The A-Z of Pro Tools is a series of articles by Julian Rodgers to help Pro Tools users get to grips with all the different features in Pro Tools.
It features everything on both the basics of Pro Tools right through to more advanced subjects.
Pro Tools is regarded as the industry standard recording, editing and mixing software for both music and post production and can be heard on countless albums and many top films and TV shows.
And so we arrive at the last letter of the alphabet. There was only ever one contender for this letter: Zooming
To choose You as the candidate for the letter Y could be seen as admitting defeat (look in the Reference Guide index - it goes from X straight to Z!) but I’d prefer to think of it as an acknowledgement of what is really important.
If it weren’t for the habit of using X as shorthand for “cross” I’d be having to write something about XML, I don’t think that would have been much for for me or you… Luckily there are a few other candidates for X:
The Workspace Browser is a file browser with enhanced search capabilities. It offers in app asset management with extra features making it more useful to musicians. A tool which allows quick, meaningful searches of a sample library is of course essential in post production and the best of the third party alternatives are very capable.
I’m not aware of any other DAW which has a voice based system like Pro Tools does. I would imagine its a result of the DSP heritage of Pro Tools that all versions of Pro Tools have a system of voices which is distinct from the maximum number of inputs and tracks available.
Although there aren’t a huge number of things in the Pro Tools World which begin with U, the Universe window is definitely worth a mention, and then how can we forget Undo...
After last week’s single topic post on the Smart tool, this week we’re looking at legacy content on the site relating to the letter T.
The Smart tool offers automatic switching of tools and its hardly a new feature. It makes me wonder why I’ve never really used it that much. I think I just didn’t know it was there to begin with and now its hard wired as a second choice for me.
Recording something into Pro Tools should be easy and indeed it is, but that isn’t quite the same thing as saying it doesn’t sometimes get surprisingly complicated. Like most DAWs Pro Tools follows a similar system to that employed in multitrack tape machines and if you press record and play in the transport bar, any record-armed tracks will be recorded onto - easy!
I couldn’t cover the letter Q without looking at quantize. When quantizing people are usually talking about forcing musical events into strict time. Very, very useful but also very misused, how can you use quantize in Pro Tools and how can you avoid over-using it?
In a round-up of legacy content relating to the letter P, the first on the list is the pencil tool. While not the most glamorous feature of Pro Tools, or the newest, its easy to overlook just how useful it is. I recall talking to a producer friend several years ago.
In Pro Tools, Output refers to a path feeding physical outputs in your system. However since Pro Tools 9 there has been more to outputs than that with the introduction of mapped outputs. Mapped outputs in Pro Tools offer some level of flexibility when transferring projects between systems.
When looking at what to include for the letter N I have noticed a common theme. All of these resources I have linked to have something in common. They are all highlighting common keyboard shortcuts. I think I have said before that my policy on keyboard shortcuts is that they are intended to be “shortcuts” i.e. they speed up the execution of things you do often. There is little point learning a shortcut for something you rarely do (and you’ll find it really hard to remember it as well). So with this in mind here are some N’s (and some shortcuts) I couldn’t get by without.
The first M this week is Mute. In this free video I demonstrate a useful trick for A/B-ing tracks using shift+S to toggle the mute buttons on selected tracks. This is really handy so be sure to check it out is you haven’t come across it before.
Latency, Locations, Linking, Latch, Loop…
Much of the metering options In Pro Tools are aimed at the post community with options such as PPM meters, an exception to this is K System metering.
In this video Julian gives a brief overview of using auto join in latch mode in Pro Tools.
O/O Setup, Insertion Follows Playback, Import, Instrument
Before HDX and Pro Tools Ultimate we thought of HD as software but it was principally a hardware solution. Pro Tools HD was introduced in 2002 and was discontinued in 2011.
Its unlikely that anyone who has used Pro Tools at all hasn’t come across the Grabber tool. Used for moving clips on the timeline and creating and manipulating automation breakpoints and midi, the Grabber tool comes in three variants.
Continuing our journey through the A-Z of Pro Tools, the first letter of 2015 is F. There are a few candidates here. Fades are worth a mention as are files.
Dynamic transport is the perfect way for me to link this A-Z of Pro Tools post with last week’s Pro Tools Fundamentals post on playback modes. Dynamic transport is the fifth playback mode, the others being normal, loop, prime for playback and half speed playback. Much misunderstood - especially by me, for a long time.
Caches are a key part of any computer system and effectively are temporary stores designed to retrieve data quickly. For example, browsers use them so you don’t have to keep downloading the same images again and again and caching appears in two places in Pro Tools disk caching and Wave Caches for the waveforms in the clips.
Bounce To Disk is the way in which either entire mixes or parts of a mix can be mixed down to a file using the internal mix engine in Pro Tools.
The AAX plug-in format was announced on 20th October 2011, AAX being the acronym for Avid Audio eXtension. AAX was developed to replace the RTAS and TDM plug-in formats which were 32 bit and made it impossible for Avid to create a 64bit DAW.