Pro Tools Pointer #10

Screen Redraws In
The World Of Pro Tools -
Myth And Reality

by Dave Whittaker

The myth: Pro Tools is slow at redrawing the screen.

This canard has been heard around town, also hinted at in an article about a competing workstation in the last Newsletter.

Reality: redraws are virtually instantaneous.

As long as you're running current software on a reasonably current Macintosh, screen redraws happen instantly, even during playback and record. The system I've been using lately has Pro Tools v3.21 running on an Apple 9600 Power PC (604e processor running at 200Mhz with 512Kb disk cache), and it just blazes along. Older machines, like the 33Mhz Quadra 950, take a couple beats, so if you're working on such a machine, consider upgrading soon. Digidesign's new Pro Tools 4.x software is written in native Power PC code, speeding up operations considerably, but it runs only on Power PC chips.

Track Transfer&
Region List Chaos

If you've used the Track Transfer utility to move edited material between sessions (most typically in rebalancing situations), you've probably discovered that the region list in the resulting session is no longer in tidy alphabetical order. The merging of session information in the Transfer process results in seeming chaos because the Source session regions appear in the region list in the order in which they show up in each track. To force the Region List to re-sort simply go to the Display menu, switch on "Show File Names in Region List" ("Show Volume Names" will also work), then switch it back off when Pro Tools finishes the re-sort. Voila!

Using The Autolocator As
A Zoom Controller

Pro Tools 3.x allows for as many as 100 autolocate points in a session, which can be handy for moving around quickly, but I find that using the Autolocator as a memory for Zoom settings is its best feature. Generally, I find that 3 or 4 zoom settings will cover nearly all my needs. To set these up, adjust the amplitude and timeline settings to one of your favorite combinations, then double click on an available autolocator button (in the right side of the Transport window). When the pop-up appears, de-select the box labeled "Current Time/Selection", and type in a name for this setting. If you've selected the button for memory location #1, for example, the window should look like this:

Click on '0K', then go on and fill up several more autolocate points with other favorite zoom settings. The Transport window should look something like this when you're done:

Then rather than clicking on the numbered button to change settings, use the keyboard shortcut: type the button's number on the keyboard's number pad followed by the period on the number pad. If you work with template sessions, you'll only need to set up these zoom settings once. Otherwise, you will need to make them fresh for each session, but the time spent is well worth the time saved while editing.