Digital Audio Workstations:
Working with ProTools Free
Getting Started | Setups & Troubleshooting | Basic Production | Voice Editing

by Jeff Towne

Instead of a dry recitation of what each of the tools and functions are, let's DO something! We'll encounter various problems and techniques as we go. We'll start with a fairly simply production: the 30-second promo, consisting of a voice track over a music bed.

(Note: the shortcuts listed here refer to Mac keyboards, for PTFree running on Windows computers, substitute "control" for "command" and "alt" for "option".)

Launch ProTools Free, then choose "File>>New Session" PT will ask you to name the session, and this step is fairly crucial for good housekeeping. The simplest way to proceed is to navigate to whatever disc you plan to record your soundfiles on, create a new folder for the project, and name the session something descriptive (not just "session1".) You can record soundfiles to a different drive than the session file resides on, and there are sometimes good reasons for doing this, but in most circumstances, navigation and archiving will be simpler if you do keep session files and soundfiles together.

Choose "File>>New Track" (or command-shift-N) and set "1" and "New Audio Track." We'll use this to record our narration. In the white bar at the bottom of the channel strip of the mixer window, or at the top left of the track in the edit window, double-click it and name it "narration." Click on the "rec" button on this track, which is located in the middle of the channel strip in the mix window, or at the left of the channel in the edit window. The "rec" turns red, which means it is record-enabled. If you have a quiet enough room, and a quiet enough computer, or an isolated space, you can record live into this session, or you could record to a DAT or Minidisc, record several takes and only load in the best ones. Because we are doing a :30 promo, make sure the narration is no longer than :20, so there is enough time for a bit of music, and a local station tag.

Now that you are record enabled, you should be able to see input levels on the meter for this channel. (If not, go to your computer's sound control panel and make sure your sound input is set to "Built-in".) Set the output level of your source (a mixer or tape deck) so that the ProTools meters are registering as high as possible, pinging the yellow a bit, without hitting the red. Notice that the slider on the channel strip has NO effect on the input levels. These levels must be set at the input, by carefully regulating the volume of that input. This can be done by outputting from a mixer to the computer's sound input. (In a pinch you can connect the headphone out from a DAT or Minidisc, and adjust the headphone output levels to optimize the input volume. Headphone outputs are often hissy, and the impedence mismatch with the computer's input can add more noise. ) If you upgrade to an LE or TDM system, rather than PTFree, you could utilize digital inputs.

Once you have set levels, start to record by using the transport panel, clicking the circle so that it turns red, and then the "play" triangle. Or, more simply, use the keyboard shortcut: "command-spacebar." To stop the recording, hit the spacebar, or the square on the transport panel. Record the narration, as many takes as you like.

Switch to the edit window (shortcut: "command =") And you'll see a waveform drawn for the soundfile you just recorded. Click the "rec" button again to get out of record-ready mode.

Now, let's clean-up the narration. The various tools up in the upper left-hand corner are crucial to understanding how the system will behave.

First is the choice of "shuffle/slip/spot/grid" which determines how the soundfiles are placed in the edit window.

"Shuffle" (keyboard shortcut: "F1") will automatically rearrange audio regions, closing up the gaps when a section is deleted or moved. This is a very helpful mode for many editing tasks, when one wishes to delete sections from a continuous audio stream, or rearrange blocks of adjacent sound. Regions cannot overlap one another, and will stay immediately next to one another.

"Slip" (keyboard shortcut: "F2") is the next most useful, allowing the user to place an audio region at any spot along the timeline. There can be silent spaces between audio regions. This is the mode you will want to use to place sounds at particular times, most useful in assembly of a production.

"Spot" (keyboard shortcut: "F3") is very useful for placing audio at very specific time values. In spot mode any time you attempt to move a region a dialog box will open asking to define the region's start, end or duration, or relationship to a sync point. This mode is excellent for placing static elements of a production that should begin or end at specific times, such as credits, audio logos, etc.

"Grid" is not generally very useful for radio productions. It is used for constraining audio to regular rhythmic patterns, which is used more in music editing.

	The "Zoomer" (keyboard shortcut: "command-1") is a magnifying glass that you can use to define the level of zoom of the edit display. Simply choose the zoomer, then click and drag over the area you would like to zoom to. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts "command-left bracket ([) " to zoom out and "command-right bracket (]) " to zoom-in.
	The "Trimmer" (keyboard shortcut: "command-2") allows you to trim the heads or tails of a region, quickly eliminating silence or unwanted sound from the boundaries of an audio region. In "Slip" mode the trimmer will trim the edges and slide the adjacent region at the same time.
	The "Region" Tool (keyboard shortcut: "command-3") lets you define sections of the soundfile to act upon. Click and drag across a portion of your soundfile and it will be highlighted. At this point you can choose to make the highlighted section a new region (command-E) or delete it (delete key) or perform an Audiosuite process on it, or many other choices. It effectively selects a section to be acted on. Double-click on a region and the entire region will be selected. Triple-click and the entire track will be selected.
	The "Grabber" (keyboard shortcut: "command-4") lets you move the region around by clicking and dragging. The movement is constrained by the slip/shuffle/spot mode, but this is the tool to move a region within a track, or even between tracks. Double-clicking with the grabber opens a "name the region" dialog which can be very useful to keep track of sections of a longer recording.
	The "Scrubber" (keyboard shortcut: "command-5") emulates "rocking the reels" on a tape machine, allowing slow manual control of forward or reverse play of the sound, helpful for finding small clicks or other audio events. Holding the "option" key allows fast playback in either direction.
	The "Pencil Tool" (keyboard shortcut: "command-6") is a utility from the old Sound Designer program that allows graphical repair of waveform irregularities. Zoom in close on a waveform with a click or a clipped peak, and re-drawing a "more correct" waveform can often improve the sound.

Just a Quick Trim:

With these basics, we can now clean-up our narration. Zoom to the start of the narration track, choose "slip" mode, then choose the "Trimmer." You can do this very quickly by hitting the F2 key, then "command-2".

Or you can use the smart tool, which automatically toggles between trim, region and grabber, depending on where the tool is in relation to a region. If you click on the bar with the three arrows, at the head or tail the tool switches to trimmer, in the middle of the region it switches to region tool, or if you move the tool to the bottom of the waveform display, it switches to the grabber.

Play the sound file by hitting the spacebar, and notice where the narration actually starts. You can probably do this by eye, there will be an obvious change in the waveform as the narration starts. But be sure to listen carefully too, it is easy to clip off a low-level but crucial beginning of a sound, especially "f" sounds.

If you are having a hard time seeing the waveform, zoom in, or change the waveform display with the display tool, clicking the upper part to make the waveforms larger, or the bottom to make them smaller. Adjust the waveform until the peaks fill the panel, but the display still shows the wave contour. The arrows on the right and left zoom in across the horizontal (time) dimension.

With the trimmer, grab the end of the soundfile, and drag it toward the beginning of the sound you want to keep. Or you can simply click on the waveform at the point you want to trim to, and the sound will clip back to that point. Or drag with the selector over the audio you wish to remove, then hit "delete."

Bedtime:

Now, let's add a music bed. On a Mac, put an audio CD in your computer's CD-ROM drive. Then go to the "Movie" menu, and choose "Import Audio from Other Movie." Navigate to the CD-ROM drive, choose the track you would like to use as a music bed, and choose "convert." It will ask where you want to save the converted file, navigate to your audio files folder within your current project. The audio file will be extracted as a quicktime movie file, then converted to split SD2 files.

If you already have music or ambience on your hard drive you wish to use as a bed, skip ahead to the next step. If you are using a Windows machine, or have another extractor program you prefer, go ahead and extract audio from a CD, in a format that PTFree can read: SD2 or AIFF on a Mac, SD2 or WAV on a Windows machine. PTFree likes "split stereo" files, but if you cannot extract to that format, it will split them for you when you import.

 Under the "file" menu choose "import audio/track" and add both the .L and .R versions of the split-stereo file. The bed track will be placed in two new tracks in the edit display, and two new corresponding channels will be created in the mix window.

Click on the name button in the upper left corner of one of the new track displays (make sure the narration track name is not selected) then shift-click on the name button of the other new track. Then under "file" choose "group selected tracks." (Keyboard shortcut "command-G") A dialog box will ask for details, so name the group something obvious, such as "music" and choose that the grouping will apply to both editing and mixing. Grouping will allow you to edit and mix these two tracks as a stereo pair.

Trim the head of the music tracks much as you did the narration. Because the tracks are grouped, as you trim one track, the same edit will be applied to the other. Slide, or spot the music to start right at 0 on the timeline. Then go to spot mode, select the grabber and click on the narration track. The spot dialog will come up, choose to place the end of the narration at 0:22:000. This will align your narration to allow for an :08 fade, enough for a local station tag. Trim the music bed to end by :29 elapsed.

In the Mix.

The narration track should be at optimum volume, so to get there, select all of the regions in this track, then go to the AudioSuite menu and choose "normalize." Run this process, and it will bring the volume of the soundfile up to the maximum level. Remember that this process simply brings the peaks up to top volume, so the overall level of the track may need to be manipulated more.

Now, for a quick and dirty mix, we'll use volume automation on the music tracks. First, in the mix window, pan the music tracks off to left and right for stereo. Then in the edit window change the display button for one of the music tracks from "waveform' to "volume." You will still be able to see the waveform, but layered in front is a line indicating the volume of the track. Click with the grabber tool to create "breakpoints" which are pivot points for the volume to be raised or lowered. Dragging a point up or down will create a change in the mix volume of that track. Option-clicking will delete the breakpoint.

For this project, we want to 'duck' the music down under the voice. Make a breakpoint in the music tracks' volume automation slightly before the voice starts, then another a bit after. Pull the second point down until it's at a good level to voice-over.

This volume automation may be too coarse, and so you can add additional breakpoints to more closely resemble a smooth fade curve.

Do the same at the end of the narration, raising the audio back up at the end of the voice. Then make one final point, dragging the audio down to 0 by :29 elapsed.

Listen to it, and make adjustments to the breakpoints to make for an optimum mix. This can then be simply played out the audio outs to a tape recorder, or even better, digitally bounced. Triple-click (or command-A) on the music tracks to select all audio in that track, then shift-click on the narration track. This selects all the active audio. From the "file" menu. Choose "Bounce to Disk." Click "stereo file," "no bounce options," "16 bit" and "out L-R." Click "bounce," and you will get a "save-file' dialog where you can choose what to call the bounce and where to save it. This bounced file is a stereo file with the results of all your edits and mix moves, which can then be burned onto a CDR, or converted to another file format for delivery.

~Jeff Towne
Tools Editor, Transom

Coming Soon:
Fades and the Finer Points of Editing and Mixing.

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