On a previous post I’ve asked for tips to merge some audio regions into a big one. I have to keep the timeline order for the regions.
Regions past with suffle fonction
Tilman Hahn sent me a great tip that I will try to explain below.
Why?
I do this for the voice test on animation. One or two actors read/play the script with all the actors written. After the recording I have to follow the script and cut each « retort ».
For example the script is
44 Mia : Hey how are you?
45 Mike : Oh great …
I will have two audio files called for example 01_44.wav and 01_42.wav
Editing and auto renaming
First I copy and paste all the recordings into another track, and I use a the « Strip Silence » fonction to remove silence quicker. After I change the name of the track (where the audio regions have been sliced with the « Strip Silence« ) with the name of the episode for example. In my case it’s the episode 10 on season 2 so I rename the track « 210_ ».
Recording and sliced regions
Now you can listen to the track and start editing your regions, add fade, etc… When editing is finished for the first region of the script just consolidate. The name of the region will be automatically « 210_01″. Now keep an eye on the script and start the editing very fast. With scrolling page activated and a cool actor who not jump quicky on each retort, you can edit and rename whithout stoping the playback of protools.
Sometimes you will have a region with various versions. So consolidate twice and rename by hand the different versions.
Example the retort 45 have three versions. When you consolidate for the first you will have « 210_45″. Consolidate a second time to have « 210_46″ and rename it « 210_45_01″.
Merge
When everything is edited. Sometimes the director ask for an « end to end ». It’s quite long to do it with the Suffle fonction on and other track. So this is the tips of Tilman Hahn.
First Save Copy in your session (to keep the original). Open the new copy of your session, and delete all the regions except the regions that you edit. Remove also the regions not used in your timeline. You normaly will have only the named regions on your timeline and in your region list.
Only edited files
In the region list click on the top and choose Timeline Drop Order > From the left to right and also Sort By > User Time Stamp Now select all the regions in the region list and drop it on a new track. You just have to consolidate and to rename the region.
Export your regions in a folder and it’s done. Yeha!
It's done
I’m not a Protools killer so maybe you have quicker technics to do this job?
Sorry for various Protools version.
Thanks Adrien for english corrections.
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Tags: Protools, Sound, Sound editing, Tips
Hey Ben,
I’ve run into this issue a while ago and let’s say it right now, PT sucks and AVID should add more metadata to the « sort by » option in the region bin. Your method is good. Although, you don’t need to do a « save session copy » (unless you want to do one for your own backup), just select all the regions edited on your track, they will be highlighted in the region bin, then change your « sort by », drag and drop them onto another track by selecting just one region. You should have the same results.
I do ADR and Voice Over (like you here). Most of the time, the person directing the session will mark the preferred takes. So you get one loop containing 3 takes for examples. LP1 : Take 1 – Take 2 – Take 3. The circled takes would be: Take 2 then Take 3.
So when you edit your stuff, you put Take 2 and 3 first and then Take 1 last and then you auto rename it so that the editorial will pick up the takes from the first (take 2), then second (take 3) if they don’t like the previous one etc.
The problem is PT doesn’t allow you to sort your regions by the order on the « timeline ». In order to do it, you should consolidate any region in order to changer their timestamp… no thanks.
SOLUTION:
I use QuickKeys with a script auto renaming my regions but I have to enter the number of takes for each loop and that sucks so I’m still looking for a faster way to do it. Keep me posted if you get anything on it.
Thanks a lot for the tips for selecting audio regions.
I’m not using loop recording like Logic. But if I think about something, I will tell you.
Thank you very much Jed
So I found a way to sort the regions out in Pro Tools by timeline order. Select one audio region, hit COMMAND + SHIFT + M in order to get the « User Time Stamp Window », then hit « current selection » and that will print the actual timecode of that region in his user Time Stamp Metadata Field. If you do that to all your regions in Pro Tools, then you’re able to sort by User Time Stamp in the region bin and all your regions will line up by timeline order, which is useful for our auto renaming process later.
It works well, but it’s also very tedious by hand so I’ve made a little script with a repeating loop in QuicKeys, that actually does all the repetitive work for me.
Let me know if you want to know more about this. I’m saving at least 1 hour worth work for each session. (PS: I wrote in English in case other folks are interested in).
Cheers,
jed
Thanks a lot for the tip. It’s look like very powerfull when it’s use with QuicKeys!