The EM Poll

Pro Tips for Pro Tools LE

Apr 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Gino Robair

           

You can perform Cut, Copy, and Paste with X, C, and P, respectively, without holding down the Command/Ctrl key. Once you've highlighted and cut or copied a selection, you can use P to move it up or semicolon (;) to move it down, preserving the start and end time of the selection. (Holding down the Option/Alt key while moving a highlighted region is another method.) You can also tab the cursor up and down using the P and semicolon keys.

Tab forward laterally through a track of audio regions using the apostrophe (') key: the cursor will stop at the beginning and end of each audio region as you hit the key. To reverse tab, use L. (Using these key commands in a MIDI track tabs you to each note.) If you want to start playback while your fingers are in the neighborhood, press the left-bracket ([) key.

Clean Up That Mess!

If you've been working on a session for an extended period, it's likely that you have accumulated extraneous data. It is, therefore, a good idea to do a little housekeeping once in a while, so that there is no wasted space on your hard disk. There are several ways to do that.

Say you have finished recording, editing, and mixing a song, and you want to make an archival data backup that includes only the elements being used. Because some of the following steps are destructive and may potentially delete something you need, use the Save Session Copy In option, under the File menu, to make a backup of your entire session in a safe place. If you perform the following cleanup routines successfully, you can delete this backup version. Otherwise, it's there if you need it.

The first step is to remove unused audio files. Select them in the Audio region bin located at the far right of your Edit window (if it's not showing, click on the double arrow at the bottom-right corner of the screen). If you're selecting more than one region file, click on each one while holding down the Shift key until all of them are highlighted. Click on the Audio tile and choose Clear Selected from the pull-down menu. Click on Remove if you want to take those files out of the session but leave them on the hard disk. Click on Delete if you want to permanently remove the files from the disk.

The difference between Remove and Delete is important to understand: the Delete function is a destructive one, so if you are sharing files with another session or project, choose Remove. Otherwise, you will negatively impact other songs by deleting the shared audio files.

But what if your region list is a mile long, and you can't easily tell which regions aren't being used. Go to the Audio pull-down menu again and choose Select. Highlight the Unused Regions Except Whole Files option and click on it. The unused regions in the session will be automatically highlighted. Go to the Audio pull-down menu once more, choose Clear Selected, and click on Remove in the Clear Audio box. If you want to remove (or delete, if you're feeling confident) all unused audio files in the session, highlight Unused Regions under the Select category in the Audio menu. Then go to Clear Selected and choose Remove or Delete as needed.

Once the unused data is gone, it's time for one more step that will minimize any wasted space in the session and allow for a streamlined backup. The Compact Selected command permanently deletes any audio data that is not being referenced by a region. (That is why I used Remove to clear — but not destroy — the unused region data that I wanted to keep. Any detritus left over will be removed for good after that process.) If you are completely done with your session, choose Select All under Audio. Then go to Audio and click on Compact Selected. In the dialog box, you are prompted to select the amount of “padding” (a user-specified amount of time around the remaining files) that you want, which will be used for crossfades. Click on Compact, and the program will process and remove any remaining unused audio and then automatically save the results.

Play the session to make sure that you didn't inadvertently delete something useful. If it plays correctly, use Save Session Copy In to copy and place all of the session elements into one centralized location. Now you have a complete copy of your session that you can burn to disc and place in your archive.

More Good Housekeeping Secrets

Maximum system efficiency should be one of the main goals of the Pro Tools LE user. Because the program relies on your computer's CPU for every task, you want to use those cycles judiciously. One way to save CPU cycles is to make inactive any tracks that are not being used at a particular point in a session. When a track is inactive, its associated automation, plug-ins, sends, and voice allocation is deactivated, so it doesn't require any CPU time. To make a track inactive, go to the track in the Mix window and Command + Control/Start + click on the Track Type indicator. The track will become gray when it is inactive.

Another way to buy back CPU time is to reduce the number of automation breakpoints. Under Setups, select Preferences, then click on Automation. Check the box marked Smooth and Thin Data After Pass, and Pro Tools will automatically delete unnecessary breakpoints in the automation.