This series could be sub-titled “If it moves right click it” because progressively more & more options have been added where using a right click gives you a range of options that relate to what you need to do at that point. Remember that Control-Click in the Mac Pro Tools world was equivalent to right-clicking. This is now not the case. Control-clicking can do different things to right-clicking now.

Contextual Menus In The Edit Window

Clip - Right Clicking on a clip brings up a contextual menu. Most of these options are available to you elsewhere in Pro Tools but the great advantage of these right-click features is that they offer these options right under your fingertips.

Cut, Copy, Paste, & Clear – These all duplicate the functions in the Edit menu.

Matches - Alternatives - After recording multiple takes with loop or punch recording, you can replace the take currently on a track with one of the other takes. This only works if each region has an identical start time. You can select and audition alternate takes from the Matches popup menu whilst the session plays or loops.

Matches - Channels - When working with audio files imported from a field recorder, you can this feature to replace a mono region on a track with a matching segment of an alternate channel that was recorded simultaneously. Any fades performed on the original region are automatically recalculated against the replacement region, and any pre-existing automation on that track is left unchanged. The details of this feature are complex and if you want more information then I would suggest you start by reading the Field Recorders Workflow guide.

Separate – This is the same as Separate Clip in the Edit menu usually Command+E (Mac) or Control+E (Windows)

Delete Fades – This enables you to delete a fade clip and becomes active when you have made a fade selection.

Snap to Next & Snap to Previous – These work in a similar way to Shuffle and are very useful especially when you don’t want to use Shuffle edit. Take a look at this screen shot, which shows a vocal track I am editing. 

If I right-click on the middle clip and select Snap to Next you will see that it has snapped to the next clip to the right, something you could never do with Shuffle! 

Conversely Snap to Previous will move the middle clip to the clip to the left, which is what you would expect to happen when moving a single clip using Shuffle. Right-Clicking a clip with the Selector Tool at one time enabled you to scrub with the cursor.  Now you use Control-click (Mac) or Start-Click (Windows).

Spot – This brings up the normal Spot clip dialog box.

Group Clips & Ungroup Clips – When you have more than one clip selected, these enable you to create and undo region clips from a selection and are the same as Group and Ungroup in the Clip menu.

Loop and Unloop – These enable you to create, remove, or flatten clip loops and are the same as Loop and Unloop in the Clip menu.

Expand to Tracks – This is another feature that comes into its own when you have multi-channel tracks acquired using a field recorder. Again for more info go to the Field Recorder Workflow guide.