A note on the Speakerphone forum says...Today we have released the first Speakerphone 2 update. This one fixes a few things regarding loading & importing settings/songs/projects that were made with Speakerphone 1.You can download and install this update from here.Speakerphone 2.0.1 update release notes - fixes:Importing SP1 settings in Nuendo & Cubase works correctly nowFixed bug in preset browser: a single click opens the user section.Importing Speaker & Room IR Automation data works correctly now (a speaker selection bug in Speakerphone 2.0.0 prevented some Speakerphone 1 sessions to come up with the wrong speaker selected. The bug is fixed, but the consequence is that sessions made with speakerphone 2 may load with the incorrect speaker selected, so please double check which speaker is selected in the speaker module.)

In Pro Tools instead of clicking on the audio track vertical zoom buttons in the toolbar at the top of the Edit window, try clicking and dragging them, you will find you can continuously vary the vertical zoom rather than in discrete steps.

PPMulator from Raw Material Software is a great plug-in that emulates the BBC PPM for £50 which is a fraction of the cost of the hardware equivalent and works brilliantly. See my previous post about it. Well it is moving.... Z-Plane, widely respected for their high-quality time-stretching algorithms and plugins, are going to take over the sales, development and support of PPMulator! Their in-depth DSP knowledge means that they'll be able to add plenty of exciting new features and provide better support for it in the long-term.More details about the handover and how this will affect new or existing customers will follow soon! For more info about Z-Plane, visit their website. I do hope this move isn't the end of this plug-in rather the start where Z-Plane and market and promote it as far as possible.

Having been back to Brent's blog I was reminded about this excellent video he has put together on using the Import Session Data option using a range of scenarios...This video looks at several key work flows utilising the power of the Import Session Data option from the File menu. Specifically:“Changing the tape” type workflows, where you have an existing mix and wish to import new audio to be mixed by it - particularly relevant with the template system in PT8.Importing a favourite channel of plugin settings.Compiling a “master session” of multiple PT session files, spread down the timeline.This video explains some of the features and workflows open to you by usiung the Import Session data window in Pro Tools HDImport Session Data from Brent Heber on Vimeo.Thank you Brent for doing this, check it out here.

Brent has just posted a video interview with Jordan Glasgow who is Avid's Post Production product manager....Jordan Glasgow Interview from Brent Heber on Vimeo.This video is an interview with Avid's Post Production product manager at the recent NAB 2009 trade show, a few days after Digidesign was truly merged with the mother company.Jordan talks about the different Video Satellite products, what they do and how they work and is on record as intending to bring more Mac compatibility to areas of work flow in the Avid environment that have to date only been available on the Windows platform.Go check it out here.

Digidesign have made this announcement...Pro Tools Compatibility with Newly Released Apple ComputersOn March 3rd, Apple, Inc. released new versions of the iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro. We have completed our testing and are pleased to announce that Pro Tools LE and M-Powered 8.0 systems are compatible with these new Apple computers.In addition to the previously announced Pro Tools HD 8.0 compatibility with the latest Mac Pro "Nehalem Processor" models, the late 2008/early 2009 MacBook Pro models are now qualified with Pro Tools HD 8.0 systems (Magma ExpressBox1 Pro or ExpressBox4 expansion chassis required).For the most recent information about Digidesign products and updates regarding the qualification of the new iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro, please check the compatibility pages at the Digidesign web site.

Audio Ease sent me an email today telling me about the new version of Speakerphone, Speakerphone 2. Get along to their site and take a look at the video. The email says.. The Speakerphone 2 upgrade adds a tremendous amount of amps, speakers, ambiences, microphones, new modules and sonic tricks unheard anywhere before.If you want to see and hear for yourself what's new (or if you just want to hear Arjen lock a guy in the trunk of a Volvo parked on a moonlit business park) do check out the "what's new" movie: There are new additions and features all over Speakerphone and the video just blew me away. The best bit for post work has to be the 'Cover" feature which enables the user to cover over a sound source, like a blanket or a car boot as shown in the demo. The upgrade costs $149 or €119

We all know that Command and D duplicates a region and places it after the host. But did you know that you could also do it the other way so that the duplicate buts up the the start of the host region. Well you can and it is Cmd-Opt-Ctrl-click the region.How neat is that! Just found it on DUC and thanks go to Chris Neal at Elephant Media Productions

Minnetonka have a special NAB 2009 offer on their Surcode for Dolby E plug-ins.For a limited time, SurCode™ for Dolby® E (both encoder and decoder) has been reduced to a special price of $4,499 and now includes SurCode™ for Dolby® Pro Logic® II RTAS™ ($795 US MSRP) plug-in for FREE! Get All three products for only $4,499! This is a savings of over $2200 from original retail value. For more information go to Minnetonka's web site.

Magma make a range of PCI extension chassises that house your PCI cards when you need more slots than your host computer can handle. They also offer a solution that saves you from having to change your PCI-X cards to PCI-e cards. In their most recent newsletter Magma have made some announcements. Magma PE6R4: Digidesign Distribution Update Digidesign recently announced that the company is no longer distributing the Magma PE6R4 Expansion Chassis. This 6-slot PCIe-to-PCI-X expansion chassis is now available worldwide though Magma. Digidesign will continue to distribute the Magma 7 Slot PCI Express expansion system. For more information on the 6 Slot PCIe to PCI-X expansion system, click here or contact Magma at sales@magma.com. For more information on the 7 Slot PCIe to PCIe expansion system, please contact your Digidesign sales rep or click here to be directed to their website.

I will be away on holiday for a week without a computer or internet access. Normal service will be resumed in the week commencing 20th April.See you then.Mike.

I have had a number of Relinking problems with clients doing something to confuse Pro Tools. So I scanned around and came up with this procedure for forcing Pro Tools to relink to files you know are there but it won't find.Open the session with the relinking problems, and skip the 'automatic find' options as you will already at the point where these haven't worked for you. Once the session opens, there will be, of course, a number of sky blue regions denoting media Pro Tools can't find.Go into the Window menu and select Project Browser. In the Project Browser go into the session's audio files folder and select an audio file you want Pro Tools to relink by force. Go into the Toolbox menu and select Relink, this will put that file into the Relink window.Now open the Workspace Browser from the Window menu and find the file you would like Pro Tools to link to but for some reason it can't find. Drag that file into the Candidates section of the Relink window. Click on Relink button to the left of the file in the Candidates section and then click on the Commit button at the top of the Relink window and the file will be relinked and very quickly the blue regions relating to that audio file will regain their normal look.If the file you relinked was not inside the session folder you might want to consider using this final step to fix it. In the Project Browser select the relinked file and from the Toolbox menu select Copy and Relink. This will get Pro Tools to make a copy of the audio file and put it into the session's audio file folder and link to that copy rather than the file somewhere else on the system. It is always safer to have all your audio files inside the session's audio files folder.

To coincide with NAB Virtual Katy are offering a Spring/NAB promotion on their VK Premium CollectionFrom their newsletter...During the months of April and May, 2009, purchase either a full license for VK Premium Collection 3.0 or upgrade to VK Premium Collection 3.0 from one of our older discontinued products, and receive a $200 USD discount. Discount is good from now through May 31, 2009. Upgrade pricing is the difference in price between the product that you have previously purchased and VK Premium Collection, less the $200 discount (ie an upgrade from VK Compare to VK Premium Collection 3.0, normally $1,000 USD, now $800 USD during the promotion)**If you presently own a license for an older version of VK Premium Collection, you can download the latest Pro Tools 8-compatible build of VK Premium 3.0.2 absolutely free from the Virtual Katy Wiki. Nuendo users, don't forget to download the matching Nuendo plug-in as well because these are version-specific. Your current VK Premium license will work to unlock the latest version and build.As a reminder, VK Conformer, VK CNA and VK Compare were discontinued over a year ago, and will not be made compatible with Pro Tools 8. Upgrading from any of these products is a quick and easy electronic process, and you will pay only the difference in price between the product you own and VK Premium Collection.I am still disappointed that they chose to discontinue their lower cost products like VK Conformer. They were useful products at a fair price. But at least with this promotion they are trying to make their Premium Collection more accessable.

How many times have you been sent a Quicktime movie and it hasn't got burnt in timecode because the video editor hasn't got time to render one out.Well I recently came across two options to resolve this.Toki Software’s Toki TC v1.4.1Toki TC is an utility for displaying a time code, a feet+frames counter, a frame counter and a line of text over a movie. It has all options to control the display of the counters and text:Position of the counters in the picture,Set the start offset and frame rate,Choice of the font and size of the text,Left, center or right alignment,Choice of the colors of the text and the background.A movie can be exported with time code, counters and text to QuickTime, DV, MPEG-4, AVI and other formats.It runs under Mac OS X Leopard and Windows Vista.The full license is 15.90 € or $ 19.90For more info go to the Toki web siteQT Sync v0.3.3QT Sync is a QuickTime movie player that can do a load more useful stuff too.Watch your movies in Full ScreenCorrect Audio/Video Sync problems "on-the-fly"Works also great with Airfoil. Visit the FAQ page to learn more.Change the Aspect Ratio of movies without losing quality (No re-encoding needed.)Combine movies which have been split into several partsCrop the movie.Insert a text track with TimeCode or Feet+Frames information into the movie.Price - freeFor more info and to download it go to the QTSync web site

Here are some more zooming tips...You can use the keyboard shortcuts Command+square brackets ([ ]) (Mac) or Control+square brackets ([ ]) (Windows) to zoom in and out horizontally or if you have the Keyboard Focus enabled on the Edit Window using the R & T keys will zoom out and in horizontally.To return to the previous zoom setting, which is especially useful when you have zoomed right in to look at the actual waveform, Alt+Click on either of the horizontal zoom buttons or use the keyboard shortcut Command+Alt+E (Mac) or Control+Alt+E (Windows).There are two modes to the Zoom Tool, Normal and Single. Normal is the original Zoom Tool and when Single is selected the previously selected Edit tool is automatically reselected after zooming. This works really well in conjunction with the return to previous zoom setting above.To zoom out all audio tracks and reset waveform display to the default settings, either double click the Zoomer tool or use the keyboard shortcut Alt+A.To set all audio track waveform heights to match the waveform height of the topmost audio track in the Edit window, hold down Control+Shift (Windows) or Command+Shift (Mac) and click on any of the Zoom buttons. Note that when you do this any waveform height offsets will be lost.

Sorry folks that I have been quiet for a while. I will be making a number of posts today as compensation.When making music documentaries iTunes has become such a convenient way to buy music but because of the consumer fair usage limits to get a track from iTunes into your Pro Tools session has involved burning an audio CD in iTunes and then ripping the CD into Pro Tools which takes time and wastes CDRs.However one of the upsides of the iTunes Plus format and Apple removing the DRM, is that it is possible to convert a purchased track in iTunes to a WAV file, export it, and import that into Pro Tools.I will be producing a detailed help guide on exactly how to do this and will post about it when it is done, but for the more adventurous of you go and explore, its great.

Our Mike Thornton writes the Pro Tools Notes, Techniques and Workshop articles for Sound on Sound as well as reviewing many of the new Pro Tools related products. Note that you will need to be a subscriber to view the recent articles or you can choose to Click & Buy individual ones.   Track Comping In Pro Tools 8 - Click here to read Mike's article on how to use one of the major new features in Pro Tools 8, a system for easily assembling comp tracks from multiple takes.

For those of you still in Pro Tools 7.4 world Digidesign haven't forgotten you. They have released 7.4.2c3 for those of you on Leopard and 7.4cs9 for those of you on Tiger and Windows.What's New in These Updates?In addition to all fixes from previous CS versions, Pro Tools 7.4cs9 and 7.4.2cs3 include the following:All Platforms (HD, LE, M-Powered, Mac & Windows)Fixed: Converting sample rate during Save Copy In or Import Session Data adversely affects volume automation (Item #111930). Saving a session copy with sample rate conversion to a rate different from the session's may result in erroneous automation ramps between breakpoints. This is mostly evident in scenarios where a static automation level had been changed over the duration of a single region.Fixed: Problems moving multiple selected regions (Item #99538). If you selected several adjacent regions, clicking on one of them to move all selected regions will only move the region you clicked on.Fixed: Incorrect multi-track audio import from QuickTime movies (Item #102279). Multi-track QuickTime movies import into Pro Tools 7.4 with each audio track containing a mix of all tracks, rather than individual tracks.HD Only (Mac & Windows)Fixed: With a surround send, pan automation gets stuck in one channel on playback (Item #112702). When assigning sends to a bus sub-path and using the "follow main pan" function, send pan automation may get stuck and not play back dynamically.Fixed: Importing audio into a session with many video regions may take a long time (Item #110829). Sessions containing many video regions may cause audio file import to take a long time. This affects importing from DigiBase or via drag and drop from the desktop and may cause delays of up to 10 seconds per file.HD Mac OnlyFixed: "Lost Communication" errors in Digidesign Expansion|HD systems (Item #105818). Pro Tools systems with cards installed into the Digidesign Expansion|HD chassis may experience -12001, -9161, or -1140 errors indicating a loss of communication with the Expansion|HD chassis. A restart is required.Go over to the Digidesign web site cs update page for more details.

Sonnox are offering a free limiter plug-in if you buy 2 or more plug-ins as a bundle until 17th April 2009.From the Sonnox web site... Purchase and register any Oxford Plugins Bundle (2 or more plug-ins) between April 1st and April 17th 2009 and receive a free Oxford Limiter with your order. The promo code: MESSEPTB must be entered by the customer (if bought online at www.sonnoxplugins.com) or by the dealer (if ordered via the Sonnox Media Pack site). Normal pricing will apply to the regular bundle purchase, and the additional Oxford Limiter licence of the same platform (Native, TDM or PowerCore) will be included at registration.For more details go to the special promotion page on the Sonnox site.