# Working with cues in Logic X



## Sopris (Jun 14, 2017)

I'm wondering if this is the easiest way to do this.

I want to have individual project files for each cue of a film I'm working on. I want the cue to start at bar 9 in the right position within the film, here's what I've been doing.

Say I want my cue to begin at 01:09:56:09.54. I've been going into Project Settings - Synchronization - General and changing the following.

Bar Position - changing from 1 to 9, then changing "plays at SMTPE" to 01:09:56:09.54

Is this the way most people do this in Logic X?

If theres an easier way I'm all ears.


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## Saxer (Jun 14, 2017)

I normally don't start at bar 9. I mostly follow the movie. If the scene start bar is at 1583 I go there.
But If I want to start at bar 9 I would set a dummy region to the scene start. Then I would set two tempo events into the tempo list window: my music tempo to bar 8 (to have the tempo for a count in) and a second one to bar 1. Now I reduce the value for the first tempo event and watch the region coming closer to bar 9. Has a bit of try and error to get the tempo to exactly from coarse to fine. It mostly ends up with strange tempos like 41,0782.


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## charlieclouser (Jun 15, 2017)

Sopris said:


> I'm wondering if this is the easiest way to do this.
> 
> I want to have individual project files for each cue of a film I'm working on. I want the cue to start at bar 9 in the right position within the film, here's what I've been doing.
> 
> ...



The way you are describing is exactly the right way to do it. 

I disagree most strongly with what Saxer said - having 1582 bars of empty space in your project before the music actually starts makes no sense, adds all kinds of hassles, and there really is no good reason to do it that way. In addition, having an initial tempo at bar 1 and another tempo event at the bar number your music actually starts at will mean that your count-in might be at a different tempo than the music that's about to start - and this is no good at all. This will be the case unless you manually repair the tempo event at bar 1 every time you adjust the tempo at bar 9. Unless you leave the tempo event at bar 1 to a fixed value while you adjust the tempo at bar 9, the actual SMPTE frame that bar 9 aligns with will move every time you adjust that tempo at bar 1 - resulting in your count-in being at a different tempo than the music that's about to start - again, not good at all. So.....

- Definitely have each cue as a separate Logic project.

- Definitely use bar 9 as the start of your actual music in each cue. This gives you enough pre-roll to be able to hear what dialog / sfx leads into the cue, and if you need to hear the ending of the previous cue and how it will overlap with the current cue, you've got that eight-bar chunk in which you can insert a chunk of the rough mix of that previous cue to hear how it will interface with the current cue. That eight-bar chunk is also enough for any program changes, initial automation events, etc. - the stuff you need to have happening before the music actually starts.

- Going into Project Settings > Synchronization and saying "Bar 9 = SMPTE XX" is absolutely the right way to do it.

- When you do the "bar 9 = SMPTE XX" thing, you're basically creating a tempo map with one tempo change event that occurs at bar 9. The tempo of the eight bars preceding this tempo change event will be the same as the tempo at bar 9. There is no need to create a tempo change event at bar 1 and another at bar 9 - indeed, this will likely create more problems down the road if you decide you want to change the tempo at bar 9, or create a more complex tempo map. In short, do NOT create another tempo event at bar 1 - just let Logic figure out where bar 1 will lie based on the tempo that occurs at bar 9. 

- If you do decide to create a complex tempo map, leave that initial tempo event at bar 9, and create further tempo events later in the project as needed. If you then decide that you need to move where the project starts relative to picture, you can just go to Project Settings > Synchronization and change the SMPTE number that bar 9 occurs at, and as long as you have not "locked" any tempo or MIDI events (which keeps them locked firmly to a SMPTE position) then the whole project AND the whole complex tempo map will move together to start at the new SMPTE number you've entered into the "bar 9 = SMPTE xx" window. You can also just open the tempo list editor and scroll or type in a new SMPTE number for that initial tempo event that occurs at bar 9. This is absolutely the same as scrolling / typing a new number into the "bar 9 = SMPTE xx" in Synchronization Settings. In fact, you can do some experimentation to help you understand how the tempo list and the "bar 9 = SMPTE xx" settings interact: 

In a dummy project that you don't mind wrecking, enter a value in Synchronization Settings for "bar 9 = SMPTE xx", then open the tempo list editor. You should see a single event at bar 9. Double click on the bar position in the tempo list, and change it from bar 9 to bar 3. Now open Synchronization Settings and you'll see that instead of saying "bar 9 = SMPTE xx" it will now say "bar 3 = SMPTE xx". This will confirm that the first tempo event in the list corresponds to the setting in Synchronization Settings. Clear as mud, right?

In 25+ years of synchronizing Logic to everything from analog multitrack machines in the studio, to DA-88s on tour, to VCRs, Pro Tools rigs, and video playback machines while scoring, I've *always* used bar 9 as my start point. With over 8,000 cues delivered using this method, I can definitively say you're doing it right!


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## mc_deli (Jun 15, 2017)

charlieclouser said:


> The way you are describing is exactly the right way to do it.
> 
> I disagree most strongly with what Saxer said - having 1582 bars of empty space in your project before the music actually starts makes no sense, adds all kinds of hassles, and there really is no good reason to do it that way. In addition, having an initial tempo at bar 1 and another tempo event at the bar number your music actually starts at will mean that your count-in might be at a different tempo than the music that's about to start - and this is no good at all. This will be the case unless you manually repair the tempo event at bar 1 every time you adjust the tempo at bar 9. Unless you leave the tempo event at bar 1 to a fixed value while you adjust the tempo at bar 9, the actual SMPTE frame that bar 9 aligns with will move every time you adjust that tempo at bar 1 - resulting in your count-in being at a different tempo than the music that's about to start - again, not good at all. So.....
> 
> ...


Your contribution here is so appreciated. When are writing a book?


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## charlieclouser (Jun 15, 2017)

mc_deli said:


> Your contribution here is so appreciated. When are writing a book?



What do you mean? I already wrote one! (It's called "my post history on vi-control" or "stuff I type on forums when I should be working")


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## dgburns (Jun 15, 2017)

charlieclouser said:


> The way you are describing is exactly the right way to do it.
> 
> I disagree most strongly with what Saxer said - having 1582 bars of empty space in your project before the music actually starts makes no sense, adds all kinds of hassles, and there really is no good reason to do it that way. In addition, having an initial tempo at bar 1 and another tempo event at the bar number your music actually starts at will mean that your count-in might be at a different tempo than the music that's about to start - and this is no good at all. This will be the case unless you manually repair the tempo event at bar 1 every time you adjust the tempo at bar 9. Unless you leave the tempo event at bar 1 to a fixed value while you adjust the tempo at bar 9, the actual SMPTE frame that bar 9 aligns with will move every time you adjust that tempo at bar 1 - resulting in your count-in being at a different tempo than the music that's about to start - again, not good at all. So.....
> 
> ...



I do this as well, always seemed to make sense. Starting at bar 9 as well. Nice to know I'm in good company.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jun 15, 2017)

Sopris, is the timecode burnt into the film?


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## charlieclouser (Jun 15, 2017)

For me, the habit of using bar 9 as the start of the music came from making records, where everything was in 8-bar chunks - verses, choruses, etc., and it was good practice to get in the habit of counting off 8 bar chunks and reflexively thinking of bar 9, 17, 25, 33, 41, 49, 57, etc.

Plus, even when you thought the song was done and arranged, there was always the chance that someone would want to add another 4 or 8 bar intro, so it made sense to use bar 9 as opposed to bar 10 or 20 or some other increment that would throw off all of those downstream boundaries at bars 17, 25, 33, etc.


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## munician (Jun 15, 2017)

I hope I don’t derail this thread, but:

While this method is perfectly okay I dare to differ…

I used to do one project per cue but the fuller the projects got with instruments and plug-ins and the loading times drove me up the wall I changed the method, at least for this tv show that I have been scoring for years now… with 1000’s of cues.

I make one project per show and start the movie at bar 50, - this leaves me room at the beginning for dumping RMX-Midi files and stuff like that.

My template holds all the instrument tracks (200+) for all kinds of orchestrations I might need for the show. After all this time I know what I need - and I do have very different „bands“ with a few new instruments per show.

Then I start scoring - usually I go chronologically through the show, but I might not. The most important is the tempo track (I work in Logic). I write in a tempo event 4 beats before the start of the cue and - equally important - create a marker over the whole cue. I write in the name, the tempo and the SMPTE position. Then I go to the next cue or I might even jump to the end of the show and do the last cue, although rarely.

If then I ever decide to change the tempo in the first cue - and I do this occasionally - it of course throws off the timing of all the following, maybe 40 cues.
But since I have the SMPTE positions written in the marker I simply insert another tempo event a couple of bars before the next cue and move it up or down until the cue realigns with the position it’s supposed to be on - and all the following cues realign by themselves. With a little practice it goes really quick.

The mixing I obviously do with automation - when I’m finished with a cue I write the starting events all in those first 4 beats after the beginning of the marker, so jumping around the cues is no problem (kind of).

I bounce a rough mix of the cue onto an audio track for two reasons: to remember what it is supposed to sound like - the final mix with my sound engineer might be weeks in the future; presenting the show to the directors/producers is easier (I don’t have to worry about ILLogics sometimes erratic automation behaviour), I can move/copy/delete the audio files if being asked to withaut worrying about the crazy tempo track.

Another BIG advantage is this: since I always get a bunch of shows to work on - usually between 4-6 - and I might need to reuse a cue in a future show, I move the whole music (make sure the markers go as well!) with the „Insert space“ command (or whatever it is called) to bar 1300 or wherever the show I’m working on is over. And I’ll do this with the next shows as well - by the end of the 6th show I might have a project with 9000 bars - with all of the cues available that I have composed so far.
It works. And surely has saved me dozens (or hundreds) of hours of loading time…

Of course this works especially well since I almost always get final cuts. I’ve done it with rough cuts as well but it’s a little more pain - as rough cuts always are…
It won’t work well with insanely different orchestrations, or tempos or other situations I can’t think of right now.
But it did speed up my workflow so much that - for this kind of show - I can’t really think of going back to the one-project-per-cue-method.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jun 15, 2017)

munician said:


> I used to do one project per cue but the fuller the projects got with instruments and plug-ins and the loading times drove me up the wall I changed the method, at least for this tv show that I have been scoring for years now… with 1000’s of cues.



Why not use VEPro? Then you only load your template once...everything remains loaded between projects (or cues). My first few productions were done as a single cue, until the cues kept changing. The editing was a nightmare! I have done a single project per cue ever since.


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## gsilbers (Jun 15, 2017)

random note about something I just saw in logic pro (which I might of missed before). you can now sort tracks based if they are used or not. so for big templates and long cues it makes it easier to find the regions.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jun 15, 2017)

gsilbers said:


> random note about something I just saw in logic pro (which I might of missed before). you can now sort tracks based if they are used or not. so for big templates and long cues it makes it easier to find the regions.



You mean "track alternatives"? It's an excellent feature, sort of like "chunks" in Digital Performer.


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## mc_deli (Jun 15, 2017)

I think he means:


Choose *Track > Sort Tracks By*, then choose an item from the submenu:

MIDI Channel


Audio Channel


Output Channel


Instrument Name


Track Name


*Used or Unused*


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jun 15, 2017)

Ahhhh yes....there's also a big letter "H" at the top of the track column that you can turn on/off. I use this feature all the time for hiding all unused tracks.


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## Sopris (Jun 15, 2017)

charlieclouser said:


> The way you are describing is exactly the right way to do it.
> 
> I disagree most strongly with what Saxer said - having 1582 bars of empty space in your project before the music actually starts makes no sense, adds all kinds of hassles, and there really is no good reason to do it that way. In addition, having an initial tempo at bar 1 and another tempo event at the bar number your music actually starts at will mean that your count-in might be at a different tempo than the music that's about to start - and this is no good at all. This will be the case unless you manually repair the tempo event at bar 1 every time you adjust the tempo at bar 9. Unless you leave the tempo event at bar 1 to a fixed value while you adjust the tempo at bar 9, the actual SMPTE frame that bar 9 aligns with will move every time you adjust that tempo at bar 1 - resulting in your count-in being at a different tempo than the music that's about to start - again, not good at all. So.....
> 
> ...



I couldn't have asked for a more clear and definitive response. You're a star...Cheers!


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## gsilbers (Jun 15, 2017)

Wolfie2112 said:


> Ahhhh yes....there's also a big letter "H" at the top of the track column that you can turn on/off. I use this feature all the time for hiding all unused tracks.



yes, but what if you want to have the unsued tracks? 
the sorting feature is nice. I don think i saw that before. ive been using logic since early emagic days and they/apple sneak in cool featuree without me knowing all the time. those guys!  
anyways. back to cues. 

Does starting at bar 9 affect when making notation parts for musicians? (if you are recording live instruments)


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## dgburns (Jun 15, 2017)

@munician , Yikes! you're braver then me. I'll never again do more then a few minutes in one project. If the cue comes back, I'll use track import or turn off the audio drivers and switch between the projects lightning fast.

I also do a bastardized version of the "bar 9 plays at" as described by Charlie, I'll keep it at "bar 1 plays at" and park my song position pointer at bar 9 and adjust the smpte while looking at the main transport smpte instead. It stops Logic writing a tempo event at bar 9 and it's the only way I know how to sync bar 9 while preserving whatever exotic tempos (ramps etc) might be happening leading up to bar 9. This is the only way to adapt any resync's further down the timeline in my experience. 
horses for courses.


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## munician (Jun 16, 2017)

dgburns said:


> @munician , Yikes! you're braver then me. I'll never again do more then a few minutes in one project. If the cue comes back, I'll use track import or turn off the audio drivers and switch between the projects lightning fast.



But when you turn the audio drivers back on - ten minute coffee break...

Of course I'm brave! Until I run into a major catastrophe, that is...and hasn't happened yet.

VEPro might be worth looking into though I don't see yet quite why - for my way of working. Having the whole film with all the music cues right in front of me is a great advantage - I see the arc of the score/movie, I can check the transitions between cues (sometimes key relations bother me that I might not have found out about if seperately working on cues), I find black holes in the score (they DO exist!)...


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## Ashermusic (Jun 16, 2017)

I also use 1 project per cue, unless there are two short ones practically right after each other, but I have always started at bar 1. But I don't do as inventive things with MIDI as Charlie does.


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## dgburns (Jun 16, 2017)

munician said:


> But when you turn the audio drivers back on - ten minute coffee break...
> 
> Of course I'm brave! Until I run into a major catastrophe, that is...and hasn't happened yet.
> 
> VEPro might be worth looking into though I don't see yet quite why - for my way of working. Having the whole film with all the music cues right in front of me is a great advantage - I see the arc of the score/movie, I can check the transitions between cues (sometimes key relations bother me that I might not have found out about if seperately working on cues), I find black holes in the score (they DO exist!)...



Well PT as a dubber pretty much solves the "bird's eye view" issue, I'd still prefer PT on a second machine so I don't have to work in a linear fashion in Logic. Also Vepro has been great over here, wouldn't think about doing anything with scale without it.


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## LaurensGoedhart (Jun 16, 2017)

I would like to comment on the way of working on a project-per-cue basis. I also did this in my last feature, but worked chronologically. I started with the first cue, then duplicated that Logic project and named it for the second cue. In that project, I would keep the first cue there for copying purposes, but built a new cue after that. If I wanted to change anything to the tempo, I would only do it for that cue though, and not for all other cues before it. Reading your ways to work in Logic with the one-cue-per-project way (starting at bar 9, changing timecode etc) interests me though and is something I really would like to try on the next feature.

My question though is this: what do you do at the recording stage? I often export rough mixes with or without, for example, strings samples, and import them in Pro Tools for strings recording. In the features I worked in a large Logic project per reel, I could easily export the tempo map of that reel from Logic to MIDI, and import it in Pro Tools for the same reel. Then all recording for that reel would be done in 1 PT project, instead of also a PT project per cue. Saves a lot of importing/exporting the IO setups etc in Pro Tools per .ptx file. If you would work with one-cue-per-project in Logic, and each project had different tempo information, how could you ever import all the different tempo maps in one and the same Pro Tools project? Is it even possible? Or do you have to split them up to in different PT-projects per cue?


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## dgburns (Jun 16, 2017)

LaurensGoedhart said:


> I would like to comment on the way of working on a project-per-cue basis. I also did this in my last feature, but worked chronologically. I started with the first cue, then duplicated that Logic project and named it for the second cue. In that project, I would keep the first cue there for copying purposes, but built a new cue after that. If I wanted to change anything to the tempo, I would only do it for that cue though, and not for all other cues before it. Reading your ways to work in Logic with the one-cue-per-project way (starting at bar 9, changing timecode etc) interests me though and is something I really would like to try on the next feature.
> 
> My question though is this: what do you do at the recording stage? I often export rough mixes with or without, for example, strings samples, and import them in Pro Tools for strings recording. In the features I worked in a large Logic project per reel, I could easily export the tempo map of that reel from Logic to MIDI, and import it in Pro Tools for the same reel. Then all recording for that reel would be done in 1 PT project, instead of also a PT project per cue. Saves a lot of importing/exporting the IO setups etc in Pro Tools per .ptx file. If you would work with one-cue-per-project in Logic, and each project had different tempo information, how could you ever import all the different tempo maps in one and the same Pro Tools project? Is it even possible? Or do you have to split them up to in different PT-projects per cue?



My thought would be to just make sure you have audio click tracks and forget about tempo maps in PT if it starts to get hairy in there. The players will read the dots and the mixers downstream will mix the audio.


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## charlieclouser (Jun 16, 2017)

dgburns said:


> My thought would be to just make sure you have audio click tracks and forget about tempo maps in PT if it starts to get hairy in there. The players will read the dots and the mixers downstream will mix the audio.



Exactly - if things are too hectic and there's not enough time / manpower / minions to prep all the ProTools sessions etc.

BUT.

All the fear of needed to import stuff, merge stuff, and have access to stuff from other cues when working in session-or-project-per-cue mode is reduced or eliminated if suitable steps are taken at the start of work.

Whenever I have a new film on deck, the first few days are spent building a new Logic template for that film. I'll usually start from whatever my last "good" template was, or in the case of a franchise I might use a favorite cue from a previous film in the series. Same for television. The template evolves, so I'm often going back to a fairly recent one that I like.

More likely is that I simply take a favorite cue that had all the bells and whistles, and a good basic mix (levels, routing, plugins, etc.) and just save that to a new location, throw away all of the MIDI, audio, automation, markers, and tempo events in order to reset it as completely as possible to a "blank slate" but retain all of the fader positions and instruments in place. Then I'll save this as a template for the new film.

Then I'll proceed to get to work, often repeating this process for each cue - take the cue I'm working on, do a "Save As" for the next cue, strip it down, and continue. This way every cue has almost the same resources in it. I lay out my tracks in bricks of 16 drums, 16 perc, 16 keys, etc. and I try to leave the last four in each brick empty for those wild card, single-use things that I just want to pull in for that one cue. So for me, switching between cues takes 10 or 15 seconds. I'm a little different to many in that I use EXS24 for 90% of my sounds, even orchestral stuff - and this means that I basically have the same thing as VEPro's "preserve on" and "decouple off" all the time, so in a template with 240 EXS instances with compression and eq, 14 reverbs, 14 delays, and 14 mastering limiters it only takes 15 seconds to switch cues, at most. If I'm using more than a few Kontakt instruments in a template these will live in VEPro, preserved and decoupled, but if it's only a few then I leave them in Logic.

When I read about folks who use templates / projects that take two minutes (or more?) to load or switch between I just think, "that ain't no way to live!". While working, I'm constantly flipping between cues - work on one for a while, get discouraged, go to another, etc. - so a fifteen-second load time is bad enough. I never "finish" a cue in one go - I tend to keep bouncing between cues to try and get all of them to somewhat the same level so I don't have a situation as the deadline looms where I have a bunch of cues that have barely been touched.

When you organize your tracks in a sensible, repeatable manner, and make liberal use of track colors, track "folder stacks", and the "hide" feature, it quickly becomes almost a reflex action to find the track you want, so the "re-order tracks with unused at the bottom" gives me the shakes! After all these years, I know that my main piano sound is the first track in the dark green brick for instance. My super-organized track layout also means that if I need to bring material (audio or MIDI) from one cue to another, I don't need to use the "import tracks" function - I go to the source cue, select and copy the regions, open the destination cue, and paste, and Logic asks if it should try to place the regions on tracks that match the tracks from which the source material came from. Most of the time everything just drops right onto the right tracks, and if it doesn't, I use the auto-generated region names as a reference as to where things need to go.

Even though I use a separate ProTools rig as a layback recorder to hold all of the 48-channel final mixes in one-session-per-reel form, on some quickie television projects I don't bother with ProTools. But in both situations I keep a similar Logic project that represents a whole episode or film reel, and I dump stereo rough mixes into that. That "preview" project is also built from my template, with the full complement of the instruments that are used in the individual cues, so if I'm previewing stuff for a director I can whiz through a whole reel / episode without loading cues, and if the director says, "can we have another strings swell right at the end?" I can do a quickie overdub right then and there into that preview sequence, instead of writing on a piece of scrap paper, "don't forget to do another strings swell at the end" or whatever. Both the ProTools layback session and my Logic preview project help me hear how one cue will overlap with the next, which seems to always be the case on the stuff I work on.

For the ProTools sessions used for external tracking sessions, if time and manpower permit I prefer to create a separate ProTools session for each cue, and import the tempo map and stems to be monitored while overdubbing into each PT session. This might be a little time consuming (maybe 3-4 hours for 60 cues?), but in the recording session it's not really that much more time consuming than doing a single PT session per reel. As with the Logic projects, I create an empty master session with all of the routing, i/o assignments, etc. and just keep cloning that. It takes mere seconds to clone a session or work from a template - IF your template is not a mess. So I make sure they're always crisp and clean - everything is labelled, i/o is all named and set up, and faders at zero.

If I AM in a scramble and just need to track to PT with a single session per reel I just make a session with the tracks and routing I'll need for recording, leave the tempo at 60bpm, and import the synth stems from my layback session (in which I've been printing rough mixes as I go). In this case I'm disregarding the tempo in ProTools entirely. Like dgburns said, the players read the dots, the engineers read the timecode, and off we go. I do most of my editing of these recordings in Logic anyway, after I've bounced them over into the Logic projects in which they belong - keeping the original PT sessions as a "virgin piece of tape" in case I mess things up in Logic and want to go back to square one. I might record a bunch of mic positions in the PT session and then condense them as I bounce into Logic - mixing them down and recording things with fewer tracks needed on the Logic side.

TL:DR = Be good at creating and managing templates and organizing your tracks and many of the "problems" don't exist anyway. When there's no confusion or time penalty for dealing with separate "file per cue" mode, life is good.


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## dgburns (Jun 17, 2017)

charlieclouser said:


> Exactly - if things are too hectic and there's not enough time / manpower / minions to prep all the ProTools sessions etc.
> 
> BUT.
> 
> ...



Maybe getting a bit off topic, but I do something very very similar. Apart from the main stem output tracks in Logic, I have two additional sets of stem tracks set up in my main template, called "A mix and B mix". They are about 11 tracks each divided up in the near usual instrument categories(strg,brs,perc etc etc). 
Charlie's idea of bringing those back into Logic for preview is a great idea, one that I hit upon by intuition more then anything else. I don't do master "all stems in one Logic project" yet, but have the ability to. I set this up so that I could edit my stems on a per cue basis, like stutter cuts or hard out to remove reverb tails (an animation specialty obviously) that need to happen over the entire stem tracks before sending to mix stage. I don't like sending edited files on my timeline, I prefer to send the mixers block chunks of stems that are properly named so all they do is hit play and it all works.
It'll happen often that video changes - and pulling the stems down to those edit tracks (A & B stem tracks) make it easier to resolve to new video by seeing the audio waveforms, and edit out and write around what you printed, or add stuff that needs to happen (like string swells at the end of cues as last minute director requests). In my case the A&B mix stems (two sets of 11 tracks for checkerboarding overlapping audio cues) go right up to the stem tracks so I can hit record and re-print out the stems from both my midi/audio source tracks and the edited A&B stem tracks all in one go. In my case I print all stems in Logic, which is great because I don't worry about timing issues syncing the two rigs together. I think now that Logic has way more busses, this'll be the way everyone else will eventually go. I just finder copy my stems over to PT now.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jun 17, 2017)

Charlie, some great tips there! Thanks for sharing, I'm going to add some of this to my workflow.


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## rlw (Jun 17, 2017)

charlieclouser said:


> The way you are describing is exactly the right way to do it.
> 
> I disagree most strongly with what Saxer said - having 1582 bars of empty space in your project before the music actually starts makes no sense, adds all kinds of hassles, and there really is no good reason to do it that way. In addition, having an initial tempo at bar 1 and another tempo event at the bar number your music actually starts at will mean that your count-in might be at a different tempo than the music that's about to start - and this is no good at all. This will be the case unless you manually repair the tempo event at bar 1 every time you adjust the tempo at bar 9. Unless you leave the tempo event at bar 1 to a fixed value while you adjust the tempo at bar 9, the actual SMPTE frame that bar 9 aligns with will move every time you adjust that tempo at bar 1 - resulting in your count-in being at a different tempo than the music that's about to start - again, not good at all. So.....
> 
> ...


Thanks so much for your detail explanation. This is the reason I support vi-control. I hope more members donate
To ensure the success of VI-Control


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## rlw (Jun 17, 2017)

dgburns said:


> Maybe getting a bit off topic, but I do something very very similar. Apart from the main stem output tracks in Logic, I have two additional sets of stem tracks set up in my main template, called "A mix and B mix". They are about 11 tracks each divided up in the near usual instrument categories(strg,brs,perc etc etc).
> Charlie's idea of bringing those back into Logic for preview is a great idea, one that I hit upon by intuition more then anything else. I don't do master "all stems in one Logic project" yet, but have the ability to. I set this up so that I could edit my stems on a per cue basis, like stutter cuts or hard out to remove reverb tails (an animation specialty obviously) that need to happen over the entire stem tracks before sending to mix stage. I don't like sending edited files on my timeline, I prefer to send the mixers block chunks of stems that are properly named so all they do is hit play and it all works.
> It'll happen often that video changes - and pulling the stems down to those edit tracks (A & B stem tracks) make it easier to resolve to new video by seeing the audio waveforms, and edit out and write around what you printed, or add stuff that needs to happen (like string swells at the end of cues as last minute director requests). In my case the A&B mix stems (two sets of 11 tracks for checkerboarding overlapping audio cues) go right up to the stem tracks so I can hit record and re-print out the stems from both my midi/audio source tracks and the edited A&B stem tracks all in one go. In my case I print all stems in Logic, which is great because I don't worry about timing issues syncing the two rigs together. I think now that Logic has way more busses, this'll be the way everyone else will eventually go. I just finder copy my stems over to PT now.


Another great insight. Thanks so much.


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## rlw (Jun 17, 2017)

Question, do you run PT on the same machine or a separate machine?


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## jeffc (Jun 17, 2017)

I'm pretty similar to Charlie's method except for a few things I've learned over the years. 

I have Protools slaved just for picture and dialogue/fx. I always start Logic at Bar 2 - in Logic Bar 2 = SMPTE start time. Because you can always drag to bar - 8 to give some preroll in Logic before the cue starts. I like bar 2 instead of bar one because anything starting right at bar one would get cutoff in exporting so bar 2 was just cleaner. Also, again if you're doing an orchestra session, I can guarantee there would be a question by the conductor every time on why bar 8 is the start - they just don't like anything out of the comfort zone.

One Logic session per cue, not per reel. That would be a nightmare. If there's a live orchestra, I'll create a Protools session per cue - BECAUSE - there's no way I know of to have bars and beats in Protools for several cues in one session. On a big orchestral long cue, not having bars/beats in the Protools session for recording would be a real time killer. You may want to punch in at bar 20 in Protools - how would you do that without bars/beats? Protools sessions open so fast, that any time saved by having all cues per reel in one session is easily erased by one punch in screw at the recording session. Plus with tempo changes and such, sometimes they will play up to a tempo change and then punch at the bar of the new tempo change. Again, without bars that would be a freakin nightmare. Especially if you're doing a session in Europe and there's already a time, language delay. I find eliminating any of those possible sessions killers really help out. 

I've also added a Midi click track (Klopgeist) instrument track to my template. When the cues are signed off and ready to prep for the session - I will play in the click on this track (quarter notes) then export this click as a) a midi file and b) an audio file. Then in Protools, import both of these files. The audio click will spot right in. Importing the midi click will give you bars/beats and tempo changes in Protools. Works like a charm. Then you can just spot in any prerecords to Protools as well and they're locked and loaded.

Always interesting to hear how we all have our own methods to the madness of getting this done..

Jeff


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## charlieclouser (Jun 17, 2017)

rlw said:


> Question, do you run PT on the same machine or a separate machine?



In my rig PT is a separate machine - Mac Pro cylinder 6-core with 32gb RAM and 1tb boot drive, and I record right to the boot drive. HD Native Thunderbolt box with Avid MADI and SyncHD interfaces. SMPTE goes out of the SyncHD as LTC on an XLR cable to the Unitor on the Logic machine. 64 channels of audio come from the Logic machine via MADI.

Video is on a third computer - Mac Mini with 256 SSD running VideoSlave, driven by MTC coming from the Logic machine via Network MIDI. 

This way video always chases Logic, whether or not the PT rig is up. While composing I leave the PT rig off until it's time to print. Then I switch to a different routing preset in the MOTU AVB software that lets me monitor through PT - while normally composing and not printing I monitor directly from Logic.


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## jemu999 (Jun 17, 2017)

Charlie, I just want to thank you for always being so generous and sharing your workflow.


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## charlieclouser (Jun 17, 2017)

jeffc said:


> If there's a live orchestra, I'll create a Protools session per cue - BECAUSE - there's no way I know of to have bars and beats in Protools for several cues in one session. On a big orchestral long cue, not having bars/beats in the Protools session for recording would be a real time killer. You may want to punch in at bar 20 in Protools - how would you do that without bars/beats? Protools sessions open so fast, that any time saved by having all cues per reel in one session is easily erased by one punch in screw at the recording session. Plus with tempo changes and such, sometimes they will play up to a tempo change and then punch at the bar of the new tempo change. Again, without bars that would be a freakin nightmare. Especially if you're doing a session in Europe and there's already a time, language delay. I find eliminating any of those possible sessions killers really help out.



I agree 1000%. Even though I mentioned that I have done tracking to PT with one session per reel and no tempo maps, now that I think back it was only on two films, and what I was tracking was NOT orchestra, and there was no sheet music or bars+beats to worry about - it was ambient weirdness, bowed metal experimentation, and stuff like that. Floaty, spacey cues that I was recording instruments that couldn't be easily moved to my location. So I just built quickie PT sessions with stereo mixes to overdub against, brought them to the remote location, and hit record.

Worked out fine. But if I'm doing anything involving printed scores, or rhythmic material like drums, guitars, etc. I definitely build a separate PT session per cue with imported tempo maps, an audio recording of my click as well as a MIDI track containing the click, the whole nine yards.


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## mc_deli (Jun 17, 2017)

dgburns said:


> Maybe getting a bit off topic, but I do something very very similar. Apart from the main stem output tracks in Logic, I have two additional sets of stem tracks set up in my main template, called "A mix and B mix". They are about 11 tracks each divided up in the near usual instrument categories(strg,brs,perc etc etc).
> Charlie's idea of bringing those back into Logic for preview is a great idea, one that I hit upon by intuition more then anything else. I don't do master "all stems in one Logic project" yet, but have the ability to. I set this up so that I could edit my stems on a per cue basis, like stutter cuts or hard out to remove reverb tails (an animation specialty obviously) that need to happen over the entire stem tracks before sending to mix stage. I don't like sending edited files on my timeline, I prefer to send the mixers block chunks of stems that are properly named so all they do is hit play and it all works.
> It'll happen often that video changes - and pulling the stems down to those edit tracks (A & B stem tracks) make it easier to resolve to new video by seeing the audio waveforms, and edit out and write around what you printed, or add stuff that needs to happen (like string swells at the end of cues as last minute director requests). In my case the A&B mix stems (two sets of 11 tracks for checkerboarding overlapping audio cues) go right up to the stem tracks so I can hit record and re-print out the stems from both my midi/audio source tracks and the edited A&B stem tracks all in one go. In my case I print all stems in Logic, which is great because I don't worry about timing issues syncing the two rigs together. I think now that Logic has way more busses, this'll be the way everyone else will eventually go. I just finder copy my stems over to PT now.


This seems similar to the esteemed CH's workflow... again hard to follow exactly without seeing it.
Thank you for sharing


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## rlw (Jun 18, 2017)

charlieclouser said:


> In my rig PT is a separate machine - Mac Pro cylinder 6-core with 32gb RAM and 1tb boot drive, and I record right to the boot drive. HD Native Thunderbolt box with Avid MADI and SyncHD interfaces. SMPTE goes out of the SyncHD as LTC on an XLR cable to the Unitor on the Logic machine. 64 channels of audio come from the Logic machine via MADI.
> 
> Video is on a third computer - Mac Mini with 256 SSD running VideoSlave, driven by MTC coming from the Logic machine via Network MIDI.
> 
> This way video always chases Logic, whether or not the PT rig is up. While composing I leave the PT rig off until it's time to print. Then I switch to a different routing preset in the MOTU AVB software that lets me monitor through PT - while normally composing and not printing I monitor directly from Logic.


I appreciate you sharing your set up. This is very helpful.


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