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.
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!
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.
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!
