 (-one space zero), if you want to set the delay to "Wait for Key Press").

[8] Click on Replace All.

[9] Save the file, and exit WordPad.

[10] Load the playlist set in Cakewalk, and you'll notice that all the songs are set to "Wait for Key Press".

If the playlist contains songs with different delay settings, you might have to do the above steps several times (once for each delay setting).

Tip: Once the playlist is opened in WordPad or another text editor/word processor, it can be printed just like any other document.

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