Working with the Demo Session

• Using Save As
• Session Setup
• Overview of the Demo Edit Window
• Transport Window
• Location Displays
• Toolbar Buttons Overview
• Display Scale Selector
• Edit Tools
• The Edit Mode Selector
• The Time Scale Ruler
• The Mix Window

Using "Save As"

First open the demo session as described in the Intro. Now, before you do anything with this Demo, create your own version of the session document so that any changes and experiments you make will not affect future demo users. (This is also a good skill for creating alternate versions of your own work.)

From the menubar, select File|Save Session As...

A standard file save window will appear. Give your session doc a different name (ex: "My Demo Session".) But before we save this new session doc we have to navigate so that the session doc will end up in a logical place, which should be inside the original Demo Session folder. So first we navigate to the same drive -- in this case it's the "Audio" drive -- and open it. Then we locate the session folder.

The resulting window might look like this:

But we need to navigate another level deeper, so that our new session doc will end up inside the session folder. By clicking on "Open" we should get the next window --

-- which is where we want this alternate version of the session to end up. So now we can press "Save."

When we do that, the "Save As" Dialog closes and we're back in the Pro Tools Demo Session Window, only now we notice a subtle change. Note the title bar of the session reads "My Demo Session." All subsequent work and changes we do will be on this new copy of the original; the original remains unaffected.

You may have noticed that that the dialog windows refer to saving the session rather than the session document. This is just verbal shorthand, and I'm likely to do the same thing in this tutorial. The "session" in this shorthand sense is the document where all the instructions about what to do with the audiofiles are stored; just remember that in order to actually recreate the session and play it, you need the audiofiles as well and the session document does not contain your audiofiles.

Now about Saving in general: unlike many software programs, Pro Tools versions prior to 5.1 do not automatically save your work every so often. So it's essential that you develop good Saving habits. Once you've created a new session, or if you've done a "Save As..." with an existing session, a simple "Save" command will do the trick; it will update and overwrite the session doc that you're working on. (If you're unsure about a set of changes you've made, choose the "Save As.." option to create some alternate versions.)

The shortcut keystroke to Save is "Splat-S." Whenever you pause to appreciate some really nice edit you've made, hit Splat-S before continuing.

With Pro Tools version 5.1 you can activate a "Session File Auto-Backup" feature by going to Set Ups|Preferences|Operations. Pro Tools lets you choose how often to Save and how many back-up session documents to Save. For instance, I have my system set to save every ten minutes and to retain the last three backups. With this option enabled, Pro Tools will create a sub-folder within the Session Folder to store the back-up session docs.

[In the case of some program crashes, Pro Tools will do an "auto save" and will display a dialog informing you of the file name. But crashes can occur without activating this feature, so don't count on it. So even if Auto Back-ups are being created periodically, it's still a good idea to manually Save whenever you've just successfully performed a series of tricky edits. Incidentally, you can sometimes avoid having to restart the Mac by forcing a crashed program to quit -- the keystroke for this is: Splat-Option-Esc. It doesn't always work, though, so if the Mac freezes up often the only recourse is force it to restart by pressing the Control, Splat, and the keyboard StartUp key simultaneously. If this happens more than once, get some Tech support to help.]

The Session Setup Window

Let's dispose of this first so that we can clear away some of the visual clutter. There are only a few items that intro students need to check. This window displays the appropriate default choices.

• Sample rate: 44100 Hz is the preferred mode. Usually abbreviated as 44.1 KHz, it's the same digital sample rate as CDs. (The other choice, 48 KHz, is handy if you are digitally loading audio from a DAT or an ADAT recorded at that rate.)
• Ch1-2 Input: Analog. Note: This option only appears on the TDM systems; for the LE systems input Channels 1-2 are always analog and Ch3-4 are always digital. (There are no digital decks hooked up to the LE systems, so unless you've made special arrangemnts you'll be using analog inputs only.)
• Sync Mode: Internal

[Session start, frame rate, and so on only apply if you are slaving Pro Tools to timecode and that doesn't apply to intro work.]

After you've checked these three items you can close this window by clicking the square in the upper left.

 Overview of the Demo Session Edit Window

This may look fairly complicated, and it is -- especially since there are many hidden pop-up menus scattered about. But like lots of software programs, to do everyday work, there are lots of features we don't need to worry about.

There are four Audio Tracks in this session. The waveform display of the tracks dominates the center of the screen. To the left of the waveforms are the Track Channel Strips. In this case the Demo tracks have been named "Drums", "Bass", "Gtrs", and "Ld Gtr." (The default names of new tracks are just "Audio 1", "Audio 2", etc., but you can type in names for the tracks by double-clicking where the names appear.) Note that each track has its own digital peak meter alongside it.

Over on the far right of the Edit Window is the Regions List:

The Audio Regions list shows the various regions that are in our session; it serves as a "storage bin" for sounds that can be dragged into the edit window. This List and its menus will become important when we create our own sessions, but for this Demo let's regard it as mostly decorative. [There are no MIDI regions in this session, and we won't really cover MIDI in this tutorial. For a very brief discussion of MIDI, you could click here.]               By the way, you can hide/open the Audio Regions List by clicking on that little double-arrow icon at the bottom left of the illustration.-------------------->

Before playing around with any editing features, let's see what material we've got to work with. We have four tracks of audio here, with various "Audio Regions" arranged within those four tracks. These regions look and feel like pieces of sound; actually they're just virtual representations of portions of the original audiofiles that reside on the hard drive. They're just software instructions as to which part of a sound to play and when to play it. With few exceptions, our edits and sound manipulations will be non-destructive, meaning that we're not affecting the original audiofiles, we're just writing and re-writing a list of instructions about how to play the sounds back.

The edit window display runs from left to right, meaning that the left side of a region or session is the beginning, and the right side is the end. Click anywhere in the edit window to make sure that it's the active window.

Now press Return. (This places the Selector bar at the very beginning of the session.)

Now press the Spacebar on your keyboard. The Session will begin playing. Pressing the Spacebar again will stop the playback.

We'll skip the artistic merits of this music; you'll be tired of it soon enough. But notice a couple things happening with the display. A vertical scrollbar should move from left to right as you play, indicating the playback progress across the waveforms. You also notice that when the session is playing, the "Play" button on the little Transport Window lights up; when you stop playback by pressing the spacebar a second time, the "Stop" button briefly lights. Let's examine the Transport Window in a little more detail:

The Transport Window

Above is the Transport Window in its simplest form.

• The "Clock" icon button is used to put Pro Tools "Online" (slaved to SMPTE timecode.) Intro students can ignore this feature.
• The "Return to Start" button places the playback cursor at the beginning of a session.
• The "Rewind" button works much like a tape rewind, only you don't hear any audio zipping by as the playback cursor / scroll bar moves. [Unless you elect to choose that option in the Preferences Menu. Frankly, it doesn't sound very good in that mode.]
• The "Stop" buttons stops playback.
• The "Play" button begins playback. (You'll notice a little arrow that loops around the Play button on the example above; that appears when you have an option called "Loop Playback" enabled.)
• The "Fast-Forward" is similar to the Rewind.
• The "Go To End" button places the playback cursor at the end of the session.
• The red "Record" button arms Pro Tools for recording, so that when you click the Play button recording begins.

Except for the Fast-Forward and Rewind buttons, which are handy for navigating through a long session, you may find it easier to use keyboard commands to execute most of these functions. Personally, I find the Spacebar to be handier for Playing and Stopping than clicking with a mouse, but you'll discover what works best for you.

But if you like using the Transport Window, by choosing Display|Transport Window Shows from the Pro Tools menu, you can elect to have it display more information. Such as:

<---------- The added time displays can be toggled by clicking the square in the upper right of the window.

Or you can choose to have an even more elaborate Transport display that includes Midi information:

But since we're not dealing with Midi in this tutorial we can keep our Transport Window small and simple.

Location Displays

You may have noticed how the expanded Transport Window can display information about the selected cursor position, or an area selected and highlighted with the cursor. In the Edit Window, those items are always visible at the top of the window. In the screenshot below, a portion of track has been highlighted with the cursor.

The Start and End positions of the selection are indicated, as well as its Length. In the "Main" window just to the right, the current position from which Pro Tools would start playback is given. (Most of the time you'll have Pro Tools set up to play from the start of a edit selection, so this "Main" window is usually the same as the "Start" window.) The "Sub" display is just a way to get the same Main Position, but in different units -- which is probably a lot more information than most people want.

Toolbar Buttons Overview

So let's look at what some of these buttons do:

I've used yellow notes to indicate some of the names. Note that in Version 5.1 a new button is added at the left:

This is the "Tab to Transients" button. A somewhat advanced new feature -- for an explanation, click here.

But first we'll start with the basics. Let's skip the Edit Mode Selectors on the far left for a moment and look at the "Zoom Buttons."

Zoom Buttons

Clicking on the arrow pointing right will change the waveform display so that it "stretches" horizontally, showing a smaller portion in more detail. Click again and it expands again. The waveform entitled "4 Bar Drums" should now look more like this:

Now try clicking on the arrow pointing left; it does just the opposite, letting you see more of the waveform over time, but in less detail. Now try playing around with the upper and lower buttons next to the Left Arrow; you'll see that the vertical display is affected, showing greater or less detail of the height of the waveform.

[More "Zoom" trivia: The buttons just to the right of the waveform height buttons control the display of MIDI notes, which we won't cover. And the buttons numbered 1 through 5 store pre-sets of Zoom Display Settings. You can experiment with the defaults; or if you come up with a favorite Zoom setting you can store it to a button by SPLAT-CLICKING the button.

Like most of these tools, the Display Scale Arrows also have some "combination keystroke" options to expand its uses. For instance, you can easily toggle back and forth between a zoomed-in view and previous level of viewing by holding down the Option key while clicking any of the Display Scale Selector Arrows. (This will have more relevance when we look at other methods of zooming in on the display.]

Before moving to the next editing tool, click the right Display Scale arrow a couple more times so that we're "zoomed in" with more horizontal detail than we started with. Now we're ready to try out the basic Editing Tools which are the Zoomer, Scrubber, Trimmer, Selector, Grabber, and Smart Tool.

The Editing Tools

Here's where you need to spend some time just fiddling around and getting a feel for the tools. As long as you're working with your own copy of the demo session, you can't do much that would mess anyone else up.

The editing tool icons are arranged as Buttons on the Toolbar. Clicking on the buttons turns the mouse pointer into the appropriate tool when you move the pointer into the waveform display.

• The Zoomer icon resembles a magnifying glass; it's used to quickly zoom in and out on the waveform display to show more or less detail as needed.
• The Trimmer -- to the right of the Zoomer -- is normally used to snip off unwanted sound at the beginning or end of a particular audio region. Or it can do the reverse and extend sound that was previously trimmed.
• The Selector icon resembles a waveform with a dark bar highlighted the middle; the selector is used to highlight audio regions or portions of regions for subsequent actions. The position of the selector bar can also determine the point at which playback of sound begins.
• The Grabber looks like a hand; it's used to "grab" onto entire regions and move them around to different places within a session.
• The Scrubber icon looks like a loudspeaker; we move the Scrubber back and forth across a waveform to audition a portion of sound at slower than normal speed. This is often needed to do to locate some subtle detail in a track.
• The "Pencil Tool" is to the right of the Scrubber. We'll find interesting uses for the Pencil later on when we look at automating volume and pan information displays. However, please do not use the Pencil Tool on a region that is displayed in a waveform view. When zoomed into extreme magnifications on a waveform, the Pencil Tool is a destructive editing tool that actually modifies the waveform of the sound.This feature is seldom used and won't be covered at the intro level. NOTE: Since this tool destructively alters the original soundfiles, do not experiment with on audiofiles that others must share. If you must fiddle with it, do so using your own soundfiles.
• The Smart Tool is relatively new to the latest versions of Pro Tools. It provides an easy way to switch between four common tasks: selecting, trimming, creating fades, and grabbing.

Zoomer

To start with, try double-clicking on the Zoomer. This should "zoom out to a wide shot" so that we are looking at the entire session. When the Zoom tool is highlighted and active, our mouse pointer becomes a little magnifying icon when we move it around the waveform display. Now try clicking on one of the waveforms and dragging the magnifier icon -- you notice a rectangular grid is selected. When you release the mouse button, the display should "zoom in" on the piece of audio that you just selected. You can repeat this process several times to continue examining the waveform in more detail. At some point the level of magnification becomes impractical for general purpose editing, so then just double click on the Zoomer icon in the toolbar to get the broad overview of the session again.

Or you can easily toggle back to the previous magnification by OPTION-CLICKING while in the Zoomer mode. (The "+" indicator on the tool icon will turn into a "-" when you hold down the OPTION key.

Trimmer

It's hard to describe the Trimmer action in words; you really need to play around with it. First, select it by clicking on the Trimmer button, now move your pointer to the last region of the top track. This region is labelled "4 Bar Drums" and you've probably noticed that this top track consists of the same audio region -- the rectangular block that contains the waveform -- repeated four times. Without clicking the pointer, which now looks like the Trimmer icon, place it about in the center of that region block and move it slightly right, then slightly left. You should notice that the Trimmer icon changes shape when it crosses the mid-point of the region. When it is closer to the end of the region, its shape changes so that it will trim off the tail of the region; when it's closer to the beginning, it will trim off the head of the sound.

Remember, this is all non-destuctive editing, so don't worry about making any mistakes here. Just position the trimmer so that it is to the right of the mid-point of the region. Now you can trim the region to that point just by clicking. You'll see that the region length has changed. (The original soundfile is untouched; all you've done is instructed Pro Tools to play just that portion of the sound and no more.)

Now move the Trimmer slightly to the left, click, and trim off a bit more sound from the tail of the region. Next, position the Trimmer so that it is inside the region. Click and continue holding down the mouse while you drag the Trimmer to the right. This should extend the region, restoring the portions you previously deleted. Now experiment with trimming and restoring the beginning of the region.

Selector

Turn your pointer into a Selector Tool by clicking on the Selector button. Now move the Selector/pointer into one of the regions and click on it. Nothing much happens except that a blinking selector bar appears at that point. But now try clicking and dragging the Selector, then releasing the button. You've now "selected" a highlighted portion of the region. You now have various choices as to what you can do with that portion. (One method of viewing some of the choices is to now pull down the Edit Menu from the Menubar. Notice that some of these are standard Mac items such as Cut, Copy, Paste,etc., with some standard keystrokes that apply.)

• Undo. There are 16 levels of Undo/Redo in Pro Tools. (The shortcut for Undo is SPLAT-Z.)
• Cut. This removes the selected portion (and simultaneously stores a copy of that portion in the clipboard, so that it can be pasted elsewhere if desired.)
• Copy. Stores the selection in the clipboard.
• Paste. This places the contents of the clipboard wherever you've positioned the selector cursor.
• Clear. This deletes the selection without storing it to the clipboard. (Note: You can use the keyboard Delete key to do the same thing. I find this to be easier than pressing SPLAT-X or SPLAT-B.)
• Duplicate. This tacks a copy of the selection onto the tail end of that selection. (See "Repeat.")
• Repeat. Just like "Duplicate", except a dialog comes up asking you how many times to repeat the region. (Handy if you like to create incredibly repetitious rhythm tracks.)
• Capture Region. When you choose this action, you're prompted to enter a name for the region. This selected region then appears in the Audio Regions List under the name you've given. From there it can be dragged into the session when needed. (Useful for identifying "good bits" that you might want to use elsewhere, such as a "Cymbal Hit" or "Big Car Crash".)
• Separate Region. Choosing this creates region boundary lines, so if you had one big region and separated a piece in the middle, you now have three regions. By fiddling with preferences, you have the option of either naming this new region or having Pro Tools slap an I.D. number on it. (Why bother separating regions? In order to treat a portion of a track differently from the adjacent sound, we need to "define" it as a separate region. An example will be come shortly.)
• Trim Region. This not only separates the selection from the larger region from which it came, it deletes the regions on either side. (As in, "I want this Cymbal Hit but I don't want the stuff that comes before and after.")
• Heal Separation. Basically "undoes" a separation, provided that you haven't nudged the regions around on the timeline.
• Mute/Unmute. Suppose you had separated a region -- like that Cymbal Hit -- because you didn't like it. This would allow you to Mute just that part of a track, where the Cymbal Hit occurs, without affecting the rest. (Later, we'll also see that you could also simply adjust the level of that separate region.)
• Lock/Unlock. When you get a region placed just where you want it, this allows you to "lock" it in place on the timeline so that it can't get accidentally moved. (Little "padlock" icons appear on the region.)

There are still more choices in that Edit Menu, but that's plenty for now. Especially since there are two important "combo strokes" to know about when using the selector:

• Holding down the Control key when the Selector is in a waveform allows you to scrub audio using the selector. (Saves the trouble of having to click on the Scrubber button, then going back to the Selector button.)
• Double-clicking with the Selector highlights the entire region. (Trust me; this can be handy.)

Grabber

That hand icon seems pretty straightforward; you grab onto regions and move them around. Try it out on one of those "4 Bar Bass" regions. Easy, huh?

But the grabber has other uses and variations on its basic use. Try double-clicking with the grabber on that same region. You should get a dialog like this:

Go ahead and rename it if you like. Try "Bass Riff." You'll notice that the other duplicates of that region also get renamed, and that the new region name appears in the list window to the right. Naming regions is often very useful. You can call them anything you like, because it doesn't affect the original audiofiles. But pay special attention to the next scenario.

If you were to double-click with the grabber on the region called "Ld Gtr" you would get a different prompt, like the following:

You'll notice that this dialog defaults to the choice "name region and disk file." It did so because in this case, "Ld Gtr" is not just a piece of some larger audiofile -- it's the entire audiofile. This is a critical distinction: DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY RENAME DISK FILES -- those are the original audiofiles. Any sessions other than the current one depend on those original file names.

Remember, you're working with a copy of the Demo Session that you've given a distinct name. There's not much you could do to your copy of the session that could affect the original -- but this is one of the exceptions. If you re-name "Ld Gtr" as "Fred" or "Wilma", when someone tries to open the original Demo Session, Pro Tools is going to be looking for a file called "Ld Gtr" -- and it's not going to find it anywhere. The file hasn't moved, but if you've renamed it "Wilma" then as far as Pro Tools is concerned, "Ld Gtr" has left the building, never to return.

Even when you're working with your own audiofiles that you've created, once you've named them and worked with them in a session, re-naming them can create this same dilemma.

[Here are some advanced combo strokes involving the Grabber --

• "Option-Grab" -- if you hold down the Option key while you grab and move a region, you create and move a copy of the region, leaving the original alone.
• "Grab-Control" -- first, move one of those regions off to the right somewhere so that there's no other region in the track just below it. The region you moved should still be highlighted; click the Grabber in an empty part of a track -- this will deselect the region you moved. Now we can truly demonstrate this move, because the sequence is important. Re-select that region by single clicking on it with the Grabber. Now press the Contr key and hold it down while you try to slide the region to the track below it. You should find that while you can move the region to any track, it will maintain its position on the timeline. In other words, you can move it vertically but not horizontally. (Very useful when you have sound effects in sync with picture, but you want to move them to a different track.)
• "Control-Grab" -- Highlight a region. Now press Control and grab some region in a different track -- and the second region will snap to a new position so that left edges of the regions line up. Handy when you want sounds to begin simultaneously. A variation on this technique: place the selector anywhere you want, then switch to the Grabber. When you Control-Grab a region, it will snap to the time position where the selector was.
• "Separation Grabber"-- if you click and hold down on the Grabber button, a "pull down" of two different Grabber modes is revealed. The "Time" choice is the default; you grab and move regions around on the timeline or from track to track. But if you select the "Separation" mode, the Grabber will work like this: if you grab any portion of a region previously highlighted by the Selector, the Grabber automatically "snips" that piece and separates it from the rest of the region so that it can be moved elsewhere. It's just a convenience, combining a couple steps into one move.]

Scrubber

Now click on the Scrubber button and move your mouse pointer onto one of the waveforms. The pointer should turn into a speaker icon. Now click and hold the mouse button while you move the mouse, "dragging" the speaker icon back and forth slowly across the waveform. You should hear the sound playing, corresponding to your mouse movements. (This is the digital equivalent of the "scrubbing" technique done for many years by moving analog tape back and forth over a playback head.) Release the mouse button and try the process again on a different waveform or portion of the same. Slow, subtle mouse moves should produce slow, subtle scrubs.

Note: Earlier we looked at a more convenient way to access scrubbing by pressing the Option button while using the Selector tool.

The Pencil Tool

We'll come back to the Pencil Tool in detail when we look at volume and pan automation. Briefly, the Pencil Tool can be used to "draw" a line representing changes in volume or stereo panning. But as mentioned above, when a region is viewed as a magnified waveform, the Pencil Tool can also be used as a destructive editing tool that can "redraw" small portions of waveforms, altering the original soundfiles forever. Exercise great caution using the Pencil Tool to redraw waveforms. Better still, avoid it altogether -- especially when working with files that are "communal property."

The Smart Tool

The Smart Tool is represented by a bar beneath the Trimmer, Selector, and Grabber icons. The Smart Tool combines several functions, switching between them by "sensing" what you want to do depending on where the Tool is positioned within a region.

• Position the Tool in the upper half of a region, but not too close to the start or end of the region, and it becomes a Selector.
• Position the Tool in the bottom half of the region, about in the middle of the region, and it becomes a Grabber.
• Position the Tool near the beginning or end of a region and it becomes a Trimmer.
• Position the Tool near the beginning or end of a region and move it vertically so that it's near the top of a region and it becomes a "Fade In" or "Fade Out" tool. You'll have to experiment with dragging this tool to vary the length of these fades; it takes a little getting used to. You can also do crossfades between two adjacent regions by moving the Tool to the border between them, and positioning it toward the bottom part of the regions. (More on fades & crossfades later.)

The Edit Mode Selector

The four different Edit Modes affect the operations of cutting, deleting, pasting, and duplicating and also affects actions performed with the grabber. You should experiment to get a feel for how the different modes operate.

• Shuffle mode - In the shuffle mode, when you perform an action, the regions will tend to "snap together" end to end. For instance, any time you use the Grabber to highlight and move a region, that region will tend to snap up against the end of whatever region preceeds it on the same track. (Other non-highlighted regions further to the right of the moved region will remain stationary when you do these Grabber moves.) However, things get trickier if you do a cut or deletion. If you select the mid-portion of a region and cut or delete that selection, the region to the right of the deletion will move to join up against the end of the remaining region. Also, any regions to the right of the deletion will "jump forward" along the timeline by the same amount. Look at this "before & after" deletion done in the Shuffle mode:

	<-----The highlighted portion is selected for deletion.
	<-----After the deletion. The remaining piece of "4 Bar Drums" has snapped to the left to join the up against the first piece. Also notice how the "More Drums" region has moved along the timeline, by the same amount as the length of the deletion.

This is why you need to be careful if you use the Shuffle mode when editing sound to picture, as you can inadvertently change the sync relationships of sound regions and picture.

• Slip mode - In this mode, regions can be slipped around freely with the Grabber, and if a deletion is made within a region the two remaining pieces remain in their original places along the timeline. Also, a region can be placed so that it "overlaps" another. (This doesn't mean that Pro Tools will play both overlapping sounds at once; the new overlapping region "hides" the underlying region. Pro Tools will simply switch from playing one sound to playing another, as if the two sounds were spliced together.)

Here's the same deletion as above, done in the "Slip" mode.

	<-----The same highlighted portion is selected for deletion.
	<-----This time all the remaining regions maintain their position on the timeline.

• Grid mode - Grid mode acts much like the Slip mode, except that the movements of the regions are constrained to user-selected increments. These increments are `chosen via the Nudge/Grid Selector, which is at the upper left. Clicking on the unit displayed will reveal a pop-up menu. Like this:

<------ Clicking on the button brings up a pull down menu of unit choices, as seen to the right.

<-------- In this case units of Minutes/Seconds are used, and an increment of 100 msec is selected. (That's 1/10th of a second.)

So if you were in working in the grid mode with units of "1 second" as your increment, a region could not be shifted by a fraction of a second; it could only be placed on lines determined by full seconds.

• Spot mode - The Spot mode is most useful for those who are syncing regions to a videotape that is striped with timecode and contains a visible timecode window burn. When you "Grab" a region in the Spot mode, a dialog window appears, prompting you to type in a time location where you want the region placed. This location can be in entered in different units (feet/frames, mins/secs, timecode numbers, or bars/beats) depending on how we set up our Time Scale.

While the Grid and Spot modes are essential for those working with film and videotape, the Slip and Shuffle modes are probably the most useful for those working on intro level projects.

[About that "Nudge" field: it has a similar pull down menu where increment units can be selected. Here's what "nudging" means -- when you have a region highlighted, you can use the "-" and "+" keys on the keyboard to move the sound earlier or later on the timeline, one increment unit at a time. Very handy in film work on the larger Pro Tools-24 systems, where increments of 35mm film frames and timecode values can be chosen. The Pro Tools LE systems don't have this option, a failing that is presently rather controversial in the pro audio world.]

The Time Ruler

The Time Ruler is the thin "ruler bar" that appears just above our audio track display. It gives us our orientation as to where regions occur during playback.

[You can choose to view the timeline in Bars/Beats or Samples by selecting them from the bottom of the Display Menu. You can also view more than one Time Ruler by choosing Display|Ruler View Shows and making appropriate selections, which on the more advanced TDM systems include timecode and 35mm feet/frames.]

The Mix Window

When we first opened the Demo Session the Mix Window was probably positioned to the right and behind the Edit window. If so, clicking anywhere on it should bring it to the foreground, making it active. If the mix window isn't visible you can make it so by selecting from the menubar Display|Show Mix Window. (The handy shortcut is SPLAT-EQUALS SIGN.)

It should look something like this:

The Mix Window gives us control over the playback levels of our tracks. By clicking and dragging on these virtual faders we can adjust levels. (When you do so, you'll notice that the numbers in the "vol" box will change accordingly.) Experiment a bit with those levels now; you can use the Return and Spacebar keys to play the session, or use the Transport Window. (Note: If you click on the Edit Window, it becomes active and hides the Mix Window. But you can get the Mix Window back by pressing Splat-Equals Sign.) Beside each fader is an individual level meter; as a rule none of these meters should indicate red (or digital clipping.) If you get a clipping indication, adjust the fader level downwards. Then click on the meter indicator that shows red; this will clear the red indicator from the display. Now play your sounds again, watching the level for signs of further clipping. [Note: If you're moving the faders and the meter levels don't seem to be affected, an option called "Pre-fader metering" is probably turned on. You can toggle it off by pulling down the Operations Menu.]

Remember that despite what these Pro Tools meters indicate, if you're recording onto an analog deck it's the combined level into your target tape deck that is most important. Get all your level adjustments lined up in your analog audio chain first; then you can fine tune the mix in Pro Tools.

Just above the volume faders are some sliders that move from left to right; these are pan pots that will position the sound for a stereo effect. (The default position leaves them in the center, which will produce a mono mix.)

Note also the mute/solo switches which can help you isolate sounds as you experiment with levels.

It's clear that we've barely scratched the surface of what Pro Tools can do (for instance, you've probably noticed those intriguing "auto read" buttons for the mixing automation.) But we'll save that for later. You can do quite a bit of sound work with what has been covered to this point.

One last note: Please do not activate any of the Record Buttons (marked "rec") for these Demo Sessions.(This could result in a lot of unwanted and confusing audiofiles scattered around the drives.) Recording into Pro Tools will be covered on a separate page.

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