Track Properties

            You already know that tracks can either RECORD or READ audio.  In the same area under the track name, you can also choose to MUTE certain tracks if you don't want to hear them, or you can SOLO them, meaning hear only that track, muting everything else.  You can also choose what size the track can be under the waveform arrow, but that's getting too fancy for our down and dirty usage.  On to more important things.

Separating your audio on different tracks

            Each different kind of sound (dialogue, music, effects) should reside on a different track.  You may want to have one track per character, or one track per type of music.  The free version of ProTools handles up to eight tracks of audio.

            After you have added tracks for each sound type you desire, you should first think about how to break down what you've inputted into these different tracks. Using the highlighting tool (third from left, with wavelength on it), highlight which part you want to break off.  Then click on the hand tool and change it to SEPARATION (a hand with scissors).  Now you can move that part you highlighted as a separate segment to another track.  You can do this to your whole original track in order to organize it better.

            Use the hand tool (without the scissors) to move sounds around after you've separated them.  Select the particular segment, then grab the sound segment and move it to the new track.  The slip mode is best for this task (more on slip/shuffle follows).

Playing audio

            Use the transport console to play through your tracks.  The play, fast forward, stop, rewind buttons all move you through your timeline.  The space bar actually works as both a play and stop button as well.

Zooming in and out on the timeline

            You may need to see more or less detail in the waveforms on your timeline.  You can use the zoom tool (the magnifying glass-type button) to click on the timeline and zoom in and out.  Alternately, you can click on the left and right arrow buttons in the upper left corner.  These make the timeline bigger and smaller.

Selecting audio

            Essentially there are two methods of selecting audio.  If you want to select the whole audio segment, not just part of it, use the hand tool.  This selects the whole thing, and you can then move the entire segment around.

            Sometimes you only want to select part of a segment, for example, if you wanted to delete that part.  In that case, use the highlighting (wavelength symbol) tool, which lets you highlight only a portion of the segment. 

Shuffle and slip

            There are two basic modes of moving things around in PTF.  You select which one you want in the upper left hand corner.  SHUFFLE locks segments to in-points, allowing you to move segments only to certain areas.  SLIP allows you to move segments anywhere.  You can see why slip is typically more useful.  Use slip.  And don't worry about grid and spot.  They're basically un-useful too.

Showing parts of audio

            There are tools I've ignored so far: one is the parentheses-like tool (sorry I can't come up with a more clever name for it), between the highlighting tool and zoom- the one with the arrows.  When you select it, you are able to show parts of a track, like extending it from the original track.  For example, if you broke your original track into parts on different tracks, you could actually use this tool to show the entire original track, if you extended it out far enough.

            On the flip side, you can also use this tool to hide certain parts of a segment, too.  It's one way to kind of delete parts of audio by not showing them.

Scrubber        

            The last tool I'll describe is the scrubber, the one with the speaker icon.  Use this tool to drag across your audio segments and hear them play at

the speed you're dragging.  I'm not going to get into the pencil, because it's so rare that people use it for basic editing. 

Deleting audio

            Want to get rid of the bad stuff?  You can just not show it, by using the parentheses tool.  Or you can use the highlighting tool, select the section you want to delete, and then press the delete key.  Then it leaves a hole where you deleted and separates what is left into two different segments.

Setting levels for audio

            So you've moved things around, positioned everything just as you want it, but now you need to deal with the volumes of everything.  You adjust levels track by track.  Go to the waveform button near the track name, and click it to reveal a pop-up list.  Choose VOLUME.  The track will re-draw with the waveform underneath, and a level on top.  This represents the volume of the track.  Use the hand tool (without the scissors) to make little points on the line where you can pull down or up the levels.  (Those points are called keyframes, by the way- an important concept in nonlinear editing.)

            You can do manual fades with this function or you can have the computer do them.

Creating fades

            Highlight the section you want to fade, and then go to Edit / Fades / Create Fades.  Then you get to choose what kind of fade you want: whether you want the levels to cross at different amplitudes, represented by different patterns you can choose.  Some transitions sound better with one kind of fade over the other.

Volume problems

            For some reason, every once in a while, the keyframe volume adjustment doesn't work.  Typically this is accompanied by a graying-out of the READ button in your session.  We think this has to do with a problem with certain sessions that import audio from CDs directly into PTF, without going through a conversion program like SoundApp.  There is a work-around, though, that offers a solution.  Under AudioSuite, there is a GAIN effect, which is just an adjustment of volume.  You can highlight the section where you want to adjust the volume, then go to the gain effect, and change the volume there.  The preview button previews the volume you've selected on the highlighted portion; the process button puts the effect on the highlighted portion.  Once you process it, you'll see the amplitude of the waveforms visibly change.  Then you can create fades to transition smoothly between one volume and the next.  I know this is a little more complicated than the standard volume adjustment with keyframes, but it works. 

The Dreaded Undo

            You may have noticed by now that PTF only has one level of UNDO.  Egads!  Only one level!  This means you should consider carefully what you're doing here, and decide pretty darn quickly if what you just did isn't what you want.  Of course, PTF is a program where it's pretty easy to get something back, recreate what you did, so it's not as big a deal as it initially might seem.  Remember that you can always get your original tracks/imports back from the saudio list at the right-hand side of the timeline and drag them into the timeline for a fresh copy.

 
AudioSuite

            Under the AudioSuite menu, there are all sorts of little bells and whistles that you can put on your segments.  I'm not going to describe them all, or any of them, for that matter, because if you want to experiment with what they do, then you'll figure it out easily on your own.

Backing up and moving your session

            Use a Zip disk (PC-formatted for PCs, Mac-formatted for macs) to back up your project.  Copy your session and its associated audio and fade files onto the disk, because the project won't work without the session and its media.  Think of the session as a map for the raw media files – one won't work without the other.  Depending on how large your files are, you may need to use multiple zip disks to accommodate the session, audio, and fade files.

            Once you've inputted your audio, you may want to move your session from computer to computer, so that you don't have to work exclusively on the computer that you started your session.  You'll want to back up your session, audio files, and fade files onto a zip disk in order to move from one computer to another.

            Keep in mind that you should only use zip disks for copying and updating copies, rather than working from the zip.  Working off of the zip drive produces a lot of errors-it's a very bad idea.  Zips should be strictly for copying and replacing files at the desktop level, not opening or working with them directly.

Moving your session onto the desktop

            If you have backed up or are moving your session onto a disk, you need to be sure to copy your session onto the desktop of the computer instead of working with the project directly from the disk.  Accessing it from the disk rather than the desktop makes the project more unstable and open to problems.  Copy the project into a folder on the computer you're using and open it from the computer.   

Outputting your session

            Once you're happy with your audio magnum opus, you'll want to get it out of that computer and onto something so that the whole world can listen to it and share your brilliance.  This is where File, Bounce to disk comes in.  Save your session before you bounce to disk.  You will probably want to read the ‘Help' window because it's fairly informative.  Name your new version (which combines all the tracks together).  I suggest saving it as a mono file. Choose Convert after Bounce and press the settings button.  Then you can choose what kind of file it saves as.  I suggest .AIFF, since CD-burning programs like Toast will take this kind of file without problems and without requiring any kind of translation.  Other file types like .WAV, etc. may work but likely need some translation before being able to be burned as a CD.  .AIFF files make it a one-step process rather than a multiple step process.  Choose 16 bit resolution.  The default on other options (quality, etc.) are fine. 

            Make sure you're saving the bounced session to the desktop or internal HD of the computer- not directly to Zip.  (The Zip's rotational speed won't match that of the internal HD and DAE errors will occur while writing.  Zips and other remove-able media are not qualified by Digidesign for use as active session file volumes.)  Now you have a file that can be played on Quicktime or other sound applications.  You can then burn this file to a CD using whatever application you like- Toast, etc- and then the world can celebrate you as an audio genius.  There are CD burners in the 3^rd floor computer lab.  Keep in mind that sound files are relatively small (compared to video/image files), so you can usually easily email them to yourself or someone else in order to transport them.  They will also fit easily on a zip disk as well, but again, copy it to the zip from the computer rather than bouncing it directly to the zip.

            Alternately, you can use the lab set-up to route your audio through the pre-amp from the headphone jack on the computer to a tape recorder.  Use the same logic we used when inputting the sound.  Stereo mini goes out of the computer into the pre-amp, either through the CD/tape input on the front or RCA inputs on the back.  Then use the speaker or tape out RCA outputs to connect to the input of your tape recorder.

            Listen to your burned CD (or cassette tape) on a regular old stereo so you can ensure that you did it correctly and it sounds good.

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