Many of the most repetitive tasks have a keyboard shortcut of their own, or even a whole workflow, that eases the workload to some extent. In other cases, little-known features make it easy to carry out practices that would otherwise be complicated to apply. In both cases, knowing these particulars results in improved productivity, and that is the goal of this series of articles.
Pro Tools version 7.4 has been chosen as the reference, and unless otherwise noted, everything described applies to HD as well as LE and M-Powered. In fact, some techniques will also be useful in other DAWs, since they are general practices.
Once again, to save space and make for easier reading, the keyboard shortcuts given throughout the text are for Mac, but the summary table lists both the Mac and Windows shortcuts.
More Ways to Export
Picking up where the previous article left off, we had just seen how to handle the need to work on (editing, for example) part of the session on one machine while the original session keeps being used for other tasks (continuing to record, for example) on another computer.
We saw that Pro Tools session files are “self-contained” and can be copied independently along with various audio files, and then the session can be rebuilt manually in a folder on any other machine. It's worth keeping this in mind, as it can save a lot of time when transferring files from one machine to another.
Another way to export the session is with the Save Copy In command, under the File menu (there is no keyboard shortcut). This opens a dialog box where you can specify, among other things, where to save the copy and whether you want to copy all the audio files.
You also get the option of whether or not to copy the fade files. If you've made a large number of edits in the session (using Beat Detective, for example), there may be a very high number of fade files.
Because these are very small files but there are a great many of them, some computers struggle to copy them and sometimes hang during the process (the same goes for some backup programs).
If you select the “Don´t copy fade files” option, these files won't be copied along with the rest, removing a possible source of problems.
When you open the exported session on another computer, Pro Tools will report that some fades are missing and offer the option to generate them again (Regenerate missing files without searching). Since fades are built from the audio files, which will have been copied, they can be re-created on the destination computer without any trouble.
Relinking
And this leads straight to a window that can be extremely useful, even though it can be a little scary the first time it appears: Missing Files. When you open a session and Pro Tools can't find all the files it needs, the Missing Files window is displayed. It tells you the type and number of missing files and asks what to do.
If only fades are missing, the option mentioned above lets you regenerate them without searching, but at some point an audio or video file may be missing too.
In that case, the first option offered is “Skip All,” which lets you keep opening the session, ignoring the missing files: all the missing audio and video clips will go into Offline mode.
This means their length and position will be shown in the Edit window, but you won't be able to see the waveform. Of course, they can't be played back either, but perhaps they aren't needed for the task at hand (the rest of the Online files will display and play back without problems).
The next option is “Manually Find & Relink,” which lets you specify where the files are or which folders to search, and the last option is “Automatically Find & Relink,” in which Pro Tools searches all available hard drives.
If you have an idea of where the files might be, the quickest approach is to choose the manual option and tell the program which folders to search, since otherwise the search can take quite a while.
If you choose the manual option, the Relink window will open automatically. There you can search for the files and, once found, the new path to them will be written into the session (Commit links).
To do this, you first select where to look for the files. In the example, the entire “HD Backup” volume was selected, but you could have selected just one or several folders.
Next, select the files you want to search for and click “Find Links.” Pro Tools will ask which criteria to use for the search. In general, the default option gives good results.
You can tell Pro Tools is searching because where it said “Find Links” it now says “Stop.”
If the audio files are found, a gold symbol resembling two rings will appear to the left of each one. To replace the old path with the new one, click “Commit Links,” which tells the program that this is the new location of the files, and they will switch to Online mode.
Along the lines of Relink, when you start moving sessions around, you sometimes need to check where each of the audio files is. The Disk Allocation window (Setup menu) is very handy for this, showing a summary of where the session's audio files are located.
Another useful window in these cases is the Project window (Alt+O), which not only shows the location of all the files in the session but also gives a detailed summary of each one, including size, creation and modification dates, sample rate, bit depth, format, number of channels, original timestamp...
When you finish a project and want to archive the session to a hard drive or DVDs, it's a good idea to confirm that all the files in the session are in the corresponding Audio Files folder. Sometimes the record folder is changed inadvertently, and you may end up saving a session that's missing files stored somewhere else.
Editing
Often, even with good musicians and after comping the best parts of several takes, you may need to adjust small deviations in a player's performance in a particular passage.
This kind of editing, which tightens up all the tracks before mixing, is called “pocketing,” and it is one of the tasks alluded to when we talked about exporting sessions to work on several machines at once.
There are many ways to do this editing, and everyone ends up adopting their own techniques and preferences. However, a fairly widespread practice is “visual editing,” that is, editing not only by listening (which is indispensable) but also by watching the position of the waveforms on screen.
Say you've already edited the drum tracks and now want to tighten up the bass track. In that case, you choose the most representative drum tracks and place them around the bass track.
In the example, the kick and snare have been placed surrounding the bass track (red waveforms), and immediately above and below are the hi-hat track and the tom tracks. In the image, the zoom level corresponds to Pro Tools zoom preset 4 (the “4” key on the regular keyboard, which is also the dollar sign).
You can see visually what you'd already detected by ear: relative to the drum hits, the bass is a little ahead of and behind the beat in some spots.
Once the tracks are arranged this way, it's useful to create a memory location (the Enter key on the numeric keypad) so you can remember their arrangement and size, as well as the zoom level, and quickly recall this configuration later if needed.
To edit the bass line, the individual notes are isolated from each other with the Separate Region command (Apple+E), and then visually aligned with the drum hits using the minus/plus keys (the “+” and “-” on the numeric keypad).
These +/- keys perform the “Nudge” command, which for this editing task is best set to “Mins:Secs,” with a value between 5 and 15 milliseconds.
In Figure 5 you can see how the first bass note has been moved 20 milliseconds to the right by selecting the region and pressing “+” twice in a row (the Nudge value is 10 ms) to line it up with the kick hit.
Figure 6 shows the final result of the edit. Of course, the final judgment on whether the edit is correct comes from listening to the passage, but being able to make a first pass visually speeds up the work enormously.
When you edit this way, it's a good idea to always use the same zoom level (there are five presets, keys 1 through 5) and Nudge amount, because over time you intuitively learn how many times you need to press +/- to cover the distance you're about to edit.
In the example the bass was tightened to the drums, but you could just as well adjust a guitar hit, guitars against each other, the vocal, and so on. You just need to place the tracks with the most important subdivisions next to the track you're editing and follow the method described above.
Fades
Going back to Figure 6, you can see that all the edits have been covered with a crossfade to avoid clicks. A quick way to create these crossfades is with the “Smart Tool” (F6+F7 or F7+F8).
This smart tool gives you the Trim (F6), Selector (F7) and Grabber (F8) tools all at once. Depending on where you place the cursor, it lets you adjust the region (when placed at the left or right edges), select part of the region (when placed in the upper half of the region) or grab and move the region (when placed in the lower half).
In addition, when the cursor is placed in the upper left or right corner, the tool lets you make a fade in or fade out (respectively), and if you place it between two regions (in the lower part), the symbol for creating the aforementioned crossfade appears.
So one way to create fades manually is with the Smart Tool. If you wanted to create them all at once, one option would be to select all the regions where you want fades and open the Batch Fades window (with the regions selected, Apple+F).
There you can specify the length of the fades, along with many other options such as the fade-in and fade-out shape, the fade type, whether to adjust existing ones...
If you're going to mix a session with lots of edits, a recommended practice is to select all the regions in the session (the “All” edit group is handy for this) and apply a batch fade to all of them. If you deselect the “Adjust existing files” option, new fades will only be created where there weren't any, respecting the ones already there. This way you can avoid some clicks that would have gone unnoticed.
For this type of fade, a length of 5 to 15 milliseconds usually works well, although you can never generalize. Keep in mind that very short fades can be more audible than long ones, but also be careful, since very long fades can reach further into the waveform than necessary and cover transients.
When you're joining two regions and a fade doesn't quite work, changing the type sometimes gives good results: “Equal Power” or “Equal Gain.” In theory, the former is useful for fades between regions with different content and the latter is intended for fades between regions of the same instrument.
Similarly, sometimes a very short fade seems like the right call, and in the end a very long fade solves the problem (or vice versa). As with everything in audio, you have to try it, and “if it sounds good, it is good.”
Snapping to
Continuing with editing shortcuts, the Ctrl, Apple, Alt and Shift keys make another appearance, because when you want to move a region to specific points on the timeline, these modifiers become vitally important.
In Figure 7, suppose you want to move the first hit of the quinto (bottom track) so it lines up with the first kick hit (top track).
With the “Tab to transients” option enabled (upper left of the Edit window), place the cursor to the left of the quinto's first hit (leaving a little space) and press the Tab key. This takes the cursor to the transient of the instrument's first hit (Figure 8).
Note: when using the Tab to transients function, if you don't leave enough space between the cursor and the next transient, the cursor may fail to detect the transient. If you then press Alt+Tab, the function moves backward in time (to the left) and may detect transients it didn't find going forward.
Next, cut (separate) the region (Apple+E), then place the cursor on the first kick hit (again, place the cursor to the left of the first kick hit and press Tab: Figure 9).
When the cursor is at the desired point, just Ctrl+Click on the separated quinto region so the start of the region lines up with the point where the cursor sits (Figure 10).
If instead of the start of the region you want to align the end of the region with the cursor, you proceed in a similar way, but this time you Ctrl+Apple+Click on the region you're going to move.
And if what you want to align is a point in the middle of the region, you can use a Sync Point. Going back to Figure 7, suppose you want to line up the quinto's second hit with the kick's first hit.
Of course, one way would be to separate the quinto region at the second hit, align that region with the kick and then drag the region to the left with the Trim tool.
A faster way, however, is to set a sync point on the second hit. To do that, just Tab to the second hit and set the sync point: Apple+; (Apple plus semicolon).
A small green triangle will then appear on the region (Figure 11), and now all you have to do is Ctrl+Shift+Click on it to bring the sync point to wherever the cursor is placed (Figure 12).
In summary, to move the start of the region, use Ctrl; to move the end of the region, Ctrl+Apple; and to move the sync point, Ctrl+Shift.
And if you have any fingers left over (and you should), you can still add one more key: Alt. This modifier lets you make a copy of the region. That is, if you drag a region with the Grabber while holding Alt, a copy of the region is created.
So by Ctrl+Alt+Clicking on the region, a single click creates a copy of the region with its start synced to the point where the cursor is (the original region stays untouched, right where it was).
Ctrl+Alt+Apple+Click would sync a new copy of the region by its end, and Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Click would do the same, but with the sync point.
As you can see, these modifiers can speed up editing in Pro Tools considerably.
In Conclusion
That's a new collection of keyboard shortcuts and techniques that we hope you'll find useful. In the next issue we'll continue with editing and cover automation, region groups, loops, view changes, importing entire mixes, copying monitor mixes, master faders, and more.
