Pro Tools Pointers #8
The Command Key & Stuff to Consider Buying
by Dave Whittaker
SECTIONS:
In the last column the Option and Control keys were spotlighted for some particularly cool features. The Command ("Apple") key has demanded equal time, so here are a few of my favorite shortcuts which utilize it but which are not that well known.
Command-Period will abort a recording in process and Pro Tools
will delete the audio file that was just being made and
return the insertion point back to the top. This saves the
time of having to delete the audio file's region from the
Edit window and then deleting the file through "Clear
Selected" in the Region List menu.
Holding Command
down when the Selector tool is in use causes the Selector to
act as a scrubber! There really is no need to go to the
Scrubber and then switch back to the Selector just to be
able to scrub - this way is faster.
Hold
down Shift
along with
Command
(while using the Selector tool, as above) and you can scrub
while making a visible selection. You can also then scrub
farther down the timeline, let go, and the selection will
extend down to that spot. This is handy if you're trying to
make a selection and wish to scrub in order to fine tune the
beginning and/or end of the selection. Play with this
feature a bit and you will find how useful it can be when
the visible waveform just isn't telling you all you need to
know and you really need to listen to find that critical
spot for your edit.
On an altogether different note, did you know that there are hardware controllers that can duplicate many of the controls and buttons within Pro Tools? By moving functions to dedicated hardware controls, the user can more easily utilize the potential of the editing and mixing features, while working with even greater efficiency. With a proper monitoring set-up these controllers finally make it practical to pre-mix effects and foley within the editing environment, allowing valuable stage time to be used for dialog pre-dubbing and more relaxed finaling. This approach is already controversial, but it is undeniably the future as stage costs continue to rise and editing budgets shrink.
Without implying any endorsements, here are a couple of the controllers that I'm aware of:
Mackie, the mixing console maker, is coming out with a Pro Tools-dedicated unit with 8 hardware faders, TDM controls, machine control, and a comprehensive hardware emulation of Pro Tools controls. Due out soon is the MCS-3000 from J. L. Cooper, a company with some experience now in making MIDI and workstation controllers. Rather than being dedicated only to Pro Tools, it takes a more open approach, and will reportedly also be useable by Sonic Solutions and Spectral Synthesis workstations. It will offer 8 automated moving faders, lots of user-programmable function keys, 5 rotary knobs for TDM settings, a joystick, transport controls, a log/shuttle wheel, SMPTE/MIDI timecode readers, a numeric keypad, 100 locate points, and expandability to 64 moving faders.
With tools like these, the day is quickly coming when the keyboard will be needed only for naming regions and files.
Thanks to Eric Lindeman for help with this column.
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter
Vol. 18, No. 1 - Jan/Feb 1997