real time bounce tip in PT

[Actualsizeaudio]

Oh, man, you should see the screaming messages on the Avid/Digidesign forum...

I was one of those. I did not agree with the dropping of some of the upgrade paths like DVTK2 to CPTK. I think they (Avid) are an atrociously run company, and their employee feedback on Glass Door proves it.

The whole 999 for an HD upgrade, unless you buy into our useless phone plan, in which case it is 599 was just weird. It should be noted I bought into the phone plan, then found a CPTK on ebay. In the end, the upgrade to PT10 took up way too much of my life than it should have.

[John Blankenship]

...

(And why it is remarkable that Avid missed the same thing happening to them when FCP came out.)

They barely dodged the bullet. But, actually, it did happen to Avid, too, in a huge, but slightly less fatal, way. It didn't put them out of business, but it entirely changed their business model for Media Composer and some other products. Ever since post houses found they could get several seats of FCP for the price of one seat of MC, Avid has been in a tailspin. The most consistent thing they've done over the last few years is layoffs.

[Marc Wielage]

Lightworks... wow! I couldn't have even imagined that a fully functioning Lightworks system was still around. Does it still require the additional "crash screen" to keep track of all the significant operational difficulties it used to have?

Lightworks (incredibly) is still around, and it's a free, open source program.

http://www.lightworksbeta.com/

There are people who still use it. I'm not exactly sure how support is handled, and whether the very spiffy hardware console is still available. Noted editor Thelma Schoomaker still uses it -- including the work she did on Hugo, which was just nominated for an Oscar. If I make it to NAB, I'll have to stop by the Lightworks booth and ask them how they're keeping the program going.

[Angelo Waldron]

Bins and folders for PT from AVID please!

Bins please. Bins please.

Everyone has been asking for years.....AVID, WTF is wrong with your ears?

[dfisk]

The timeline is my workspace. Any files I need I usually import and immediately drag onto the timeline. Periodically I will Select > "All unused regions except whole" and then hit Shift + Command + B to delete them (they are just references to a parent region).

Add the very end of a session, after all work is done, I will File > Save Copy In. This will save only audio files that are used in the timeline, getting rid of unnecessary and unused files. There is usually about a 10% storage savings doing this.

Mark

When I did game audio, I would end up with thousands of audio files in one session. In the last game I worked on (an MMORTS that was heavily vehicle based with several factions) I kept everything vehicle related (minus weapons) in one session. With three vehicle factions, and at least 7 to 10 vehicles per faction, and 3 to 4 variations on each thing the vehicles could do (idle sound, rev up, move, stop, explode)...and each one of those would have at least 4 or 5 audio files making up the total sound, I would have tons of audio files, and after finishing a specific pass for a given faction, I would do this same thing...remove all unused files. Otherwise the bin just became a holding cell for thousands of unused files. Once I had what I needed for a given sound, I would name each region so the name in the bin would change so it was easy to find if I needed to recycle it. I've only ever used PT, so I developed a system to where I could work extremely fast in PT. The only other things I've tried are Cubase and Nuendo, and I found I wasn't able to move as quickly in them, but that is really probably more due to the fact that I had worked with PT for so long and knew all the keyboard shortcuts and tricks.

When I worked on tv and film I'd make separate stems if I was doing everything by myself. If I was handing my session off to a pre-dub stage or mix stage I just gave them the session. When I was doing game trailers, I did the same thing. I recorded everything to a stereo or 5.1 track so when there was a change requested, it took much less time to export the file after I made the change. But, the problem with that is if you want to export to a quicktime movie (which was often the case when getting final approval), it had to be a real time export, just like doing a bounce.

[Marc Wielage]

I've been mixing both in and out of the box for years. I swear the PTmix systems and PTHD systems' bussing sounded different to me, but supposedly it was all in my head. When I mix out of the box it is through a Manley 16x2 tube mixer. There's no mystery what I'm doing when I do that;' I'm looking for a less linear mix buss that adds a bit of distortion. People hear the difference and find it pleasing.

I think it will be different yet again once PT11 has 64-bit internal processing. I don't dispute that going through a tube stage changes the sound, sometimes in favorable ways.

One of the advantages of Pro Tools 11 going 64 bit and getting rid of the TDM architecture is that it will be able (finally) to do a non-realtime bounce.

Yep, that's long been a promised feature. Assuming I can make it to NAB, Avid/Digidesign will be among my first stops at the show, just to see what's happening with PT11.

I'll tell you a big feature I wish they had: the ability to open multiple sessions at once. You can do that in Final Cut Pro and certain color-correction programs, but with PT, you have to close each session when you open an old one. I'd love to have, say, three mix sessions up and say, "here's last Thursday's version, here's yesterday's version, and here's the one we did this morning." And then have the ability to cut and paste between them. That's be pretty slick.

[Michael Wynne]

I think anyone has worked in audio post extensively knows that pt is the undisputed industry standard for many reasons. And yes it's a pain in the a## at times but usually only when trying to upgrade prematurely / install untested 3rd party plugins, etc.

Ive been using it since version 5 and the last rock solid version IMO was version was 7.4 which many studios still run. Bouncing and or exporting consolidated regions for me is a simple matter of what's the task at hand. I don't ever want to be in such a hurry that I can't wait on a bounce. To me it's valuable to listen one last time before delivering.

[Jay Rose]

I'll tell you a big feature I wish they had: the ability to open multiple sessions at once

You're kidding!

Nuendo's been doing that for at least five years. It's incredibly handy.... particularly for long-form projects that go through many "final mixes" and then have revisions. The pix editor can ignore original and just cut stems, hand you an OMF with those stems, and you can go back to your own previous version and get just the few moments of edited prodn sound you need to carry over changes.

You can scrub/copy/paste between projects instantly, just by bringing timeline windows forward.

[Marc Wielage]

Nuendo's been doing that for at least five years.

I know. Not yet in Pro Tools.

I'm not even sure if Avid can open up multiple timelines. It probably can, but I haven't used it for 7-8 years.