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Preview Mode

– June 10, 2009Posted in: ProTools HD tips

Here’s another quick video to demonstrate a key automation feature from the PTHD7.2 release. Its called Preview mode. Many clients want to audition a change in their automation from region to region, scene to scene, before committing to “Writing” it. The most common way of doing that pre-7.2 was to suspend your automation, find the sweet spot for your settings, then Write them to your selection and re-engage automation.

Preview mode allows you to skip the “suspend automation” step, and “dynamically suspends” only the parameters of your mix that you touch. So you can hear your changes in the context of your mix, without turning off global automation families like Inserts or volume.

Preview mode and Latch Prime in Stop

“ICON Bootcamp” up next…

Preferential Power…PTHD and ICON Prefs

– June 7, 2009Posted in: ICON Videos, ProTools HD tips

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!

Whats going on?

– June 3, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

Hi Folks,

Sorry for the break in content.

I’m planning to shoot a few new videos shortly, ICON related, and update a few of the SD videos on Vimeo to HD. Once that’s done I’m planning to collate it all together in a logical progression of ideas to make a bit of a step by step, online ICON bootcamp to post on the DUC. Hopefully that helps. There still seems to be slow uptake on some killer features like Preview, AutoJoin and other custom fader options. I also seem a lot of clients using their ICON with its shipping default preferences so thats probably the next topic I cover.

In the meantime, here’s a short video interview with Eden from Song Zu in Sydney, a well respected advertising house. This video has been in the pipeline for quite a while, so I apologise if its dated a bit now, but the elastic audio information is just as relevent today as it was a few months ago.

Eden @ Song Zu & Elastic Audio

Dolby E with Paul Neyrinck, Part 2

– May 19, 2009Posted in: General Topics

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

POLL: Where’s your Audio coming from?

– May 15, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

So, this question is to get a feel for how many of my readers are effected by “Field Recorder” workflows.

Where does your picture department get the audio that they then hand over to you with an OMF/AAF?

Is ISDN dead?

– May 13, 2009Posted in: General Topics

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:

Pirates...

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!

Dolby E, Digital and DTS with Paul Neyrinck

– May 8, 2009Posted in: ProTools HD tips

This is part 1 of a video interview I grabbed with Paul Neyrinck whilst at NAB. Paul details how his Dolby Digital AC3, DTS, and newly released Dolby E plugins work with Pro Tools and what his background is.

Paul Neyrinck Interview Part 1

NAB2009: Video Satellite LE demo

– May 3, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

Hi all!

This video shows the HD QT workflow option “Video Satellite LE” in action. Jeff Komar, long time Digi employee demos two Mac pros locked together using the Pro Tools ethernet protocol. A Decklink Extreme card provides external picture on a Pro Tools LE system locked up to the main D|Command ES Pro Tools HD system.

NAB2009: Video Satellite LE in action

NAB2009: Dave Gibbons interview

– May 1, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

David Gibbons is the lead of the Product Management team of Avid Audio (aka Digidesign). For many years now David has steered the direction of Pro Tools and other products under the Digi banner. In this interview David talks about his role, what he sees for the future of Avid audio and some of his personal opinions on what Avid Audio could develop next.

Interview with Avid Audio Senior Product Manager

If you have any further questions for people like Dave, please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to get some further answers for you!

NAB2009: ICON & Video Satellite demonstration

– April 30, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

In this video interview from NAB last week, Gil Gowing (a regular on the DUC) demonstrates a small film mix stage (or large TV mix stage) using a variety of recent technologies including:

Multiple machine/layer control on D|Control ES

Satellite Link – locking 3 HD rigs together

Video Satellite with Avid Media Composer 3.5 for HD picture playback

Neyrinck’s VMon monitoring plug in solution with hardware controller

Various ICON Shelf products

NAB2009 ICON for Post demonstration by Gil Gowing

I’d love to know how many of you out there have seen configurations like this and how you find them in working environments? Comments always welcome!

NAB 2009 Interview: Jordan Glasgow, Post Production Product Manager

– April 29, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

So, first interview: Jordan Glasgow!

Jordan has worked with Digi for many years and is now the Product Manager for Post Production within the Audio division. During the interview Jordan talks about his background, the recent releases and what we can expect from Avid Audio with regards to Post production in the future. HD video linked below:

Jordan Glasgow interview on my Vimeo page

If you have any follow up questions for Jordan, please post a comment and I’ll do what I can to get som further answers from him, where possible!

Busily editing, HD videos coming soon!

– April 28, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

Hi all,

So I took yesterday off work to edit my blog videos (yes! in Media Composer 3.5 no less!) to promote Avid…sighs…what hope does my girlfriend have?! So coming your way shortly are a couple of demos showing video satellite workflows and a few interviews with key staff from Avid Audio.

It was a tidy process – Im lucky enough to be running my Media composer on an old PC alongside my Mac G5 PTHD rig, so as soon as I finished cutting the video, I just popped the audio across and locked them up in the “Video Satellite” configuration until Id finished the audio then popped it back to MC and exported my high res QT H264s and upload to web – qed!

Off to Singapore next week to “cross-train” some of our video division on what the audio team does and things like this – yes, its really happening!

I’ve been having fun with Sonic No Noise and look forwards to trying out Izotope RX in the near future – need to pull back that trade show walla from my interview records!

Anyways, just a quick note to let you know the videos should be up very soon. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile – does anyone have any questions about Digidesign inside Avid, now as Avid Audio? The Digi User conference has been busy with a lot of discussion, a lot of it needlessly doom and gloom IMHO (but what would I know, I only work for the company, right?). What do you think of the new Avid logo?

I’d love to hear some of your thoughts – please, post some comments!

NAB 2009 III

– April 23, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

Well its late at night and tomorrow is the final day of NAB 2009.

(LINK to Video blog showing a main stage demo from yesterday for those curious)

Yesterday I managed to be a busy beaver and in between the post suite demos I was involved with (showing Stereoscopic workflows, RED workflows and Video Satellite) I managed to get even MORE interviews to cut up on my return, with folks such as:

Jordan Glasgow, head of interop for the audio side of Avid

David Gibbons, Head of Product Marketing – the guys who decide what goes in each Audio release

I thought some of you might like to see the people behind the decisions that effect us all and hear what they have to say about the “new Avid” and the directions and plans for the future.

*Don’t expect anything too controversial, if they were to reveal anything top secret to me, its not like I’m in a position to release it to the world without taking a beating, but they were absolutely a pleasure to get on camera and very willing to talk directly out there to you guys, the community of users who support us all which I think is a wonderful thing, personally.

Hmm, what has been going on? Well the stand has been packed, main stage could have used more chairs. We have had some great main stage demos, showing the basics of making music on ICON for post and some basic sound design bits, those were recorded and should go up on the Avid community site soon (linked from the side panel on the left in case you never noticed). Main stage was also demoing MC obviously, plus DS and…wait for it…Torq, from MAudio – that got peoples attention, a DJ package being shown under the Avid banner!!

I’m also hoping to get some more demo material of video satellite in action with LE and MC. Its not every day you get a chance see these configs in action without considerable trouble, so its a great opportunity to get some of the action on camera to see how it works.

So, lots of stuff to trickle out on my return! I haven’t had much time to wander the halls outside the Avid booth and the private demo suites, but hope to have a look around tomorrow. From what I hear, NAB 2009 is largely about Stereoscopic and RED workflows on the post side of things, but a bit of a case of manufacturers showing what they already have to market, with not too many new products on show.

In case you didn’t know, Media composer can edit in 3D and its well impressive, and DS can conform RED/R3D materials (dpx files) from an offline cut using Media composer in no time flat – very tidy workflow.

Thats all for Day 3, more in a few days after I get back to the other side of the world…stay tuned.

NAB 2009 II

– April 22, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

So here we go!

The New AVID!!

The New Avid Logo

So if you asked me for a business card last week, it would have read “Digidesign” on it…this week, as of Monday NAB 2009, it reads Avid. New logo, new web site, new direction, new company…seriously.

Over the last 10 years, Avid as a company have had many CEOs devoted to change, to the principles of “interop” of making the audio and video arms talk and co-operate properly. For various reasons, this hasnt happened at the times when it was promised. Gary Greenfield however, is making change happen. In the last 18 months, we’ve seen some folks lets go (for better for worse) and the marketing, logistics, manufacturing, management and sales teams of the big 5 Avid companies have been slowly but surely merged into one single company. Thats right, not just merging 2 companies, but 5, at the same time!

The new Avid web site is here

Lots of great info about the new direction here

And lastly a fantastic showreel of what our customers do and who they are here

I managed to score an interview with Dave Lebolt and will edit that up on my return and post it up. I also grabbed an interview with Paul Neyrinck, Digi (sorry Avid Audio) 3rd party developer of many industry standard surround sound encode/decode solutions. More interviews hopefully to come!

Lastly, I saw a presentation by Larry Blake on our main stage today, talking about ICON and how its revolutionised the way he works – a great quote from him was that working with a traditional hollywood mix stage using a console and PT dubbers is like “typing up a document in word, then printing it out, then typing it up again from scratch to make a few changes, then printing it out and then typing it up again with a few changes…” His point being the lack of integration of the workflow from the sound designer right through to the mix stage when using dubbing workflows over “automation follows edit” type conform within PT. It was a great presentation, wish I could share it with you all but my camera ran out of batteries

NAB 2009

– April 19, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

Hi all, from Las Vegas!

I’ll be over here all week, helping Avid show end to end post production solutions – with particular emphasis on Video satellite HD picture workflows. I’m also looking forwards to hearing Larry Blake speak on the Avid stand – hopefully get some footage to post and share!

Avid, encompassing Digidesign, M-Audio, Sibelius, Pinnacle, Sundance Media and Softimage products, has gone through some big changes in the last year and a half since our new CEO, Gary Greenfield came on board. He’s brought on board some great new staff to help the company transform, promoted existing staff into new roles and all in all, the company is evolving into a very different entity from the one I joined 6 years ago. The key thing for Gary is “Customer success is our success” and we’ve made a tonne of structural changes to make that more of a reality.

I’m thinking this week will see some interesting developments, as NAB always does. I’ll be here and post a few topics as time permits. I’ve also brought my HDV camera with a view to gathering some interviews over here to host on the blog. Stay tuned for more news as it hits!

Where’s Avid @ NAB?

Las Vegas Convention Center
Las Vegas, Nevada USA
Booth # SU 902, South Hall

More info on guest speakers and other events at NAB is here

Pro Tools 8 Australian Tour

– April 5, 2009Posted in: General Topics

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!

Importing Session Data

– March 23, 2009Posted in: ProTools HD tips

This video looks at several key workflows utilising the power of the Import Session Data option from the File menu. Specifically:
1. “Changing the tape” type workflows, where you have an existing mix and wish to import new audio to be mixed by it – particularly relevant with the template system in PT8
2. Importing a favourite channel of plugin settings
3. Compiling a “master session” of multiple PT session files, spread down the timeline.

Import Session Data from Brent Heber on Vimeo.

New plugs!

– March 7, 2009Posted in: General Topics

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!!
SPL Transient Designer Plug in
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…
McDSP Retro Pack

Spanning disks with large trackcounts

– February 26, 2009Posted in: General Topics

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

Expand tracks by Timecode with Concert recordings

– February 23, 2009Posted in: General Topics

See the notes under the video…

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!

Comp edit workflow in PT8

– February 15, 2009Posted in: General Topics

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.

Great bookmarks

– January 29, 2009Posted in: General Topics

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:

http://community.avid.com/

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.

Structure for Post I

– January 23, 2009Posted in: General Topics

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!

What next? (a poll)

– January 18, 2009Posted in: Thoughts

Hey everyone,

Just wondering what topics you’d like to see me cover next? Yes! The Blog is “interactive”!!

Custom Fader Group mapping on D-Command in PT8

– January 15, 2009Posted in: ICON Videos

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

– January 8, 2009Posted in: ICON Videos

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:

Interrogate those busses…

– January 5, 2009Posted in: ICON Videos

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

– December 31, 2008Posted in: ICON Videos

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

– December 27, 2008Posted in: ICON Videos

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.

Find and Replace / Fine and Enhance

– December 9, 2008Posted in: ProTools HD tips

In this blog entry I want to share an old feature that’s had some embellishments thrown at it over the last few years. Video below:

Back in the early days of TDM, there was a particularly convoluted shortcut that would allow you to select a region in the edit window, thenhold the modifier and click and drag a second region from the region bin on top of the 1st region and a very powerful Find and Replace function window would appear. In my experience back then, it was such a complicated task that I just put it off as a non-event and got on with using other tools to get the job done.

Since 7.2 and all the right click enhancements, this feature is back “in vogue”.

In order to find and replace a region on the timeline, all you now need do is simply highlight the region and then right click on the replacement region in the region bin and in your context pop up you now have the Find Replace function ready to go!

Find Replace allows you to selectively choose what file to replace, what instances of that region to replace (just one or all) on what tracks to replace it (just one or all) and the duration of the replaced region (original or replacement length). Its extremely powerful to replace kick drum samples, gun shots, and all those sorts of impulse sounds we use constantly.

The double whammy comes when you use Find Replace in combination with the newish Duplicate track function. Right click on a track name in the edit window, choose to duplicate it, including all automation and the current playlist. Now you have two tracks, identical. Use Find Replace on the duplicate track and you can now easily automate a mix between the new and old sounds.

Ive seen this used in both post and music. Add a 60Hz “kicker” underneath the kick drum only takes a few mouse clicks. Bulking up a gun shot with a small explosion underneath it, the options are only as limited as your lateral thinking!

Elastic Music beds (pt2)

– November 24, 2008Posted in: General Topics

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!

Elastic Music beds (pt1)

– November 19, 2008Posted in: General Topics

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.

Elastic Dialogue

– October 20, 2008Posted in: General Topics

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.

What are the “Custom Fader” modes?

– October 1, 2008Posted in: ICON Videos

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

– September 11, 2008Posted in: ICON Videos

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…