Monthly Archive for March, 2009

New Pro Tools Resource site

Published on March 29, 2009 in News and tip. 0 Comments Tags: .

A quick post today as I am so busy with completing several projects at once including an 8 x 1 hour music documentary series for an independent production company here in the UK as well as being the NVQ assessor for the Advanced Media Apprenticeship scheme being piloted here in Manchester, England.

A group of folks have got together to share a site for sharing shortcuts and PT tips and although not strictly ‘post’ related is providing a useful resource bank of tips and shortcuts. Go and have a look

Storage Dilemma Part 3

Published on March 26, 2009 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments Tags: , .

I have been considering my options and I have made some decisions.

  • I have decided having a Mojo unit to handle my video requirements is mad. Apparently the range of content it supports is limited, on HD rigs you are supposed to have a Sync I/O with it, which I don’t own, so I will be putting my Mojo up for sale on Ebay soon. I then may either buy a Canopus AVDC 110 unit or just continue using the video window on my right hand computer monitor. The other advantage of not having a Mojo is that it won’t tie up my firewire buss and I win back my last PCI slot. If I had kept the Mojo I would have needed to use the last slot for a firewire card.

  • I have also decided to use the internal SATA slots in my Mac Pro as ‘work in progress’ drives rather than Time Machine backup drives as present.

  • I will then use one the Sonnet internal to external SATA adaptor to connect a raid array to my Mac Pro for Time Machine or similar to backup on to.

  • I may well drop using Time Machine to back up my Mac HD and my ‘work in progress’ drives and use something else that will give me a backup drive that can be booted from. Also the backup application I will use for my ‘work in progress’ drives needs to be set up so that when I clear sessions off my ‘work’ drives they get removed from the backup drives automatically, ideally a period of time afterwards.

  • I still have issues to resolve, like what sort of raid array I should use for my short term backup, and what I should do about my long term backups, as currently I don’t charge the clients for this service.

SurCode for Dolby E adds Pro Tools 8 Support

Published on March 25, 2009 in News. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I got an email from Minnetonka yesterday announcing that their Dolby E plug-in is now supported for Pro Tools 8.

Minnetonka, MN – March 24th, 2009 – Minnetonka Audio Software’s SurCode for Dolby E Encoder and Decoder now support Digidesign® Pro Tools® 8 for Pro Tools LE® and Pro Tools|HD® workstations on both Mac® and Windows® operating systems. This version is offered as a free upgrade for existing SurCode™ for Dolby® E customers.

It surprises me a little that such a new plug-in wasn’t released as Pro Tools 8 compliant, but the good news is that it is now!

How to zoom in vertically on one track

Published on March 24, 2009 in tip. 0 Comments Tags: .

How many times have you had a situation like this….


where the waveform are different heights on different tracks? You can of course adjust the vertical audio zoom but that changes it for all tracks so you end up with tracks looking like this….


What would be really great is to be able to vertically zoom one particular track on its own. I have known this must be possible somehow for a long time. I started noticing it when importing tracks from other sessions and noticing that they sometimes seemed to have different vertical zoom settings.

Well you can!
What you can do is to select the Zoom Tool either from the toolbar or using the F5 button on your keyboard and then when you hold down the Control key (Mac) or Start key (Windows) and by dragging you can continuously adjust the vertical zoom on one track. Drag up to increase the vertical zoom, and drag down to reduce the vertical zoom. Make sure you start dragging over the track you want to change…..


You can also drag left or right and that will continuously adjust the horizontal zoom but of course all tracks will zoom horizontally in this case.

Do you like the new look of Pro Tools 8?

Published on March 23, 2009 in tip. 0 Comments Tags: .

It took me a little while to get used to it. Initially I found the grey and the overall lack of contrast hard to come to terms with, but I have got used to it and I thought it somehow looked ‘cheaper’.

Interestingly when I went to do some work on a clients system and they still have Pro Tools 7 and the thing that struck me the most was the thickness of the automation lines. In PT7 it looked like a massive marker pen had been through my edit window when I was in volume mode.

Also I initially was concerned that the contrast for highlighted regions wasn’t great enough but I haven’t found I am struggling to find the highlighted region.

I do find that the PT8 look is more restful on the eye. I do like the new toolbar and the clearer buttons although it is taking me a while to get used to the different locations for some of the drop down menus like the Region List one as I am so used to clicking on the title bar and now I have to go for the little arrow button. I initially thought moving the A/Z button was a mistake but it is more difficult to hit it by mistake in its new location.

I am not sure about the way the region names are displayed in PT8. I guess it is all part of the ‘smoother’ look but I find I am zooming in more just to read the region name as it is truncated so often. The fact that the default setting for the Edit window gri is on is a real pain for those of us for whom Grid is not part of our working day.

I would like to see a better set of appearance options than the existing contrast and saturation on the colour pallete so we can choose the shade of the background

Those are some of my thoughts, what do you think?

SRS Circle Surround plug-in discontinued

Published on March 20, 2009 in News. 0 Comments Tags: , .

SRS announced this by sending users and resellers an email announcing they were stopping support for the TDM plug-in. This is what it said…

Dear SRS Circle Surround® TDM Pro Reseller and User,

Since its introduction in 2005, SRS Circle Surround TDM Pro has empowered broadcasters and post-production facilities to deliver professional quality audio. We thank you for your support and your continued interest in our Circle Surround TDM Pro software over the years.

The purpose of this letter is to inform you that SRS Labs has decided to exit the TDM Pro software business and we will no longer be supporting the product with upgrades or patches. Currently, SRS Circle Surround TDM Pro 2.1 software supports Pro Tools® 7.1 and 7.2 systems; however, with Pro Tools 8 now available, we will no longer be able to dedicate resources to update our product.

We will continue providing technical support for the SRS Circle Surround TDM Pro within the Pro Tools 7.2 and earlier environment for the next six months, until September 4, 2009.
Sincerely,

Cyndee Pelino
Senior Marketing Manager
SRS Labs, Inc.

I for one, am very disappointed at this and it is a sudden announcement that makes a significant investment worthless. Folk are already commenting on the DUC. I used it as a way to easily create an LtRt stereo compatible mix from a 5.1 stem as it was easier than using the Digidesign Dolby Surround plug-in because you have to get the 5.1 stem into LCRS before putting into the plug-in.

Also the SRS plug-in could be used as an Unwrap plug-in too as I explored in my article in Sound on Sound, for those you can’t afford the excellent TC Electronic UnWrap plug-in.

Has anyone got it to work in Pro Tools 8? Comments on the DUC are mixed, but I will try and find some time to check it out.

Dolby E experience – update

Published on March 19, 2009 in tip. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

In my post about the new Dolby E plug-ins I asked if anyone had had any experience of using them.

Miguel Torres from Spain has very kindly emailed me with his experiences and I share it with you all with his permission…

We have hard tried Minnetonka and Neyrinck plug-ins on PT 7.4, 10.4.11 and HD3 system.

Controls, 8 track encoding and decoding its 2 tracks works are perfect for us, but when inserting Dolby E into a dbtc tape, we have to hear a decoded return, to hear what we are sending to our clients.

We haven´t been able to AES/EBU real time monitor for QC. Pro Tools AES/EBU aux track with plug-in return from tape decoding a Dolby E signal (not with Neyrinck or Minnetonka). Have you?

When a clients send a Dolby E tape, you have to record it into a Pro Tools stereo track.

Both plug-ins are based on a “select stereo file” system to decode, but mono tracks are not admitted (neither stereo interleaved or 2 mono files). Have you found this problem too ?

Have you found a Tape QC monitoring work flow or record a Dolby E signal and decode it in Pro Tools ?

Glad to feedback with other pros.

Very best regards.

Miguel Torres
Tech Manager
SONYGRAF DIGITSOUND

Thanks Miguel for this. As yet haven’t personally got involved in Dolby E so cannot answer any of Miguel’s questions. Over to you….

Minnetonka Dolby E plug-in special offer

Published on March 19, 2009 in News. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Minnetonka are currently offering a special NAB promotion on their new Dolby E Pro Tools plug-in.

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.

They also have produced an excellent Dolby E FAQ with questions ranging from What is Dolby E? through What is metadata? to Can I edit a Dolby E stream?

If you are looking at bringing Dolby E into your workflow then this is well worth a look.

Stoage Dilemma part 3 – some responses

Published on March 18, 2009 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Johnny suggested using a FW800 to 400 adaptor to resolve how I could support clients FW400 drives if I went the e-sata route with my Mojo on the system.

Thanks for the thought, you are right but with an Avid Mojo on the system, my understanding is it takes the entire firewire buss both FW 800 and 400 so if you want to attach firewire drives you will need a PCI-e firewire card. However if I have fitted an e-sata card in my remaining slot then I won’t have the slot to fit a firewire card as well.

Johnny also suggested MaxDigital products as a more cost effective solution than replacing my removable drive system.

I supply the MacPower Pleiades enclosures to clients and there is an equivalent 3 way case. I then put Seagate drives in them. Interesting you should point to Wiebetech, I have started supplying clients with their 2.5″ buss powered cases ToughTech, and I am very impressed with their quality.

My Intel machine is about to be fully loaded with drives, one system drive, one ‘storage drive’ which has all my sound effects, and two drives for Time Machine which I have set up to backup the system, storage and my two ‘external ‘work in progress’ drives. Thanks to Johnny for his excellent input. Folks please keep it coming as I hope this will helps other people in similar situations.

My Storage Dilemma part 2

Published on March 16, 2009 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments Tags: , .

I have done some more research and discovered a number of interesting points with regard to using eSATA in a Pro Tools environment. Assuming one has a Mac Pro there are two ways of getting SATA to the outside of the computer.

  • You can get an eSATA card, which will take up a PCI-e slot. This will give you between 2 and 4 separate eSATA sockets and will enable you to hot swap your eSATA drives.
  • Alternatively you can get an adaptor plate that picks up two unused internal SATA sockets and presents them as eSATA sockets so you can connect extrnal SATA drives to your computer. This method is much cheaper and doesn’t cost a PCI-e slot and doesn’t load the PCI buss but you cannot hot swap drives connected this way.

Now if a rack or desktop chassis like the Sonnet R400Q for example, will I be able to access each drive separately all will all four drives just appear on my computer desktop as one drive. I know that Pro tools won’t support these system in any of their RAID modes, I am referring to their JOBD (Just One Big Drive) mode. Because if I cannot access each drive separately them I cannot easily swap drives around to work on different projects. The other issue that is niggling me is why Digidesign haven’t approved the use of eSATA? It seems strange although even in my research so far I have read about people not able to get some configurations to work with their Mac let alone work with Pro Tools. So is this high-speed technology still struggling from to many ‘ifs, buts and maybes to be reliable? If anybody has any comments, observations or experience I would value your input.

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