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Pro Tools Pointers #21 |
Digipix Tricks, Multi-Speed
Auditioning & 5.1 Features
by Dave Whittaker
and Charles Maynes
Simple Picture Editing with the Quicktime Player
Are you tired of having to sync up your digitized picture every time you import a fresh file? The Quicktime Player that came with your Mac will allow you to do simple editing and you can use it to trim video files so that they will play in sync. The following procedure will work for any session that starts at the top of an hour.
- In Adobe Premiere or Final Cut
Pro, start recording your digital picture before the
start mark and continue recording as normal. Save the
file and quit.
- Open your picture file in the
QuickTime Player. Scroll through the picture until
you’re on the frame before the start mark (use the
right arrow key to move a frame at a time). Then, while
holding the Shift key down, drag the scroll bar back to
the very head of the file. This will select the
"pre-roll" portion of the file which will turn gray in
the scroll bar. Hit Command-X to chop off this portion of
the file.
- Save the file and you’re
done. Your video now begins on the start mark and will
import into Pro Tools in sync.
With versions prior to 5.1, Pro Tools has had trouble playing the end of Premiere digital picture files in 48k sessions. The usual workaround is to record at least an extra minute or two beyond the end of the reel or act when digitizing, but this is an obvious waste of time and disc space. You can use the Quicktime Player to add tail to your picture file without increasing the file size. Open the file in the QT Player. Shift-click and drag in the scroll bar to select a minute or two of video. Copy this material (Command-C). Then drag the cursor to the end of the video, paste the copied material there (Command-V) and save. Your video appears longer to Pro Tools, but the file size hasn’t changed.
Auditioning Tricks
Since version 4.0, Pro Tools has provided multi-speed playback, which you select by holding down the Control key and tapping a key on the numeric keypad – 1 being slowest, 5 normal, and 9 fastest. This feature lets you preview a speed change without opening AudioSuite. In later versions, the — and + keys control the direction of play, as well. (This gives you reverse play at normal speed, but it doesn’t work with locked video.)
Try this: hold down the Control key, tap any key on the numeric keypad, then hit the — and + keys. The sound will switch from forward to reverse and back again. Next, hit a different number key. The speed changes immediately without stopping.
Multiple Undos and Auto Saves Not Just for Fairlights and ‘Frames Anymore!
While Pro Tools 5.0 brought us powerful mixing tools, 5.1 offers an array of new bread-and butter-features for editors. Perhaps the one we’ll all be most grateful for is 16 levels of undo – finally! The system will remember the last 16 editorial or automation moves – you just keep hitting Command—Z to back your way through your work.
Also new is "Auto Save," which saves automatically and preserves old versions of your session. You enable this from the Operations page of the Preferences menu. Auto-Save doesn’t actually save over your current session document; it essentially writes successive "Save As" documents. This makes it easy to precisely backtrack through earlier versions of your cut when things go awry. When Auto-Save is enabled, a "Session File Backups" folder will appear inside your main session folder, where Pro Tools will place up to 99 consecutive backups of your current session (you can set the frequency on the Operations page). Each will have a ".bak" suffix, followed by a number, with the numbers ratcheting up in logical succession. Simply find the file you’re looking for, based on the modification date and time, and open as needed.
Finding Lost and Lonely Files
Using Pro Tools versions prior to 5.1, one can go a bit mad dealing with missing audio files. Moving
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PT 5.1 opens a find window during session launch. |
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Version 5.1 addresses the problem with its new "Find" feature. While not quite as automated as Session Browser, it allows one to find the needed files when the session opens. The popup window that appears lists what is "missing" and allows the user to search for the needed file (see Figure 1).
This can be very handy when you receive OMF sessions from your assistant that have yet to be opened on your drive, or when you are trying to open a stage session that is pulling sweetener files from multiple drives. If the material is scattered in different folders, you will need to do multiple finds, but once all the parent folders have been looked into, Pro Tools will go and get the candidates without further prompting.
An interesting adjunct to this is that Pro Tools now embeds UID’s (Unique File Identification numbers) in all of the files recorded in a 5.1 session, an idea that was borrowed from AudioVision. This means that Pro Tools creates a specific link for every file used in a session and doesn’t rely on the name of the effect to link the session to its media. You can actually have 10 different effects on your mounted drives, each called "Pistol Shot #1", and Pro Tools will alert you if you choose the wrong one in the Find popup when opening a session. This feature allows you to keep all the files for your sessions in one directory without the fear of opening a previous cut and having all the fades recalculated!
Keyboard Shortcuts for Nudge and Grid
When you need to change the increment values in the Nudge or Grid windows, it is much quicker to use keyboard shortcuts than the mouse. The shortcuts are Control-Option +/- for the Grid window and Command-Option +/- for the Nudge window (these windows weren’t separate until version 5). This allows you to move quickly and easily through the various increments without tiring your mouse hand.
More Presets for the ShuttlePro Controller
In the last issue, we profiled Contour Design’s ergonomic Perfit Mouse and USB ShuttlePro Multimedia Controller. Since then, the company has released additional presets for many post-production applications including Pro Tools 5.1, iMovie 2, Premiere 6.0, Final Cut Pro 2.0 and After Effects 4.1. They also offer presets for more everyday applications, including the Apple QuickTime Player and DVD Player, Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, Microsoft Word, QuarkXpress 4.1 and others. Contour is currently beta-testing ShuttlePro drivers for Windows 2000 and should make a Windows version available soon.
Thanks to James Morioka, Annie Thornburg and
Marvin Walowitz for bringing their discoveries to our attention.
Tips and reader feedback are most welcome.
Contact Dave Whittaker at (818) 980-1506 or via email
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Magazine
Vol. 22, No. 3 - July/August 2001
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Copyright © 2001, All Rights Reserved by The Motion Picture Editors Guild, IATSE Local 700