It’s been a while since I made some fresh tutorial videos. I thought I might start with some fundamentals of quick PT operation.
Starting off with how to move regions around with precisions, using the grabber tool and your cursor position, in combination with keyboard modifers.
Hi all,
Here is the second part of the interview with Paul where he goes into more detail about Dolby E.
Paul Neyrinck Interview Part 2
So how many of you out there have run ISDN sessions? Recording a Voice over remotely? Streaming the talent from one city to another with an ISDN box at both ends?
Its dead technology. Read more below after enjoying this instructional video about voice over recordings:
In case you hadn’t heard, there’s this thing called the “inter-ma-web” and it connects lots of places too, so the smart coders over at Source Elements created a plugin for Pro Tools called Source Connect. It allows a CD quality stream of audio (and TC!) to be pass 2 ways between two PT rigs connected by decent broadband connections. By decent, I used to have it running on a 256k out and 1500k in ADSL connection and it worked great, with a 300ms delay, which for a VO is bearable.
Sournce Connect was susceptible to drop outs depending on your internet connection, so they have developed a new caching technology (with SC 3.x) to go back after the recording and fill in the gaps with Auto-Restore and Auto-replace functions! Well cool!
They also have a plugin for one way communication that would be handy for quick approvals with multiple parties. Its called Source-Live and it sets up a stream from your PT rig (from an Aux out to the plugin) so that anything you play in the studio can be heard by the email recipients who connected to your stream with windows media player or itunes!
I’m hoping to get an interview with Rebecca from Source Elements in the near future and she can talk us through their various SW with a demo.
A second piece of technology that works very well with Source Connect is Digidelivery. DD for short. DD allows the owner of the box (its a rack mounted server) to send large media packages over their outband internet connection as simply as email. Its integrated into PT and Avid Media composer directly from the file menu, so you can simply DD a PT session and it comes up with the dialogue box similar to a Session session copy as – ie would you like to include media, videos files, etc as tick boxes.
These systems have been used together for remote VO records, where source Connect allows for the director/producer to give the talent feedback on their recording from somewhere else, and at the end of the session, the local PT session recording is delivered to them uncompressed via DD. Tidy workflow!
Hi all,
Sorry for the lack of new material coming up at the moment – hopefully get some new vids up soon.
The delay is mainly that I’ve been on the road showing PT8 to the Aussies and once I get through that I’m off to NAB, then back to NZ to continue the tour – no rest for the wicked…
Next week are the Sydney and Melbourne events, hopefully see some of you there!
Sign up for the events by following this link
Well – those of you in music have probably come across the famous SPL Transient Designer in your travels. Its a fairly unique device, playing around with the envelope of your sound, specifically the attack and release. Wouldnt it be nice that if you bought one of these devices, you could use it many different times? Wouldnt it be nice to make it change levels and follow your needs automatically as the program content changes?? Yes!! Its a plug in, signed off by SPL with SPL engineers, for TDM!!
This plug has been created not only by the engineers at SPL but in partnership with the coders responsible for the utterly brilliant Brainworx plugs.
There’s an interview on the Audio News Blog here
Other brand new SPL plugs can be demo’d here
Not only has this happened, one of our favourite plugin makers, Colin of McDSP has released some more plugs in his “best of breed” family. Specifically catering to the Retro stylings that are so in demand these days. Lots of info on his site, here…
Of late, Ive seen quite a few clients get themselves into corners, with poor system performance due to track count issues and large sessions. There seems to be an assumption out there that you can run 100+ tracks off the average 5200rpm Firewire drive…that is simply not the case! In this video I show how easy it is to manage the process of spanning your session across multiple hard drives, explain a few caveats, and show how to bring it back to one volume for backups etc
Spanning Hard Drives from Brent Heber on Vimeo.
See the notes under the video…
Venue Workflow HD from Brent Heber on Vimeo.
This topic relates to the Expand tracks by timecode feature, that was introduced in PTHD7.4cs5.
It allows you to automatically “conform” your tracklay session (large contiguous files recorded at once) to an edit made by someone else – in the demonstration, a video editor (Media Composer).
So, you have recorded the discrete tracks of a concert, plus a 2-mix. The mix gets given to a video editor along with all the video material. They do a cut of the concert, and hand you back the cut of your original mix file.
With the Expand tracks by Timecode feature, you can now expand out all the discrete tracks, matching the edit to the 2mix given to you…So you can say, bring the bass to the front of the mix when the camera is on the bass player, bring the guitar up front similarly etc rather than a static mix throughout the clip.
As Venue and PTHD systems are used in the field to record more and more concerts, this workflow is a powerful addition to the options for post production of those projects.
Caveats:
1.I handed an embedded AAF over to the video guys with my mix files in them
2.They handed me back a referenced AAF – which I then relinked to the original Mix files in my audio files folder of the concert recording.
3. All files in the session must share an identical “Creation date” in the Project browser. If you have extra files in your session, addition overdubs etc, they may well be expanded as well, giving you many extra tracks that are probably undesirable. It just looks for any region with matching timecode and puts it onto a new track, that’s all. That could encompass alot of material in your session if you are not working with a pure tracklay of the concert.
Hope that’s useful!
Hi all,
Sorry for the delay between vids, there’s been alot of changes at Avid of late and Ive had to travel quite a bit to keep up with it all!
You’ll find a video below that explains the new comp edit workflow in PT8, how to rate a take and how to filter your takes in the new playlist view. Hope its useful!
PT8 Comp edit workflow from Brent Heber on Vimeo.
Hey all,
Just an interim post with some great resources Ive stumbled across lately.
Firstly, a fellow blogger from the UK, Mike Thornton, who is writing on topics relating to Pro tools and the Media industries. You may recognise his name, as Mike is a regularly contributor to Sound on Sound.
http://protoolsformedia.blogspot.com/
Secondly, for those with more of a music focus, the lads from the AIR group are running their own blog specific to those virtual instruments and software tools such as Structure
http://airvirtualinstruments.blogspot.com/
Avid have recently launched their own version of the mighty Digi User Conference, the Avid Community portal. Its great, with tutorial videos, news and a bunch of good people already involved:
For more Media composer tricks than you can point a stick at, I recommend the Edit Blog
http://www.scottsimmons.tv/blog/
Lastly, Michael Phillips of Avid has had his own site, 24p, up for a long time:
http://www.24p.com/reference.htm
Hope these are of use! More on Structure coming soon, its been a busy week and Im off to LA on Sunday.
OK, so Structure for Post won the poll, having 25% of the votes. First off, there are two key features for Structure that are great for post production, drag and drop of samples from the timeline to create MIDI patches and secondly support for Surround sound. Check out this video first and I’ll add to it with post examples in my next blog:
Mapping FX in Structure to your keyboard…
Drag and dropping samples into Structure – they MUST be WHOLE FILES is the trick!
Hi all, thanks for visiting the site.
Today’s video is a very short and sweet demo of a feature that alot of folks don’t know exists.
Ever been in a situation where you want a DV25 res video, or a Motion JPEG movie but the client delivers… wait for it….H.264 Your very favourite system crunching codec.
Well, the power is well within your hands to quickly re-render that video into the resolution/codec of your choice. It’s all about a shortcut when choosing “Bounce to Quicktime movie” as shown in the video (hold ctrl+opt+cmd)
Hope that helps!
Hi all,
Following on from my last blog topic on changing tempo of elastic music, this video shows a simpler way of creating dynamic changes, without resorting to tick based audio and the tempo ruler.
Each have their benefits. Using the tempo ruler, you can effect multiple tracks at once. Using the warp marker function shown is super quick if its just a single track you need to adjust visually.
Elastic Music Beds pt2 from Brent Heber on Vimeo.
Enjoy!
Hi all,
The video below outlines two possible ways of manipulating the tempo of a piece of production music to easily fit it better to picture. I’ve since thought of another way of doing this and will follow on with a second video on this topic shortly.
Elastic Music Beds from Brent Heber on Vimeo.
Hi all,
The videos taken below were from Scott Wood’s presentation as part of our 2007 HD picture workflow tour. There is a tonne of great info in here about video resolutions, video satellite, codecs of choice, frame rate niggles and general HD nastiness – if you’re not feeling ready to tackle audio post for HD video, these videos could make a heck of a difference for you! All up, there’s about an hour and a half of footage below.
Part 1 of 5…
Part 2 of 5…
Part 3 of 5…
Part 4 of 5…
Part 5 of 5…
Hi all, Sorry for the hiatus between videos!
Before Pro Tools 8 takes over, I felt it would be good to look over the elastic audio features in 7.4 and how they apply in post production. I see a lot of facilities upgrading to 7.4 for bug fixes or increased stability but still many engineers aren’t adopting elastic audio features into their everyday workflows.
The video below is an introduction into the 7.4 Elastic audio feature set, specifically how to use warp markers to clean up sync on dialogue.
Elastic Dialogue from Brent Heber on Vimeo.
The only shortcuts I used in the above video were fairly straight forward editing ones:
Region Loop = Option/alt + Command/Start + L
Using the trim tool at the bottom edge of a looped region to edit the selected content
Here is an excerpt of a short cut list I assembled for guys doing quick turnaround/churn and burn editing:
Grabber modifiers
Snap region “Head” to Cursor location Ctrl/Win + Grab
Snap region “Tail” to Cursor location Ctrl/Win + Command/Ctrl + Grab
Snap region Sync point to Cursor location Ctrl/Win + Shift + Grab
Insert Sync point Command/Win + Comma (,)
Copy region to Cursor Location As above + Option/Alt
Trims (with keyboard focus enabled)
Top trim to cursor location A
Tail trim to cursor location S
Top and tail (Trim to Selection) Command/Win + T
Fades
Fade from beginning of region to cursor location D
Fade from end of region to cursor location G
Create crossfade across selection without popup Ctrl/Win + Command/Ctrl + F
Nudging
Nudge left/right + or – on numeric keys
Nudge left/right , or . (in CF mode)
Nudge left/right by next higher nudge value M or / (in CF mode)
Nudge content of region left or right Ctrl/Win and +/- on numeric keys
Shift Selection Opt/Alt + H
Navigation
Go to and select next region Ctrl/Win + TAB
Go to and select previous region Ctrl/Win + Opt/Ctrl + TAB
Enter main counter * on numeric keys (in CF mode)
Enter Start/End/Length counters / on numeric keys (in CF mode)
Multiples
Duplicate at end of selection Command/Ctrl + D
Repeat selection Opt/Alt + R then enter quantity
Region Loop Opt/alt + Command/Win + L
Hope these are useful!
NEXT BLOG: Mapping plugs and sends using Custom Fader functions on ICON
The Pro Tools Mix window is a pretty straight forward place for engineers with a good grasp of signal flow, but there are quite a few keyboard shortcuts that make it even more flexible than you may at first believe. In this entry I’ll go through some of the more commonly used techniques to get the most comprehensive control of your mix.
Do to all – holding the Option key when you do something in the mix window is the old “Global modifier”, so if you want to change the master outputs to your interface, hold option and change one track, and all the outputs will switch.
Do to Selected tracks – this is a good one, hold Opt AND shift AND then do the task and it will multiply it across your selected tracks. This is very powerful when used with “Link Track and Edit Selection” enabled. Say you are editing your BVox group, highlight a quick swipe across their tracks, Command + = to switch to the mix window and then opt-shift and change their outputs to a buss. You now have all your BVox sent to a unique buss master, or maybe you want to instantiate a reverb send on those selected tracks…save yourself from…
Opt + click and drag to copy sends and inserts around the mix window
Ctrl click on SOLO buttons to enable Solo protect mode – this means that this track cannot be muted by another track’s solo state. Very useful with effects returns from post fader sends or sub group masters.
Command/Apple click on the up/down icon next to a send and it will change send view from “Assignment” mode (the default) to show the complete info for the first send on that block – a small fader, pan and meter. Its a useful view. In fact for quick turnaround work, I like to set up my main two sends on send A and F slots so they can both be viewed at the same time in this mode for quick visual feedback.
Ctrl clicking when you assign an output allows you to send the output of a track to multiple places, like hitting multiple outputs on the assign section on a console. This is EXTREMELY powerful once you can think about it transparently – for example, you have a buss master for your drum group, its currently assigned output is the mix buss. Ctrl click and assign a second output, to a buss. Now its going to both places. You can return the buss to an aux alongside it and throw a compressor on it and you’re now in a parallel compression configuration. Advertising engineers can use this to set up a buss master for a mix minus, so everything is sent to the buss master EXCEPT the voice over. They can now have multiple VOs on seperate tracks mixed in with the mix minus, tracking to seperate outputs at the same time.
When creating your mix groups, you have a choice of what letter they get assigned – I never thought much about this until I was shown a great workflow, where you choose the letter that starts the name of the group, and this enables the keyboard focus to switch that group on or off by simply hitting that letter (when the mix window is in the foreground and keyboard focus is on). So you’re mixing, you’ve made a drum group and assigned it to the letter “d” instead of the default “a” for your first group. Now, when you have the mix window open, you can simply hit “d” to turn that group on or off!
Speaking of groups, if you are not using a VCA, the normal group behaviour is to gang all your faders together when the mix group is enabled. This is mostly what you want, but what about fine tuning? Simply hold Ctrl and move the fader – this acts as the group clutch key and temporarily disengages the parameter you are touching/moving from the ganged group. (This saves you turning the group on and off)
Lastly, another groups tip. Since 7.2 we’ve had a lot more control in the Groups Window by adding two new tabs, Global and Attributes. These features allow us to do things like group our effects controls together independent of the fader controls, or send levels grouped independent of faders. These can be useful tools in some situations, so be sure to explore the hidden tabs in the group creation window!
Hopefully there are some useful tips there! If you’ve got any other great tips for the Mix window, please comment down below and share them!
NEXT BLOG: I’ll make another video, having a look at the Automation “Write to..” commands and how powerful they now are.
In the advertising industry (aka “churn and burn”!) an audio editor could find himself producing anywhere up to 200 x 15-30 second ads per week. Yes, its quite a few ads! The important skills in this sort of work are knowing your SFX library and having a solid music library readily edited into the right durations, at your beck and call.
The problem is…well…producers. You see, they often fall in love with a special piece of music that they “Really think would add a stronger message to this piece”…and well, YOU know its just a 15 second ad about sausages, but hey, its a gig and you have to oblige…
So they whip out their CD and here you are again, trying to cut down a 3min music bed into a 15 sec clip that has a beginning, a middle and an end. Its an art. You’re good at it.
However, if I’m guessing your background right, you’re probably looking at a Timecode or Mins:secs ruler and dont want to try playing with that “bars and beats stuff” as “thats for music guys, not us churn and burn guys, I dont have time to play with that!”.
In my opinion, you don’t have time NOT to! The trick is to know two features in the Events menu, and your whole style of music bed editing could change.
The time saving is all to do with identifying where the musical bars are. If you can find the first beat of each bar quickly you can slice it up and put it back together super quick, but how do you find the first beat of each bar? Well…you can listen for them and seperate your regions when you find it, and seperate, and seperate and so on and so on for every bar. OR you can let Pro Tools do half the work for you…
First thing: Find the first beat of your song. Let me clarify: this is the first beat of the first bar, not the first thing you hear! Alot of music will have a drum fill leading in to this beat, so you need to use your intuition – Im sure you know what I mean…
Put your cursor there, go up to the Event menu/Time operation/Move Song Start and you’ll get a floating window pop open. First time you use this, you’ll need to be sure to tick the box to “Renumber to bar 1″ and then you can simply click OK.
In your Tempo ruler, you’ll see the red diamond of your song start is now aligned with Bar 1 Beat 1 and if you switch over to the bar:beat ruler you can see it clearly when you play through. The problem is, nothing else is in sync!
So, listen for the first beat of bar two, place your cursor there and go to the Event menu and choose “Identify Beat”, enter 2 on the numeric keypad, hit return and you should see a new tempo marker put in place, and the tempo ruler will show a change in tempo take place.
Repeat this step, Identifying the beat (Command-I or CTRL-I) for a few beats until your tempo map is locked in tight – this is an art in itself, but it shouldnt take too long – particularly if you use “Tab to transients”.
OK – onto the fun part. Switch to Grid mode, your ruler should be bars and beats, and now, change your grid to a whole bar. Now, everywhere you click, you will have your cursor on the start or end of a bar. Make a selection and loop it, it should loop freely on the bar no matter where you click!
Last trick – highlight your whole music bed, go to the Edit menu and move down to “Seperate selection” – and choose “on the grid”. Your music bed is now cut up into 1 bar chunks for you – saving a lot of seperating!
Switch to Shuffle mode, cut out what you dont need and rearrange as necessary. Opt-drag bars around when you need to copy them, until you are close to the duration you want. Highlight it all again, Batch Fades and you’re done!
This workflow really depends on metronomic music – things that have very rigid and easily identifiable tempo, but that is pretty good description of an awful lot of production music, so hopefully this helps you speed up your music editing!
PS Correction for the video: I said “go to the Event menu” at the end of this video when I meant “go to the EDIT menu” to find “Seperate region – On the grid”. Sorry for any confusion there!
NEXT BLOG I’ll be drafting up a comprehensive list of shortcuts to make the most of the Mix window. Check back later this week if you haven’t subscribed.
The idea of stem mixing is as old as film sound, but in recent years its taken off in the music industry to the point where mastering engineers are often being supplied with stems (or requesting them) instead of the traditional 2-track.
If you adopt a stem based workflow, one of the most effective ways of saving time is setting up a mixing template.
In ProTools that may consist of two parts, both a *.ptf file (write protected/stationary pad) and an io Setup file – so your busses are labelled the way you like and your outputs are set up for either stereo or 5.1 mixing. Be sure to keep a backup of these files somewhere safe!
Going down the path of setting up your ptf file, if you adopt a template there are two killer features you should be using, markers and window configs…
Picture this: you are mixing the project, diving down, working on backing vox or ambience tracks or SFX or the drum kit and you want to change the overall balance of your stems. So what do you do? You simply hit “.”, “2″, “.” to recall memory locate 2 and what happens?
Potentially, all of this: in the edit window, the track list gets hidden, the region bin closes, the io view and inserts views disappear, all your tracks disappear except the buss masters, in volume view, which blow up to take up a quarter of the window each (red lines drawing as you mix in latch mode), on the right hand side, your favourite buss master compressor plug in window opens and maybe Signal tools, showing you the current level in Peak and RMS and you are now in the sweetest place to mix your stems – all the info you want, maximised on screen at the press of a memory locate.
So how? Well, create a memory locate, tied to no “Selection” but with track show hide/track height and a window config attached…
This is the point – combining windows configs and memory locates in your template gives you alot of power when it comes to everyday tasks, navigating your session as a power user who can anticipate the every day tasks of crafting your mix.
Ive seen some power users with templates that include windows configs that open/close a tonne of info in both their edit windows and mix windows saved to common sense buttons on their numeric keypad like 4 and 5 to open and close the edit window, 7 and 8 to do similar with the mix window, 1,2,3, 5 and 9 for project specific views – seeing it in action is definately a “penny drop” moment.
ICON Power feature:
Taking this idea a step further – dig into your ICON preferences to enable “Track Show/Hide: ShowHdn”
This means that tracks that are hidden in the edit window are still accessible on the control surface using your custom fader groups! So you can now mix on tracks on the console, independent of what is visible in the Pro Tools GUI.
Next Blog: An ICON automation feature called AutoJoin, how to mix effortlessly without reaching for the stop button and a mouse when you make a mistake!