Tips for ICON users Archive

ICON Bootcamp!

Hi there folks, it seems that some new visitors to my blog (www.protoolsprofessional.com) aren’t finding all the various videos or visiting them in any logical order, so I thought Id take the initiative of posting a “contents” type list of the videos I’ve made so far and how the logical progression of ideas could be navigated…ICON BOOTCAMP!

First, configuring your system. Understanding your PTHD automation prefs and your ICON console prefs is vital to getting the system working the way YOU want it, rather than YOU working the way the console wants:

PTHD Prefs

ICON console prefs – aimed more at DCommand

Most folks can find their way around the board pretty easily, particularly if they are familiar with PT in the first place, but will possibly be intimidated by how to insert a plugin onto a channel.

ICON Assignment matrix – inserting plugins

Another great feature on ICON is interrogating your signal flow by holding the sends button, or opt/alt sends button to show the input/output view:

Where is your signal coming from and going to?

Now you’re ready for the big league – CUSTOM FADERS…unique to ICON – the key to navigating your mix on the console in the context of the mix, rather than following the layout of the session inside Pro Tools

Introduction to Custom faders

Lets leave custom faders for a minute and look at the new plugin mapping feature…

Intro to Plugin mapping with PT8

Now back to custom faders to put the two together:

Mapping plugin parameters and other mix components together into custom groups

OK, so now you’ve got a very good idea of how to move everything about and navigate your way around the ICON. Why do we have so much flexibility in where things go?? Well, simply put, to automate your mix as effectively and effortlessly as possible. So lets more on into automation.

If you like to automate your mix moving down the timeline, typically in Touch auto mode, please consider moving over to Latch mode. Latch allows you to multitask, where Touch will only allow you to work on whatever you are touching at the time. Autojoin and back and play are new features to help Latch based workflows.

Autojoin workflows, mixing down the timeline in sequence

If you work in post, chances are you like to write your automation on a scene by scene basis. The Write To commands are your key. Snapshot automation is also very powerful.

Using the automation “Write to” commands for scene based mixing

Using snapshot automation on ICON

Speaking of scene based automation – or writing automation within a selection, such as to a region – Preview mode is a super powerful tool to use, which largely surpassed older “Automation suspend” workflows:

Using Preview mode with the Latch Prime in Stop Preference

Lastly, you may need to lock up more than one HD rig together to mix your film or you may need HD video playing alongside your mix position. Check our these new, related technologies:

Avid HD picture workflow with ICON and Video Satellite

FCP QT HD picture workflow with PTLE and Video Satellite LE and Decklink technology

I hope these videos are of use to both earlier adopters of ICON and new users. I made these videos to assist freelancers who often have no time or training and are expected to sit in front of a relatively complicated piece of kit and use it proficiently in a very short amount of time. Hopefully they find these videos and it helps take some of the pressure off their shoulders. PLEASE pass this post on to your peers who you think could benefit from the tips and tricks!

Kind Regards,

Brent Heber

Senior Applications Engineer, Pro Audio

Avid Digidesign

Sydney, Australia

Preferential Power…PTHD and ICON Prefs

So, The Preferences…

These two videos explore the two sides of an ICON suite, the Pro Tools HD system’s preferences and the ICON console’s preferences. Key components of the PTHD prefs are your choices on the “Mixing” page amongst others. On your ICON you can completely customise how the unit behaves, where your custom fader groups go, how many faders they steal, what automation commands you want in your user pages…all these and more allow you to make the console jump to your commands, rather than fitting yourself into the “default” box.

Tweaking your Pro Tools HD Preferences

Customising your ICON Preferences and User menus

Until next time!

Custom Fader Group mapping on D-Command in PT8

Hi all!

With the release of PT8, DCommand users can now open plug ins on the channel strips, just like DControl owners. This cool not only for general work in the “Mix window” state, but gives enormous customisation power when you start to map things inside a custom group. Check out the video:

Custom Group Plugin Mapping with PT8 on DCommand

Snapshot automation with ICON

Hi all,

There are a bunch of powerful automation features on ICON that came in with PTHD 7.2, some of which I still haven’t covered. So I’m going to revisit a few of those.
Firstly, lets have a look at the basics of using the Snapshot section on the board. This can be used powerfully with Latch Prime in Stop enabled in your prefs, and there are also modifiers when taking snapshots for different workflows. Take a look:

ICON Snapshot automation from Brent Heber on Vimeo.

Interrogate those busses…

So, another great little feature for ICON users with the release of PT8 is the ability to see your signal flow on the board, by seeing what channels are routed to the one you are touching or where the channel you are touching is routed too…see the video for details!

PT8 ICON Buss interrogation from Brent Heber on Vimeo.

The Matrix

In this video we take a look at how the new Assign Matrix works on ICON surfaces with PT8.
At first, the matrix may seem complicated but that passes fairly quickly with a little bit of use. One of the key differences and advantages of this method of assignment compared to the legacy behaviour is you no longer have to move your hand around to see the scribble strip while turning the pot…now the menu is laid out across a panel of pots and you simply hit the select buttons as required, speeding up the process enormously. Secondly, we are now assigning busses, plugs and I/O in a consistant fashion, making ICON easier to learn for folks new to the surfaces.
There is also lots of info in the D-Control v8.0 guide Chapter 12 titled “Assigning Inserts, Sends and I/O with the Assign Matrix” and similarly in the D-Control v8.0 guide for the 2 encoder version, but the behaviour is largely the same.
Sorry it’s hard to read the scribble strips in the video, but hopefully with your own ICON in front of you and this video it will all make sense!

ICON Assignment Matrix from Brent Heber on Vimeo.
Have a Happy New Year everyone!

PT8 ICON Plug in Mapping

Hi all,

I’ve removed the assignment matrix video as due to Xmas gremlins it was pointed out to me that it stopped about half way through! I’ll repost that again shortly.

Meanwhile here’s a look at the new way to map plugins with PT8. Each plugin can have multiple maps now and this feature is not just for ICON users but anyone with any Digi surface!

PT8 Plug in Mapping from Brent Heber on Vimeo.

What are the “Custom Fader” modes?

Sorry for the delay getting this recent video onto the site. Ive been travelling the last few weeks throughout Australia and NZ with Scott Wood of Digidesign in LA presenting clinics on HD picture workflow and the transition to file based workflows.

Introduction to Custom Faders from Brent Heber on Vimeo.

Last video I went into detail with Custom Fader “Plug in” mode and how to map your plugs onto the fader the way you like them. Due to a few client requests, this video goes back to the beginning and explains the other 3 Custom Fader Modes:
Custom Groups
Pro Tools Groups
Track type/Masters

Ive also started to upload an awful lot of material from last year’s Workflow tour with Scott, going into A LOT of detail about file based workflows and also looking at Field Recorder workflows. Having a fw technical difficulties currently, I suspect due to the durations, but hope to overcome that this week. Stay tuned!

Custom Fader Plug in Maps

Before we look at plug in mapping – a reminder, the HD Workflow tour starts on Monday in Adelaide! If you havent RSVP’ed for the Adelaide, Sydney, Auckland or Wellington events, please do so!

OK, first, here’s a video explaining what Plug in maps is about….

Now you’ve watched the video, a few extra notes. The “maps” that you create of plug ins all get added into a file kept on your CPU. Thats a *.PIO file, and they can be imported and exported from your ICON from the soft key section.

Why would you want to do this? Well, there are alot of plugs out there that aren’t EQ or Dyn and consequently wont map to your centre section. As a result, all your other plugs will come up slightly differently when you focus them into the custom fader section. why not map them for some consistency? Input and output levels always in the same spot? Reverbs mapped down similarly, so its only the character/timbre of them that changes, but you drive them the same…there are alot of options here.

SO, you have your pio file, and its how you access your plugs, put it on a thumb drive and take it with you to another ICON studio and there you go! You can import it and youre driving their system the way you like to!

If you dont move around alot, then I guess its not a big deal, apart from backing it up for redundancy – last thing you want is to have a fantastic detailed map file for hundreds of plugs lost because you had to reinstall your OS…

Last thought on the topic, when a pio file is made, it seems to take a snapshot of all the installed plugs on your system. Consequenty its not representative of your map of a single plug in, but rather of ALL plugs on your rig. Why is this important? Well, what if you want to find a map that you used to use…so you import that old pio file into your current rig, and you have your old map for that plug in…problem is, you may have created new maps since that file was backed up, and on those plug ins that previously had no map, the default state will have copied over on top of your maps, putting EVERY installed plugin back to its state…

So its NOT incremental, its a system state file – so beware if you intend to tinker with it! If you think of these files as system snapshots taken in series, getting more complex over time, then you should be fine.

To import and export the files, its in your preferences menu, 4 or 5 pages deep.

More “Custom Fader” goodness coming soon…

AutoJoin, AutoMatch, Autowhat??

Pro Tools HD 7.2 introduced so many new automation features that they almost deserve a name all of there own, ala SSL or Euphonix or Neve automation systems. In this blog I want to concentrate on one of those many features, a button called “AutoJoin” – you can see this mode when you open your Automation Enable window, down the bottom above AutoMatch.

How many of you reading this feel you know Pro Tools automation inside out? On the flip side, how many are comfortable with Touch mode and leave it at that? Hopefully this post will encourage the touch mode ops out there to experiment with Latch mode…

So, you are using Latch mode, writing automation from the point when you grab a fader or pot, writing it at the level last touched as the transport continues forwards, until you have potentially engaged up to a hundred different parameters, all latched and writing automation, a MIX moving forwards down the timeline…

THEN, it happens… you miss a cue. Maybe you should have grabbed the BVox and pulled them up earlier to prepare for the chorus, or maybe the FX buss came in too loud, either way, it just happened, you’re in the zone, and you can fix it. Hit the “Back and Play” button above your transport controls on the DCommand or DControl.

The transport drops back in time (by the Back/Forward amount in your preferences) and you get a second shot at the cue, and you nail it. Transport hasn’t stopped but a disaster has happened – when you dropped back, all your 100 parameters dropped out of auto record and now you have hard breakpoints and you’ve lost your mix – you would need to touch all the 100 parameters during the back amount to get back to where you were!! Impossible!

This is where AutoJoin comes to the rescue – with Autojoin enabled, when you hit Back and Play, a red line appears on screen clearly showing where you hit it, and you are now approaching it from your back amount. You can fix your cue, but when you pass the red line, ALL your previously engaged automation re-latches and you continue with the mix, as if nothing ever went wrong!

You can go back and play as many times as you like, the trick is to always let it pass the red line before hitting back a second time or you will lose your record enabled cache.

Ive seen music guys using this to great effect, mixing all their BVox or drums in a single (sort of!) pass or post guys doing a doco, cranking through a mix on the first pass – only needing a little bit of trim at the end to tidy it up for broadcast.

There’s a video below showing the behaviour WITHOUT autojoin and WITH autojoin enabled. Hopefully this is a pretty clear description of the workflow and you can see the power of AutoJoin and add it to your quiver for those times when you need to mix super fast on your ICON.

Next Blog: We’ll be looking at a quick way to edit music tracks when they weren’t recorded by you and aren’t locked to your bars and beats ruler…

Other info…