Some of the most useful day to day features of Pro Tools, in its editing guise, are assembled around the tools buttons on the toolbar at the top of the edit page. Features like Tab to Transients and Zoom Toggle were a revelation to me when I was first learning Pro Tools and once I finally understood what the Link Edit and Timeline Selection and Insertion Follows Playback buttons did some of the mysterious “weird’ behaviour of Pro Tools was finally (and predictably) revealed to be my fault after all!
One button which often gets overlooked is Link Track and Edit Selection. For many years I found I could get by quite happily without this button. However it is really useful in day to day Pro Tools operation when combined with a handful of shortcuts relating to track operations.
What Does The Link Track And Edit Selection Button Do?
In the best spirit of the least catchily named parts of the Pro Tools interface, the clue really is in the name. A Track selection is precisely that, the track or tracks you currently have selected as indicated by their track names being highlighted in white and their entry in the Tracks List sidebar being highlighted in blue.
An Edit Selection is the highlighted area on the track lanes on the timeline. This can be occupied by a clip or be empty space in the timeline and it can span more then one track either contiguously or non-contiguously. Also bear in mind that the flashing Insertion Point on the timeline which is displayed when there is no edit selection currently selected is also a selection. Just one with zero duration.
What the button which links these does is to select the track or tracks in which the insertion point or edit selection is made and vice versa, moves or extends the edit selection to any tracks which are selected.
How Is The Link Track And Edit Selection Button Useful?
The principal benefit you’ll find using this button is that you can use the various ‘Shift+’ shortcuts to toggle Solo, Mute, Input Monitor and Record Enable on the selected tracks by navigating the session using the Command Focus shortcuts P and ;.
This is very fast indeed and falls very neatly under the fingers of an experienced editor who will more than likely be navigating the timeline using P and ;.
To see this workflow in action watch the video tutorial brought to you with the support of Avid.