Who uses Protools nowadays and do I need to to get it!

[SimonFranglen]

General question to those using pro tools for composition - regarding midi exports, how do you approach them? I'll elaborate on why I'm asking...

Pro tools midi exports are a bit different than cubase, whereas all tracks in your PT session seem to be included in the export unless you mute them. With a big template I can imagine it being a pain if pro tools exports 500 tracks in a midi export. And it doesn't make sense to comb through a session muting all tracks with nothing in them. The alternative is to select all tracks with data on them and then right click the track header > export midi. Doable, but not as quick as a global export command.

The import and export session data options are obviously very sophisticated compared to other DAWs but I agree that a revised global MIDI export command would be good. The right click export method is pretty fast for me, but I don't do much MIDI exporting now that I can cut and paste into Sibelius on the fly.

Another oddity is that the manual for pro tools regarding midi exports seems incorrect in one area based on my testing. It says that muting midi clips has no effect on the export as long as the track itself is not muted; the data on the track will be exported regardless of whether the clips are muted or not. However, my testing seems to show that muting a clip, while leaving the track unmuted, means that the midi data is not included in the export. So muting clips does seem to have an effect.

Just curious about more experienced users thoughts on this process in PT.

Yup. I find that Muted MIDI doesn't export, however Muted notes did paste into Sibelius early on, it's something I flagged.
I'll talk to some folks about additional love to the MIDI export/import workflows.

 

[Tom_D]

@SimonFranglen

May I ask how you run your video these days? Is it a separate PT rig for video playback and stem layback? If so, is it synchronized with satellite link to the composing rig?

 

[SimonFranglen]

@SimonFranglen

May I ask how you run your video these days? Is it a separate PT rig for video playback and stem layback? If so, is it synchronized with satellite link to the composing rig?

During demos, stems are printed by bouncing down within my main programming computer, the Mac M2's are powerful enough.
Video and Stem playback is from a second rig. My editor keeps a concurrent PicnMix Session going that I always run there.
Once there's orchestra, that stay on a third rig for mixing, but I'll take a rough 712 mix from the scoring sessions to replace the fakes within my programming rig.
All using Satellite to link.
My team all use VideoSync for their setups rather than satellite, which works perfectly.

 

[fakemaxwell]

Simon this is entirely unrelated but I was checking out your studio setup- where do you put your center speaker when you're doing surround or Atmos work, when you have a big computer monitor? I have the baby junior setup of yours in a smaller room (KH 120s and 750s) and the center speaker is just a bear to deal with. Too high, too low, or the computer screen is too low, or the TV is too high...

 

[SimonFranglen]

Simon this is entirely unrelated but I was checking out your studio setup- where do you put your center speaker when you're doing surround or Atmos work, when you have a big computer monitor? I have the baby junior setup of yours in a smaller room (KH 120s and 750s) and the center speaker is just a bear to deal with. Too high, too low, or the computer screen is too low, or the TV is too high...

In general, the grownups complain if music uses the centre speaker too much so I'm not too concerned within my writing room but I feel your pain and I like to write in surround. Here's a photo I've just taken of my home writing room in LA which is Atmos. 3x420 with 3x870 subs. Sides and rears are 310's, overheads are 150's. For scale the TV monitor at the back is an 80" - the phone wide-angle lens has super distorted this image.

When I'm writing I have the Neumann elevator stand on the centre 420 which raises it off the 870. This allows me to see the tweeter above the screen, with a little EQ it works fine. This 55" monitor is an OLED from Sony - very thin and relatively transparent. I have side 34" LG's for Sibelius etc…
If we do final mixes in here, then we swap the centre screen over to a widescreen 34" LG. at which point the monitors aren't masked.
If the weight distribution on the Apple Vision was better then I'd be able to dump all the screens. Maybe soon.

 

[samphony]

@SimonFranglen

May I ask how you run your video these days? Is it a separate PT rig for video playback and stem layback? If so, is it synchronized with satellite link to the composing rig?

I too can highly recommend https://non-lethal-applications.com/products/video-sync-5/video-sync-5 if you don’t want to/ are able to use a second PT rig

Outside of the AVID ecosystem this is the only APP that is allowed to use the Avid Satellite Sync protocol. Setup is easy and everything stays tightly synced!

 

[fakemaxwell]

In general, the grownups complain if music uses the centre speaker too much so I'm not too concerned within my writing room but I feel your pain and I like to write in surround. Here's a photo I've just taken of my home writing room in LA which is Atmos. 3x420 with 3x870 subs. Sides and rears are 310's, overheads are 150's. For scale the TV monitor at the back is an 80" - the phone wide-angle lens has super distorted this image.

Funny- from that angle it looks identical to my setup, aside from the fact that everything in yours is nearly twice as big! Thanks for the explanation, seems like the perfect solution will be forever a pipe dream...

Been digging into surround mixing a lot lately- if in another thread you ever feel like sharing your thought process would be very interesting.

 

[Steve Martin]

ProTools is like English. It's not my native language, but I'm expected to speak it (more or less) fluently in all kinds of professional and creative collaborations. It's the lowest common denominator.

Hi Dietz,

that got me thinking - I'm guessing you are inferring that when recording samples, VSL uses Protools as the main software/hardware? My reason for asking is that Sibelius now can take midi files directly from Protools by copying and paste it directly into a Sibelius score, so I'm kind of curious about the program. Thanks if you can share an answer in regard to this.

 

[samphony]

If the weight distribution on the Apple Vision was better then I'd be able to dump all the screens. Maybe soon.

I had similar visions for my future setup when holo lens was announced and again when Apple announced Vision Pro. Unfortunately we probably have to wait until V3 to have multiple independent virtual screens projected from a mac.

 

[Dietz]

Hi Dietz,

that got me thinking - I'm guessing you are inferring that when recording samples, VSL uses Protools as the main software/hardware? My reason for asking is that Sibelius now can take midi files directly from Protools by copying and paste it directly into a Sibelius score, so I'm kind of curious about the program. Thanks if you can share an answer in regard to this.

A wide range of applications are used to create VSL's samples, impulse responses and audio software. ProTools is certainly one of them, as are Nuendo, Cubase, Sequoia, ... and of course a number of non-commercial and proprietary in-house tools.