In this, the first of a short series of tips articles, we present five useful Pro Tools tips. Handy, easily digestible features. Hopefully among them there is something here which will be new to nearly everyone.
Add Favourites to AAX and AS Lists
Many people will be aware of the option to add a Default EQ and a Default Dynamics plugin to your plugins menu, allowing quick access to your favourite EQ or compressor. Quick access to specific plugins has been supplemented by the introduction of a plugin search, just click in the plugin slot and start typing the name of the plugin. If you’ve never checked out setting a default, go to the mixing tab of the pro tools preferences and selection from there. The defaults will appear at the top of the list.
What is less well know is that you can do something similar for AudioSuite plugins. This is particularly useful as there is no search for AudioSuite. It’s extremely simple. Just Command-click (Control click on a PC) on the AudioSuite plugin you wish to favourite and it will appear at the top of the list separated by a line from the rest. Multiple plugins can be added. To remove them just Command on the favourite to remove it. If you like this system of favourites you can add AAX plugins to the top of your list in the same way using Command (Control on a PC).
I use AudioSuite a lot when editing dialogue and my favourites are the RX DePlosive and Pro Limiter Loudness Analyser plugins.
CMD To Slip in Grid
Changing Edit modes is easy enough, use F1-F4 to access each mode. Slip and grid are F2 and F4 respectively. However if you are working in Grid and want to temporarily drop out to Slip you can do it by holding Command while making your edit selection, trimming or dragging you clip. If you them want to move your offset event you can use Relative grid mode to snap your event up and doww the timeline maintaining its required offset from the grid.
Multiple Outs
People wishing to route audio to more than one place often use a send to achieve it. With the track output set to the main output and a send routing to some parallel processing or a side chain or whatever. If you want to be able to independently control the level feeding the alternative output a send is the right choice but if it is just a duplicate then you can route. To multiple outputs from the track output.
On a Mac hold Control and select a second output or bus. A ‘+’ will indicate that multiple routings exist on that output. You can do this with sends too.
Toggle Melodyne Editor
Pro Tools’ ARA integration with Melodyne has been a long time coming and once experienced it’s one of those things you can’t imagine being without. I likened it to the introduction of Clip Gain, a feature so useful it’s kind of unbelievable that we managed without it for so long.
The system of tabbed editors at the bottom of the Edit Window for Clip Effects, MIDI and Melodyne adds more potential clutter to the Pro Tools UI so managing those elements which compete for screen real estate is important. To toggle the Melodyne editor hit Option/Alt 8. However the rally useful one for me is Option+Ctrl+8 (Alt+Start+8 on Windows) which toggles the Melodyne editor to full height. Being able to quickly pop it up for detailed work and then just as easily park it at the bottom of the screen speeds things up hugely.
Change Bus Instead Of Output
To use Pro Tools effectively you have to know how to use Option+Shift for ‘Do To Selected Tracks’. Changing routing in this way is a real time saver. However if you want to change all the tracks routed to an output to another output the the fastest way is to do it from the IO setup window.
Just go to the Bus tab of the IO setup window and you can remap the output bus instead of changing all the output assignments in the session. This is possible because Pro Tools uses Mapped Output Busses, All you have to do is find the output you wish to re-map in the bus tab, not the output tab, and change its setting in the Mapping to Output column. For example I often want to change my entire session from routing to my MBOX Studio’s Internal Outputs 1-2 to Internal Outputs 3-4. I could do it by selecting all the tracks routed to 1-2 in. The Pro Tools Mixer but it is far quicker and less likely to introduce errors to do it from the IO setup.
In this video, brought to you with the support of Avid, Julian demonstrates all of these tips in Pro Tools.