Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby macrae11 » Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:24 pm

Mathieu Benoit wrote:
macrae11 wrote: Or just select it and delete it... :-P

Go ahead and try that for yourself... It really doesn't work that way. Option click is definitely something I should have thought of though, as that's how warp markers function.
You had me doubting myself so I had to turn the computer back on to check this. Works just fine. You do have to select it in the markers ruler though. If it's not working on your system it's a bug.
Mathieu Benoit wrote:
macrae11 wrote:Two main ways I do this. First way is the way you suggested, just create a duplicate playlist, name it, or make a comment, and consolidate. The two commands for playlists are (I think) Control+\ for New, and Control+Option+\ for Duplicate.

The second way, if I'm a little less sure that my edits are perfect is to group the regions. Basically that turns all the independent regions, fades and gaps into one large region. The nice thing is it's 100% non destructive. Command+Option+G to create the group, Command+Option+U to undo the group. Another cool thing is that you can create region groups across multiple tracks, so if you just want to do some moving to a whole drum kit, but don't have all the edits done, you can group all the tracks, move things around, then ungroup.


I'll consider the second option, but what I'd really like is to be able to clean some things up for when it comes mix time. Fewer calculations for the computer to make, and have I mentioned I'm OCD? I didn't realize you can group the regions though. I've never actually grouped regions, just tracks.
Grouping regions is totally different than grouping tracks, as I'm sure you know. For mix, I consolidate if I'm sending it to someone else. If it's just me mixing, I don't consolidate unless there's problems. Goes against my efficiency ethic.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Tue Sep 27, 2011 10:16 pm

macrae11 wrote:You had me doubting myself so I had to turn the computer back on to check this. Works just fine. You do have to select it in the markers ruler though. If it's not working on your system it's a bug.

You're a bug. :roll: Seriously I tried just deleting it, it was the first thing i tried and it didn't work.
Mathieu Benoit wrote:
macrae11 wrote:Grouping regions is totally different than grouping tracks, as I'm sure you know. For mix, I consolidate if I'm sending it to someone else. If it's just me mixing, I don't consolidate unless there's problems. Goes against my efficiency ethic.

I do understand that it's different but I had no idea it was even possible. As for the reason I'm consolidating everything, it's because it's a huge mess right now and I'd rather not have to look at it when we start the mixing stage. I can't work in the chaos as well as you can yet. Although I must say I'm making big improvements in that department.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby macrae11 » Wed Sep 28, 2011 6:38 am

Mathieu Benoit wrote:
macrae11 wrote:You had me doubting myself so I had to turn the computer back on to check this. Works just fine. You do have to select it in the markers ruler though. If it's not working on your system it's a bug.

You're a bug. :roll: Seriously I tried just deleting it, it was the first thing i tried and it didn't work.
Did you make a selection with the marker inside, or just click on it and hit delete?
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Sep 28, 2011 9:07 am

macrae11 wrote:
Mathieu Benoit wrote:
macrae11 wrote:You had me doubting myself so I had to turn the computer back on to check this. Works just fine. You do have to select it in the markers ruler though. If it's not working on your system it's a bug.

You're a bug. :roll: Seriously I tried just deleting it, it was the first thing i tried and it didn't work.
Did you make a selection with the marker inside, or just click on it and hit delete?

The latter. You win this round.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 05, 2011 10:14 am

Finally got around to installing Pro Tools HD this week. First thing I noticed is that none of my groups seemed to work. My first instinct was to call Andrew, but then Nick noticed that a feature in HD is that there are more parameters to choose from for groups. Those parameters needed to be set up it seems. So we needed to add "solo" to the attributes section in each group.

I can now group the record-enable function. Pretty sure I couldn't do that before...
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby macrae11 » Wed Oct 05, 2011 10:21 am

If you set groups to follow globals the group settings you are used to from LE will be activated. I'm pretty sure that's the default but there might have been something changed since you moved the session into HD after it was created.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 05, 2011 10:30 am

macrae11 wrote:If you set groups to follow globals the group settings you are used to from LE will be activated. I'm pretty sure that's the default but there might have been something changed since you moved the session into HD after it was created.


I expected that the settings would have kept from LE, but they didn't for whatever reason.

Since I have you here though: VCA tracks... How can they be of use to me?
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby macrae11 » Wed Oct 05, 2011 11:38 am

First thing, create a group for your drums, which you probably already have, send them to a subgroup aux, and create a VCA track based on the drum group. They all do similar things, but with different strong points. I use all three all the time. Essentially VCA's are like grouping your tracks, but with the flexibility of ungrouped tracks. Groups are primarily used for editing, subgroups for processing. If I need gain change before processing (usually compression) I'll use the VCA. If I need gain change post processing, I'll use the subgroup aux.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 05, 2011 11:41 am

macrae11 wrote:If I need gain change before processing (usually compression) I'll use the VCA. If I need gain change post processing, I'll use the subgroup aux.

Ahh... Cool, good to know.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 19, 2011 10:23 am

A little while I discovered on my own that when you are in quickpunch mode Pro tools is discretely recording audio during playback even before you hit record. I thought this was brilliant since you can use the trim tool to move the punch point back in case you didn't hit the punch perfectly.

I mentioned this to a rehearsal client a few weeks back because they are recording bed tracks in their home studio and the guitar player is using Pro Tools. I wanted to let him know that even if he missed a punch he could still trim it into place. He asked me a question last night that I couldn't quite answer...

If you are playing back in quickpunch mode and the engineer (don't ask me how or why) didn't hit record button because he didn't know he was supposed to be recording, is that discrete recording still kept? Is an audio file being written to the hard drive regardless of if you hit record?
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby macrae11 » Wed Oct 19, 2011 11:38 am

Is the record enable button not hit on the track, or did he not hit record on the transport? Either way here's the answer

If record enable button isn't turned on, then you're not actually in quickpunch mode so nothing happens.

If record enable button is on, but didn't hit record on the transport, the file is being written in the background, but only into RAM. It's only written to the hard drive when the transport is put into record mode, even just for a millisecond. If you don't enter into record mode, the info in RAM will be discarded with no chance of recovery. So answer is... always be recording, and if you screw up, make sure you hit record before you hit stop. I have screwed up before where I thought I was in quickpunch, but was actually in trackpunch or some such thing so.... always be recording. Hard drives are cheap.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 19, 2011 11:58 am

macrae11 wrote:Is the record enable button not hit on the track, or did he not hit record on the transport? Either way here's the answer

If record enable button isn't turned on, then you're not actually in quickpunch mode so nothing happens.

If record enable button is on, but didn't hit record on the transport, the file is being written in the background, but only into RAM. It's only written to the hard drive when the transport is put into record mode, even just for a millisecond. If you don't enter into record mode, the info in RAM will be discarded with no chance of recovery. So answer is... always be recording, and if you screw up, make sure you hit record before you hit stop. I have screwed up before where I thought I was in quickpunch, but was actually in trackpunch or some such thing so.... always be recording. Hard drives are cheap.


As I suspected it's only written into RAM. I actually told him last night that I suspected it would only be written to the RAM unless he hit the record button. In his case the tracks were record-enabled it's just that the engineer hit stop before actually recording anything. I told him I knew a guy that would know the answer for sure though.

Thanks! Is there anything about Pro Tools you don't know?
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby macrae11 » Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:09 pm

Oh yeah there's plenty I don't know. I've got the basics down pretty good though, and I'm always trying to keep up to date and learn new stuff.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:46 pm

Any reason certain files would mysteriously vanish?

Last night I finish up a bunch of guitar edits, I consolidate the regions on a new playlist because I'm certain I have all the edits perfect. I save the session, bounce a rough to listen to on the drive home and leave the studio. This morning I go to make a few adjustments to the drum edits, and I find that Pro Tools can't locate the consolidated files from the hard drive. Why would that be? It's not a huge deal to me now, I'll just re-consolidate, but what could be the cause of this? I'd hate to one day realize that I'm missing something important through no real fault of my own.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 19, 2011 4:02 pm

To further clarify, I know very little about how Pro tools does disk allocation and since I do have several drives attached to that computer could something have been allocated somewhere else by mistake?
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby macrae11 » Wed Oct 19, 2011 5:08 pm

Yeah disk allocation is he first thing to check. Pro tools can assign every track to its own hard drive if you want, which is a hang over from the days of very slow and small hard drives. The disk allocation window is under the setup menu. Every track in the session will have a record path that can be set independently. To set them all the same hold down option and select the correct hard drive and it should care of the rest. If that wasn't it let me know and we'll talk about option B.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:36 pm

macrae11 wrote:Yeah disk allocation is he first thing to check. Pro tools can assign every track to its own hard drive if you want, which is a hang over from the days of very slow and small hard drives. The disk allocation window is under the setup menu. Every track in the session will have a record path that can be set independently. To set them all the same hold down option and select the correct hard drive and it should care of the rest. If that wasn't it let me know and we'll talk about option B.


Allocation is all correct. Time to talk about option B.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby macrae11 » Wed Oct 19, 2011 10:23 pm

First off just to confirm, was there another hard drive plugged in previously that isn't now? Because the disk allocation will revert to normal if a hard it was pointing to is removed. Second step is confirm if the files are actually missing. Try using spotlight to search in the finder for the files that are missing. Sometimes the link between the session and the audio file becomes corrupted and you have to manually relink it. When the relink dialogue pops up when you first open the session choose the manual option and point pro tools to the correct file. Once in a while when some relatively serious corruption happens sometimes the name won't actually perfectly matchup, but the file length and and other indicators will be the same.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Thu Oct 20, 2011 9:09 am

macrae11 wrote:First off just to confirm, was there another hard drive plugged in previously that isn't now? Because the disk allocation will revert to normal if a hard it was pointing to is removed.

Not to my knowledge, except for my jump drive. I was copying some roughs to it so I could play them in my car. If Pro tools wrote files to that, it's a being jerk than I thought. But seriously, during the time the files were being written there were extranneous hard drives on the system. That being said between the back up drives and archives I've got a few hard drives running on that computer at all times.

macrae11 wrote:
Second step is confirm if the files are actually missing. Try using spotlight to search in the finder for the files that are missing. Sometimes the link between the session and the audio file becomes corrupted and you have to manually relink it. When the relink dialogue pops up when you first open the session choose the manual option and point pro tools to the correct file. Once in a while when some relatively serious corruption happens sometimes the name won't actually perfectly matchup, but the file length and and other indicators will be the same.


I only had about 5 minutes to check last night, but I could not find that particular file name in the Production drive were all the session files should be. I did find the file previous to that which was x.06_01 but x.06_02 is not there neither are the other 7 regions I consolidated at that time. Tonight I'll have more time to do a search in the other drives as well.

Either way it's no big deal, I will just reconsolidate. But I need to understand how Pro Tools works logistically so that I can avoid this kind of thing when it counts.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby macrae11 » Thu Oct 20, 2011 2:34 pm

You could check the settings for the jump drive, but typically they're set to transfer only. You can find this information in the workspace browser key command Option+;. There you'll see every hard drive attached to your system with 2 labels beside them, one labelled A for audio and V for video. Three's three potential states, T for Transfer, which means Pro Tools can't do anything with the drive except for copy files to a new location, P for Playback, which can read files, but can't write, and R for Record which is full access. If your jump drive is labeled R, then that could have been the problem, although I highly doubt that.
Attached external hard drives are no problem, as long as they aren't removed with online media on them.

Other than all that, there's a few ways to screw up files on a hard drive, but most are somewhat difficult to do. Some in Pro Tools directly, some in the finder, but you really have to not be paying attention, and/or be a pretty big idiot yourself. For example if you happen to hit Command+Shift+B, instead of Command+Option+B when you want to do a bounce, you can remove files from your session. In order to permanently delete them though, you would have to ok two dialogue boxes, so unlikely. Other than that bugs, computer malfeasance and the like are always possible suspects, which unfortunately I can't help you with.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Thu Oct 20, 2011 2:56 pm

macrae11 wrote:You could check the settings for the jump drive, but typically they're set to transfer only. You can find this information in the workspace browser key command Option+;. There you'll see every hard drive attached to your system with 2 labels beside them, one labelled A for audio and V for video. Three's three potential states, T for Transfer, which means Pro Tools can't do anything with the drive except for copy files to a new location, P for Playback, which can read files, but can't write, and R for Record which is full access. If your jump drive is labeled R, then that could have been the problem, although I highly doubt that.
Attached external hard drives are no problem, as long as they aren't removed with online media on them.

That was the first thing I checked. I'm familiar with that process since the backup drive issue for a while back that we already covered in this thread.

I've done the command+shift+B before. It because pretty clear that I did not want to proceed so it wasn't an issue. I'm not the only person that's been at my computer in the past 48 hours, but I'm pretty certain no one touched anything from the time I bounced the rough mix until I went to open the session the next day. I was the last person to leave the studio. Bottom line is I don't think this is user error. The file was there when I bounced it. Then I saved and closed Pro Tools and went home. Came back files missing.

I'm going to have some time tonight so I'll get to the bottom of this...
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Sat Nov 05, 2011 1:59 pm

If my 2 Bus in Pro Tools is showing let's say, -3DBFS why would the fireface/central station show levels of about -12DBFS? Is it in Pro Tools or a setting in the Fireface perhaps? Any thoughts?
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby macrae11 » Sat Nov 05, 2011 2:40 pm

To many variables to make a proper guess. Pro tool meters aren't that great but it shouldn't be anywhere near that big of a difference.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Sat Nov 05, 2011 3:48 pm

macrae11 wrote:To many variables to make a proper guess. Pro tool meters aren't that great but it shouldn't be anywhere near that big of a difference.


Okay, so that means it's on the Fireface side of things. I'll investigate further.
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Re: Matt's Pro Tools learning thread...

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Tue Nov 29, 2011 4:26 pm

So I really wanted to use Maxim on the output bus of the cue mixes but when I was testing it out I realized that there was a delay. So I started trying to figure out why that was the case. Is it because of the look ahead? It's too bad really... It would have been a great idea.
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