This guide will show you a few ways to keep your Pro Tools sessions tidier and make recording and mixing easier.
I/O:
1. If this window pops up when you open your project, click on Open I/O setup.
2. Import the default I/O profile for that room. This will stop your track inputs and outputs form getting greyed out
In The Box:
1. If you are doing all your mixing inside Pro Tools, then set the output for all your tracks to a stereo pair of outputs, such as 1+2. Alternatively, you can send the tracks to output down a new stereo bus track, then send this to a stereo pair of outputs.
2. Make sure that those faders are being sent to the mix bus, then bring up faders 1+2.
Console Mixing:
1. If you want to bring each track in Pro Tools out on a different fader to take advantage of our analogue mixing consoles, assign each track to a separate output, then bring up the fader on the desk matching that output.
Aux Tracks:
1. Create a new track and set it to an Aux Input instead of an audio track.
You can make the track mono or stereo depending on if you want to pan audio within the track.
An example of this would be a stereo reverb, or if you you created a drum sum track and wanted to pan your overheads with in the aux track.
2. Set the input of this track to an unused mono or stereo bus.
You can get audio to the aux either through a bus send or you assign the output of the audio track to the bus that inputs onto the aux.
This depends on if you want to send the entire track, or if you want to send audio to the aux while maintaining an unaffected signal.
Bus Sends:
1. You would use a bus send if you wanted to send audio to the track but keep your original audio as well. For example for parallel processing, or if you wanted to send the audio to a reverb.
To create the bus send, go to the track you want to send, click on bus sends, and select the bus going to the aux track.
2. The bus send level fader will pop up, pull up this fader to send more signal to the aux.
By default this is post the track fader, but can be changed to pre fader by clicking the pre button at the top of the fader.
Sum Tracks:
1. By setting the output of several tracks to a bus instead of an output on the soundcard, you can use the aux track to control the level of, and apply processing to all the tracks routed that aux at once.
This is an efficient way of working and can drastically reduce CPU usage by decreasing your total number of plugins.
Colours:
1. Using the colour palette window allows you to change the colour of clips, groups, and tracks.
To do this, open the colour palette by going to Window, Colour Palette.
2. Select the object you want to change the colour of, then select the colour on the palette.
You can use the drop down menu to change what the colour change will effect.
Groups:
1. Setting up groups allows you to effect multiple tracks at once.
To add tracks to a group, select the tracks you want to group, then press cmd+G on the keyboard.
To select multiple track as once, hold cmd while clicking on the names of the tracks.
2. On the groups window that pops up, name the group and assign an id.
The id allows the group to be activated and deactivated by pressing that key, allowing you to quickly swap between changing individual members of the group and the group as a whole.
You can also turn groups on and off by clicking on them in the bottom left corner of the mix window.
Types of Groups:
1. Pro Tools gives you the option of making groups Mix, Edit, or Mix/Edit. Mix groups are effected by function on the mix window such a fader position changes, mute, and solo.
Edit groups react to the movement of regions, automation, and fade changes.
Saving:
1. If you have recorded new audio into the Pro Tools session and want to copy and consolidate everything into one folder, go to File, Save A Copy In, then make sure you have audio files ticked.
If you have not added any audio into your session you can safely use Save As to make a copy of just the Pro Tools file.
Backing up Projects:
1. Make sure you do not leave any important files on the desktop as they will be deleted.
After you have finished with a session, move your session folder either into the audio drive on the computer or to an external drive.
Drag over the whole folder not just the .ptx file.
