Tool Thursday with Jed Hackett...
Is your Pro Tools rig prone to crashes? One source of trouble for your rig are preferences. Certain changes you make to your Pro Tools session are stored in temporary files called preferences. For instance, when you change your hardware, playback engine, or preference settings, those changes are stored in preference files. When Pro Tools crashes, those preferences are easily corrupted. If you don’t get rid of them after a crash you are much more likely to experience more crashes until you do.
Note: PC users consult with digidesign about this before you do it. This is meant for mac users.
After a crash you should throw away the following files found in Home>Library>Preferences:
1)DAE Prefs
2)Digisetup.OSX
3)Pro Tools v7.x Preferences
4)com.digidesign.ProToolsHD.plist
Next, on each hard drive connected to your system there is a folder called digidesign databases. Trash that as well. Don’t worry, Pro Tools will rebuild all the files that you just trashed the next time you fire up the program.
Once you have thrown those files away, reboot your computer. When the mac reboots, it will repair any damage to the boot up drive before launching OSX.
After your mac reboots, open the disk utility program located in Applications>Utilities. You will notice that for each drive on your system the disk utility lists the technical name for the drive and underneath is the name you gave the drive when you formated it. For example 233.8 GB Maxtor 7Y250MO>Mac Drive. Click on the tech name for the drive so that it is highlighted and click Repair Disk Permissions. This will take just a minute or two. The disk permissions are also easily corrupted and repairing them will help alleviate problems.
Next, launch the Pro Tools software, then open the session you were working on. Pro Tools will be just a bit more sluggish opening up for the first time after you follow these steps; it has to rebuild the files that you just trashed. Pro Tools will set your preferences back to the factory presets.
The last step is to set your session settings back to the way you like to work. For those of you that don’t live and breath Pro Tools tech geek stuff, here are some basic settings to restore:
1) Under Options> turn on Quick Punch and Mute Frees Assigned Voice. Also, make sure your Delay Compensation is set as you want it. On if you’re mixing, Off if you’re recording.
2)Go to Setup> I/O and make sure your I/O settings are back to normal. How you set them will depend on the type and number of I/O’s you have.
3) Under Setup>Preferences>Display turn off Tools and Tips. I don’t know about you, but the constant pop up bubbles drive me nuts!
4) Under Setup>Preferences>Operation choose Record Online at Insertion Selection. For Open Ended Record Allocation Select Limit to XX Minutes. Set the number of minutes to the maximum amount of time that you would ever need to record a song, for most people that would be 10 minutes. Lastly, make sure that AutoSave is turned on.
5) Under Setup>Preferences>Editing change Conversion Quality to Tweakhead (Slowest).
6) If you have Pitch N Time or another TC/E plug-in, under Setup>Preferences>Processing change the TC/E Plug-in back to the one you wish to use. If you don’t have an alternate TC/E program just leave this setting alone.
Now that you have set things back to normal you are all set to go. This may seem like a lot to go through but it is well worth it. You will have fewer crashes and less stress.
Take care,
Jed
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
deliver me a house
check out this story on how one of our eTalent members, Byron House (bass) saved the dixie chicks tour!
dixiechicks.msn.com
image by bryan sutton
peace!
dixiechicks.msn.com
image by bryan sutton
peace!
Thursday, December 6, 2007
tool thursday, with jed hackett...
Clean Up Your Room! Or in This Case, Session.
So you’ve got your tracks cut, overdubs complete, and things are all tweaked up and ready to be shipped off to your favorite mix engineer. Let’s talk about a few things you should do to make everyone’s lives a little bit easier.
First of all, save your mix as My Song for (some engineer with three names) so that when you clean things up you don’t lose your original files. Now it’s time to do a little house cleaning. Get rid of every track that you are not using from your new session. Then remove every alternate playlist from the tracks that you are keeping. If you have a hidden playlist that you would like to include with your session, make a new track and bring that hidden playlist to the top layer of that track making sure you label it appropriately, like “Alternate guitar solo”. The idea is to only have the tracks that you want the mix engineer to use in the mix, in this session, with no alternate playlists.
The next part requires a little communication with your mix engineer. Find out what plug-ins they have on their rig. If you are using a plug-in that they do not have and it is critical to the sound of an instrument, say Guitar Rig or Amp Farm, then you should print a track for them with the audio processed by that plug-in. If you have soft synths like Trilogy or Stylus in your session, make sure you print those tracks as well. You may also have a chat with them about the size of your session and see if they would like you to submix any parts together, like the 16 tracks of Oohs you put in the chorus. See if they like automation and plug-ins left in the session. Some engineers like to build off what you already have going on and others just want a clean slate. If you use the comments field to leave notes about the tracks, make sure you leave that field open so they realize you have left comments. You may also want to warn them that they should look for the comments. It’s also not a bad idea to print a rough mix for the engineer so they know what you and the A&R department have gotten use to.
Now that you are on the same page with your mix engineer, it’s time to clean up the remaining tracks. Go through and check that all of your crossfades are clean… you did put in crossfades, didn’t you? Clear out any unwanted noises between phrases, check that you didn’t cut off any breaths on your lead vocal, etc. Once you are sure you have everything all neat and tidy, no laundry on the floor, go ahead and copy the first click of the song from the click track to every track that you have. This will give the mixer a fail safe way to line up your tracks if for some reason they aren’t lining up when he/she spots them in their session. ( And don’t be putting a click over some audio you intend to use at the top of the song! Make sure you paste these clicks before everything starts.) Now consolidate every track from the same start point to the end of the last piece of audio in the session. Once you so this, every track will have only one piece of audio, start and end at the same point in time, and have a click at the front just in case.
The next thing you need to do now that you have cleaned up all the clutter is to empty out the trash. Remove all unused audio from the session. In the Regions menu within the Edit window choose Select> Unused. Then choose Clear. This next part is very important! When prompted, choose Remove. If you choose “delete” instead, as I said before, all of your files will go into the intergalactic bit bucket, never to be heard again.
The final step is to Create a new folder on your drive entitled Ready to Mix and save a copy of your mix session, with the audio, into that new folder you just created. In the Pro Tools menu, under File, choose Save Copy In. When the copy window opens up, next to “Where:”, find the folder you just created, check the box under Items to Copy labeled All Audio files. Also check the box labeled Session Plug-in Settings Folder. If you don’t check these boxes, your audio files and plug-in settings won’t be copied along with the session. Click Save.
Congratulations! You now have a very neat, organized and hopefully idiot proof session to send to your mix engineer. If you follow these steps you will quickly become one of their favorite clients. Cleaning things up like this can cut hours off of their set up time and leave them more time to do what they do best…mix. It may even translate into cheaper rates for you in the future!
Mixers, please write in with any other helpful advise on this subject. Thanks and see you next week.
Jed
So you’ve got your tracks cut, overdubs complete, and things are all tweaked up and ready to be shipped off to your favorite mix engineer. Let’s talk about a few things you should do to make everyone’s lives a little bit easier.
First of all, save your mix as My Song for (some engineer with three names) so that when you clean things up you don’t lose your original files. Now it’s time to do a little house cleaning. Get rid of every track that you are not using from your new session. Then remove every alternate playlist from the tracks that you are keeping. If you have a hidden playlist that you would like to include with your session, make a new track and bring that hidden playlist to the top layer of that track making sure you label it appropriately, like “Alternate guitar solo”. The idea is to only have the tracks that you want the mix engineer to use in the mix, in this session, with no alternate playlists.
The next part requires a little communication with your mix engineer. Find out what plug-ins they have on their rig. If you are using a plug-in that they do not have and it is critical to the sound of an instrument, say Guitar Rig or Amp Farm, then you should print a track for them with the audio processed by that plug-in. If you have soft synths like Trilogy or Stylus in your session, make sure you print those tracks as well. You may also have a chat with them about the size of your session and see if they would like you to submix any parts together, like the 16 tracks of Oohs you put in the chorus. See if they like automation and plug-ins left in the session. Some engineers like to build off what you already have going on and others just want a clean slate. If you use the comments field to leave notes about the tracks, make sure you leave that field open so they realize you have left comments. You may also want to warn them that they should look for the comments. It’s also not a bad idea to print a rough mix for the engineer so they know what you and the A&R department have gotten use to.
Now that you are on the same page with your mix engineer, it’s time to clean up the remaining tracks. Go through and check that all of your crossfades are clean… you did put in crossfades, didn’t you? Clear out any unwanted noises between phrases, check that you didn’t cut off any breaths on your lead vocal, etc. Once you are sure you have everything all neat and tidy, no laundry on the floor, go ahead and copy the first click of the song from the click track to every track that you have. This will give the mixer a fail safe way to line up your tracks if for some reason they aren’t lining up when he/she spots them in their session. ( And don’t be putting a click over some audio you intend to use at the top of the song! Make sure you paste these clicks before everything starts.) Now consolidate every track from the same start point to the end of the last piece of audio in the session. Once you so this, every track will have only one piece of audio, start and end at the same point in time, and have a click at the front just in case.
The next thing you need to do now that you have cleaned up all the clutter is to empty out the trash. Remove all unused audio from the session. In the Regions menu within the Edit window choose Select> Unused. Then choose Clear. This next part is very important! When prompted, choose Remove. If you choose “delete” instead, as I said before, all of your files will go into the intergalactic bit bucket, never to be heard again.
The final step is to Create a new folder on your drive entitled Ready to Mix and save a copy of your mix session, with the audio, into that new folder you just created. In the Pro Tools menu, under File, choose Save Copy In. When the copy window opens up, next to “Where:”, find the folder you just created, check the box under Items to Copy labeled All Audio files. Also check the box labeled Session Plug-in Settings Folder. If you don’t check these boxes, your audio files and plug-in settings won’t be copied along with the session. Click Save.
Congratulations! You now have a very neat, organized and hopefully idiot proof session to send to your mix engineer. If you follow these steps you will quickly become one of their favorite clients. Cleaning things up like this can cut hours off of their set up time and leave them more time to do what they do best…mix. It may even translate into cheaper rates for you in the future!
Mixers, please write in with any other helpful advise on this subject. Thanks and see you next week.
Jed
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
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