At NAMM 2020, Avid will be demonstrating the most asked-for new feature request - Folder Tracks. Although you will be able to see Folders Tracks on the Avid Booth, Avid tell us that is is another feature that is ‘coming soon’ but it is good to know that it is on the way.
What Is Folder Tracks?
Folder Tracks have been designed to improve the organisation of your Pro Tools sessions and will help to eliminate clutter and distractions on the screen, which ties in with Avid’s aim to continue to free your mind to work more productively without the distraction of numerous tracks and complexity on screen.
Here are just some of what you’ll be able to do with Folder Tracks in your session:
Organize tracks into collapsible folders (up to 8 layers)
Drag-and-drop tracks into folders with ease
Colour-code folders
Edit the folder itself, thereby automatically editing the “member” tracks simultaneously
Basic Folder Track Functions: include reordering tracks in and out of folders, open/close folders, and propagation of show/hide and active/inactive actions to member tracks.
Routing Folder Tracks: allows audio signals to be routed through the folder for stem mix workflows. All Aux track functions, including inserts, sends, and automation are available on Routing Folders. Optionally, selected tracks can be automatically routed when moved into a new Routing Folder.
Editing: Edit selections made on folders are propagated to their member tracks, allowing one to easily edit clips across all member tracks. On open folders, all edit commands that are currently available on multi-track selections are allowed; A smaller core set of edit commands are available on closed folders and will allow users to perform many useful edits without having to open folders.
Track Presets: Folders with their nested members can be saved and imported as Track Presets, expanding the already powerful feature.
Backward Compatibility: When sessions with folders are opened in Pro Tools versions earlier than 2020.R1, Routing Folders turn into AUX tracks, while Basic Folders are simply dropped. Nesting is flattened.
What Do Folder Tracks Look Like?
For those of you whoa re not able to get to NAMM 2020 we have some examples, which show how Folder Tracks will look when Avid release it in an upcoming version of Pro Tools.
With all these examples, you can click on the image to see a full-sized version. Let’s start with a music session…
A simple example of using Folder Tracks in a music session is using folders to organise your tracks by type. This shows a music session made up of a number of Folder Tracks and in this view, the folder tracks are all closed. When closed you get blocks representing the clicks and the colours follow the colour coding of the track in the folder. Consider this an more of an overview, from which you can see the whole session.
For instance, in the example above, you’ll see that tracks are organised into folders, based on the track type. Lead vocal tracks live in the hot pink folder titled “Vox Lead folder”.
You’ll notice that the Track looks a little different now, with icons on the bottom left of the track information area, indicating that this is a folder. Additionally, you’ll notice a change above the folder title, as well as the same colour around a thin border across the track information and additional track modules (Inserts, Sends, I/O, Real-Time Properties, etc…). All of this is to ensure that you will be able to distinguish a track from a folder.
Looking into the main edit/arrange area, you’ll notice that a visual representation of all the tracks that exist in the folder. In the example below, you’ll notice that the green “Horns folder” has 4 separately coloured tracks, living in this folder.
In this view, you can see that the BV Folder Track has been opened. Now you can see each track in the folder, with waveforms, Clip Gain etc all as normal. Note that each track in the folder still has Inserts and Sends as normal, but so does the BV folder track as well. You will also see that the folder master track has routing too and that the input has been set to the ‘BV folder’ and the output is going to the main output for the session as normal.
In this view, you can see both the ‘Floating vox’ and ‘Adlibs’ folder tracks open, without the BVs tracks getting in the way. Folder Tracks make it so much easier to see what you need to see and hide what you don’t need to see. I can see users not needing to use Window Configurations anywhere as much, once a version of Pro Tools with Folder Tracks is released.
Lets more on an audio post-production example. Again we start with an overview with all the folder tracks closed…
By their very nature, audio post sessions tend to get large rather quickly. Using Folder Tracks in Pro Tools an audio post user can easily build a scene by grouping related tracks together and manage functions such as signal flow, mutes, and sends, all through a routing folder.
Also available in Pro Tools Ultimate is the ability to navigate a large session easily by consolidating numerous tracks in the Mix and Edit windows. Audio post users will be able to organise different types of tracks including scenes, sound design, dialogue, and any other audio elements, logically, according to the user’s desire.
Working down this post session, you can see that video tracks can even be in folder tracks, as can VCAs, again making session management so much easier. Next, we have a DX folder followed by FXs tracks for the dialog that aren’t in the DX folder track.
Following on are folders for music, ambiences, foley, FXs and even a Fix folder track, before we hit some FXs reverb tracks.
In this second view of an example post-production session, we can see the Foley folder track open, displaying all the tracks grouped together in this new folder track. Not how all the tracks are mirrored in the folder master track, so even when the folder track is closed you side retain an overview of what is going on in the session.
Check out how the Foley track is displayed in the Tracklist on the left-hand side of the Edit window. It is very easy to see which tracks are part of the FOL folder track with the nested layout on the GUI.
What Do You Think About Avid’s Implementation Of Folder Tracks?
As someone who hasn’t used a DAW with Folder Tracks, Avid’s implementation seems very well thought through and I can see there will be much less need to use Window Configurations to manage large sessions. Using Folder Tracks, when closed will give a compact overview of the session and opening folder tracks will enable us to drill down and see in detail, the parts of the session we are working on, whilst still maintaining an overview of the session as a whole. What do you think? Do you like what Avid has done or would you have preferred something else?