Search form

[Sir Hannes]

This is a tough question seems to: I use all the time AudioSuite in ProTools and controllers till now only handle plugins as an insert. I programmed keystrokes for preview/bypass/render already. But I really want to have a better and faster handling, where I load up my plugin in audio suite and can tweak more than one parameter simultaneously.

Any ideas?

[molecular]

That's interesting - I never use audiosuite (or really hardly ever). So I'm interested to know what you are working on, and what your workflow is, that you use it so regularly. When do you choose it over an insert?

[DC-Choppah]

If you like rendering the plugin rather than keeping it as insert, then there is a way to use your controller to twiddle the knobs.

What you have to do is use the insert version (not the Audiosuite version), use your controller to tweak it. Save the settings. Call up the Audiosuite version, load the settings and render.

So you could save a macro that does it all in one shot and use the same name for the settings file.

So with one hot-key, it would save the settings in the plugin, call up the Audiosuite version, load the same name setting, hit render and close down. Youwould be back where you were, but the effect would be rendered.

This won't work for the few Audiosuite plugs that don't have an insert version. But those ones are pretty simple.

[The Korff]

Oooh, I like that. Very neat. Better still would be to assign your macro to the 'Print' key!

[Sir Hannes]

Heard about that before. Thanks for your posting still.
Just imagine, I create an EQ-track with 8x eq's in the slots. I have this duplicated with all plugins for stereo objects. Now: how can I get an object, let's say a mono audio file from a car passing by with automation, to that dedicated mono EQ track. Between these are 80 FX tracks. This should be done via one key press (e.g. Eucon or MaestroKeys). And it must be in sync, no smallest ms/frame to the left or right is allowed. I could make this manually via mouse drag&drop and scrolling, or cmd+x and scrolling down via cursor, but this in not an option with so many tracks as it takes extremely too much time.
And if I would put this tracks near the tracks I am working on? - not useful, when I have to remix elements between 80 tracks.
I guess here it ends?

[The Korff]

Ah, Foley! I see... Foley projects always look a mess, I think that's just the nature of them. All you can do really is try and negate the mess by organising things in a way that makes sense to you — colour coding, naming tracks logically, etc etc. Or you could insert your various EQ settings into auxes instead of tracks, and instead of moving the Clip to a different track, just assign it to a different aux? If you name the busses sensibly ('HF boost 1', 'extreme LF cut', 'mid boost 3' etc) then all you need to do is reassign the track to the appropriate bus from the drop-down list. Might be quicker than scrolling half a mile down your project...

[Sam Inglis]

I wonder if Softube's Console 1 works as an AudioSuite plug-in/controller? I never thought to try it that way. If so then it would be good for your needs I think.

[DC-Choppah]

Heard about that before. Thanks for your posting still.
Just imagine, I create an EQ-track with 8x eq's in the slots. I have this duplicated with all plugins for stereo objects. Now: how can I get an object, let's say a mono audio file from a car passing by with automation, to that dedicated mono EQ track. Between these are 80 FX tracks. This should be done via one key press (e.g. Eucon or MaestroKeys). And it must be in sync, no smallest ms/frame to the left or right is allowed. I could make this manually via mouse drag&drop and scrolling, or cmd+x and scrolling down via cursor, but this in not an option with so many tracks as it takes extremely too much time.
And if I would put this tracks near the tracks I am working on? - not useful, when I have to remix elements between 80 tracks.
I guess here it ends?

Can you bus record all 80 tracks through 80 new tracks, each with your EQ track punched in?

Bus recording is the alternate to using Audiosuite to burn in the efx.

The key to this is to have a macro that creates say 80 new tracks - and arms them to bus record - feeds them from your 80 FX tracks perhaps with automation. It Punches in the EQ effects into each track (which could also have automation), and does the bus record.

Then after the audio is rendered to the 80 new tracks, you slide them up in one shot to the same position as the original tracks. Thus you burn in the EQ track efx into the audio in all 80 tracks in one shot and replace the old clips with the new with the burned in effects.

Or what I often do, is I select the original tracks, and 'hide and make inactive' and then just carry on with the new bus-recorded tracks that have everything burned into the clips.

You can so this pretty fast without a macro or make a macro for the following. I do this kind of thing all the time for bus recording stuff like drum kits and other multitrack stuff.

- ctrl-shift-N and create 80 new tracks.
- Set the input of the first new track to your first bus for bus recording. Select all 80 new tracks, Hold down Alt-ctrl-shift when setting the track number of the first one and the rest will be sequential.
- Do the same with the output of your 80 tracks you need to bus record.
- Put your EQ bus across all 80 of the new bus record tracks. (use alt when inserting on all selected tracks).
- Select the time region to render.
- Record arm all 80 tracks and hit record.
-You get 80 rendered tracks in one shot.
- Select the audio of all 80 and slide them up (hit ctrl first to lock the time so it doesn't move horizontally).

[Sir Hannes]

I wonder if Softube's Console 1 works as an AudioSuite plug-in/controller? I never thought to try it that way. If so then it would be good for your needs I think.

No, it can't do that. Only as an insert. I already asked the company.

[Sir Hannes]

Thanks for reply your idea. I tried to follow yours but I guess, this is more for music than 1000 of audio objects, when each object is around say 10sec, then on the same track followed by others which needs completely different (!) EQ settings.
And - if I understand you correctly - I would create 80 audio objects with a length of 90min (feature film). So this would kill my HD, as for one object I maybe need 8 times of processing with different plugins.
Did I get you right?

[Sam Spoons]

Why does the processing have to be done in real time? Can't you print the processing/fx to 'tape' individually for each item and then edit them together into the 90 mins worth of 10sec sound clips?

[DC-Choppah]

Thanks for reply your idea. I tried to follow yours but I guess, this is more for music than 1000 of audio objects, when each object is around say 10sec, then on the same track followed by others which needs completely different (!) EQ settings.
And - if I understand you correctly - I would create 80 audio objects with a length of 90min (feature film). So this would kill my HD, as for one object I maybe need 8 times of processing with different plugins.
Did I get you right?

90 minutes of audio at 48k is about 1 GByte. So 80 tracks is about 80 GBytes.

You can print all 8+ effects in in one pass of bus recording. HD can do 256 tracks recorded and vanilla can do 32, so you may have to do 3 passes possibly to bus record 80 tracks with vanilla PT.

After bus recording you can use 'strip silence' and you will get back all those little audio objects with all of the silence removed and the clip files will be much smaller, so the 80 GBytes you need is just temporary. After doing a strip silence, just go into the clips window and clean up all the unused big clips so they are deleted and only the little printed objects are saved.

So this would be a last step after you have everything sounding like you want it. This just prints all the effects in one shot regardless of the complexity of the effects patches. It will take 90 minutes of real time, but will be hands off. So instead of printing each effect as you go with Audiosuite, here you are doing everything as a plugin with automation and printing everything once at the very end to end up at the same place.

[Sir Hannes]

Ah okay, I guess I understand. Nice approach. This would be interesting to try. It needs an unconventional organization of the tracks and which objects can be on which tracks. Normally you must sort via content (imagine you have these 1000 objects or more and you must know every object to make fast changes e.g. the director dislike number 349, 352 and 798 - they don't use the numbers, they tell you what they dislike: this noise, that sound as...)
Also I can't bounce all objects as I will loose my fades on frame, which I maybe have to change in mixing stage again. So I need quick access to that. Otherwise I can't return to the original clip (also if I have it in playlist, then I need exactly that one particular plugin-chain I used month before).
The other thing is, each track has only 8 slots for inserts. but to get what a scene in a movie needs, there may be 9 different steps for one clip, in the next scene (same track) I need 11 different steps to create different. But both objects are "start engine and drive away". So my little helper is something like PatchWork, where I can create own customized channel strips and recall them.
I guess I will try out a touch screen...

[DC-Choppah]

Actually, to keep the flexibility in tact, what you do is keep BOTH the bounced tracks and the original tracks that generated all the printed audio.

Then group all the original stuff and hide them all and make inactive.

Now lets say you want to make a change to object #356.

You unhide the original track, mess with the fades or effects as needed.

But since you leave ProTools in the mode where it ALWAYS records when the transports moves (Punch in Record Mode) you are ALWAYS re-burning the audio back to the printed tracks. See what I mean?

So just the act of making the change to the original track and playing it has reprinted the audio to the printed tracks automatically.


I keep ProTools in the 'Punch in Record' mode all the time when mixing at the point where I want everything burned in but still am making changes.

This creates lots of audio files along the way, most of which you don't ever need again, so at some point in the session before you finish do a delete all unused clips an move on with a clear head.