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Pro Tools Pointers #15 |
Your
Friends, The Mac 'Cut' & 'Paste'
Commands...& More
by Dave Whittaker
It's been nearly a year and a half since the last of these "Tips" columns (sorry - I've been tied up in an endless series of temp dubs alternating with low-budget madness). The new editor of the Newsletter has prevailed on me for another batch. Leading off...
Creating a "bulk" region across existing region boundaries:
From time to time we all wish to make a region boundary in the middle of a fade or select across a large piece of material with internal regions, as illustrated here.
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Conforming, in particular, makes this kind of demand, but Pro Tools won't do this with the standard Separate Region command. But if you make the selection, execute CUT with the Macintosh Command-X (the selection will disappear as seen in the "After 'CUT'" illustration), then PASTE everything right back where it had been (Command-V), the desired region boundaries will materialize. In the "After 'PASTE'" illustration you can see this most clearly in tracks "New DIA B" and "New DIA C" at the head of the selection (92 feet) - the fades are gone and replaced by region boundaries.
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How many years have I wished for this capability! I just learned this major time-saver from Dane Davis, who just discovered it by accident himself. The only catch is you will need to fix the fades that get blown away.
This trick has probably been there from the beginning, but I never stumbled across it. The moral of the story is never be afraid to beat on the operating system and software looking for all of their capabilities.
The war between sample rates is over:
Until Version 4.x arrived you had to use programs like Sound Designer II or Sound Hack to convert files at the wrong sample rate to your desired sample rate, and it was a somewhat cumbersome procedure. Digidesign devised a simple utility called Convert and Import Audio to fold the conversion process into the 'Import Audio' step, and it's found just below Import Audio under the Audio top-level pulldown menu.
Simply navigate in the left window to the file(s) that need converting and click on "ADD" for each one; you can also click on "ADD ALL" if that's what you need. Then click on "DONE". Another window will appear asking for a destination folder for the fresh file(s) that will be written. Navigate to your desired folder, click on the bar at the bottom, and sit back. When the number crunching is done the new re-sampled files will appear in your region list; they'll be at the correct pitch and the same length as before. If you have long files, or just a whole bunch of them, the process will take a while (90 seconds for a 30 second stereo original using a Power PC 9500 running at 200MHz). Plan around this reality and make calls for your next job while the computer is chugging. Or nag your company for a G4.
Here are some simple shortcuts I've collected or stumbled across in the last year or so.
Super-quick fades:
Instead of the usual Command-F shortcut to bring up the FADES window, try holding down Control as well. This bypasses the FADES window and you'll find you get a very quick fade at the last fade setting used.
Scrubbing stereo:
Somewhere in one of the early versions of Version 4.x Digidesign implemented stereo scrubbing. Just place the Scrub or Selector tool across the left and right tracks.
Built in shortcuts:
Unless you can find the time to study the manual, you might never realize that Pro Tools has keyboard shortcuts for several frequently made mouse moves. Two of my favorites are scrollbar shortcuts. The Track Scrollbar on the right is controlled by both Control-Page Up/Down or Shift-Page Up/Down. The Timeline Scrollbar along the bottom is controlled by Option-Page Up/Down.
Moving groups:
You can change the placement of a Group within the "Groups" list by clicking in the skinny column to the left of a Group letter and doing a Drag-and-Drop on it to the desired location in the list. This is handy when you wish to organize a bunch of groups that were created haphazardly while cutting.
Moving tracks - another way:
Similarly, try a doing a drag-and-drop routine on a track in the "Show/Hide" window on the left. You'll find this is a quick way to move a track up or down; you can only move one track at a time however. Version 5 - big changes:
The music editor on the feature I'm busy dubbing just got Version 5, and I've been looking over his shoulder. It's exciting - there's a lot of great new stuff we've all been asking for. I hope to be able to go into detail about it later this year. If you own your gear you should definitely look into upgrading. The software update is quite affordable, but be aware that Version 5 is RAM hungry; consider going up to 256 megabytes if you wish to multi-task on your Pro Tools machine.
Tips and reader feedback to this column are most welcome.
Contact Dave Whittaker at 818-980-1506 or
send him an email.
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter
Vol. 21, No. 1 - Jan/Feb 2000
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