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Published in SOS July 2009

Technique : Pro Tools Notes


We continue our newcomer’s guide to Pro Tools with a selection of techniques that every user should know.
Mike Thornton
Our workshops bring you useful techniques every month, but there are some that are especially applicable if you want to get up and running in the most efficient way. Here’s a quick roundup.
Auto Backup
Make sure you’re using the Pro Tools Auto Backup feature, as one day soon it will save your bacon! Go to the Operation tab of the Pro Tools Preferences and you’ll see a section where you can set up the Auto Backup option. With this active, Pro Tools will save a copy of the Session at the interval you specify. You can also set how many backup copies are kept at any one time. Pro Tools puts these backup copies in a dedicated folder inside the Session folder, called Session Backups. For more on this and other backup strategies, see the Pro Tools workshop article in the July 2007 SOS.
Template Sessions
It’s well worth getting to grips with Template Sessions, which really save setup time at the start of a project. I create a Template Session when I’m working on an album, so that I can very quickly create a new Session for each song. Include in the template whatever you might need: a click track, buses and aux tracks for effects and headphone monitoring, and any plug-ins you use regularly, with the appropriate presets loaded. Whatever you find yourself doing when you start a session, try to have it in your template so you don’t end up wasting time doing the same things over and over again. You can also use Template Sessions as a means of saving presets for individual tracks: if you create a bunch of tracks with plug-in combinations you use regularly, the Import Session Data dialogue will allow you to import these tracks individually as needed.
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Published in SOS July 2009

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Sunday 8th November 2009
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