an observation about the Mix window

[Slau Halatyn]

For a few years, I've been using the newer versions of Pro Tools but only began using the latest version at the studio as of this year. Having spent more time with PT 11 on a day-to-day basis, I've come to notice something that didn't occur to me earlier. I've never seen mention of it on the list although the general subject has come up. I have not, however, seen any posts offering the following explanation. For what it's worth, here it is:

As, I'm sure, many of you have noticed, tracks sometimes appear, for lack of a better way of saying it, "to the left" of the Tracks List pop-up button (erroneously labeled, "Show/Hide label.") When interacting with those tracks, VoiceOver does see all of the elements and one can certainly interact with controls and change input paths, etc. However, when trying to perform actions that involve routing the mouse pointer and doing a modified click, things don't work as expected. Actually, they don't work at all. The reason is that, when the tracks appear to be to the left of that pop-up button, they're actually not visible on screen and therefore cannot be accessed by the mouse pointer. Scrolling into view has certainly been suggested on the list as well as showing only the tracks in question. That's all good but an alternative is to simply page up or, even quicker, use the bank select on a control surface to expose the left-most tracks or, conversely, the right-most bank if that's what you need.

This is one of those things that has come up on the list a few times but I've never seen this particular observation. Regardless, putting it out there.

Slau

[Scott Chesworth]

Nice one, never thought to try hitting page up. Thanks for the tip!

Scott

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[Slau Halatyn]

One more thing just popped into my head. In the Edit window, the same (or similar) behavior is seen with the tracks in a vertical orientation: at a certain point, there's a group that sometimes appears earlier in the list rather than together with the rest of the tracks in the timeline. the same issue exists here, as far as I can tell. Surely, hiding tracks you don't need is a good way to simplify but sometimes keeping more tracks visible is advantageous. Anyway…

I don't remember if I specified in my previous message but, as some folks might already know, VoiceOver sometimes sees things that are concealed visually. This is both an advantage and disadvantage. I became somewhat exasperated with my assistant when she couldn't see something on screen that VoiceOver clearly saw. I insisted it must be there and, in fact, it wasn't, at least not until she clicked on a disclosure triangle and finally saw it. Meanwhile, VoiceOver saw it despite the fact that it was technically hidden because of the collapsed disclosure triangle. Funny… and yet not funny.

Slau

[CHUCK REICHEL]

Hi Scott,

Page up works most of the time   even way back to   pt 9.03.

I find my self almost automatically using it when attempting to clear up the mix window issues!

YMMV

Chuck

CHUCK REICHEL

soundpictu...@gmail.com

www.SoundPictureRecording.com

954-742-0019

Isaiah 26 : 3

 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

In GOD I Trust

[Scott Chesworth]

Tried it in both mix and edit windows on a cluttered session this
morning and yup, 100% success so far. Man, this beats the merry dance
I'd previously been doing of closing, rebuilding, restarting and
chanting. lol

[Hi]

The big problem is that this is not a 100% fix. It's dependent on where
the screen is scrolled as you're using page up or down. For example, in
a session with more than 100 tracks you don't know how many times to
press page down in order to rout the mouse let's say to the I/O field.
So, if you want to use the modifier keys with the mouse to do something
with tracks 60, 61 and 62 you would select those 3 tracks and use option
shift to change the I/O on those 3 tracks. The problem becomes even with
scroll in to view as you page down for the screen to match VO you
wouldn't know how many times to press the page down key and it also
depends on your track size. I've been using this method since version 9
and I've gotten pretty good at doing it by feel but I always end up
double checking with one of the tracks I'm changing the field on. The
more unfortunate part is while bank select did work on certain surfaces
such as the C|24, Control 24 and others through version 11, version 12
of PT does not work where the bank select changes VO's view with the
D-command and D-control. On the D-control you're able to do this on the
board but again, it's visually using a combo of buttons and the scroll
wheel so doing this by feel is not so simple.

[Scott Chesworth]

Hey Joe,

Yeah, I can imagine there'd a knack to it with that many tracks
showing. So far I've been using it in combination with being judicious
about what I've got showing and it seems to work well enough as a
quick fix.

Scott

>> is advantageous. Anyway...

>>
>> I don't remember if I specified in my previous message but, as some folks
>> might already know, VoiceOver sometimes sees things that are concealed
>> visually. This is both an advantage and disadvantage. I became somewhat
>> exasperated with my assistant when she couldn't see something on screen
>> that VoiceOver clearly saw. I insisted it must be there and, in fact, it
>> wasn't, at least not until she clicked on a disclosure triangle and
>> finally saw it. Meanwhile, VoiceOver saw it despite the fact that it was

>> technically hidden because of the collapsed disclosure triangle. Funny...

[CHUCK REICHEL]

Hi Scott,
agreed!
Since 2001, starting with pt 5.1, I always only have the tracks showing I'm working on just to be safe! :)
When you group your tracks and use memory locates its a breeze! :)
YMMV
Chuck

[Ricky Prevatte]

I noticed that but I am a new ProTools user. I thought I was doing something wrong thanks for the clarification.

Ricky Prevatte LMBT1154

[CaseyBrian Casey]

Hi all, I've just jumped on the PT band waggon, and am all ready to go tracking my first session in studio, but meter reading issues have come out of no where, leading me to be very much less prepared than I had thought.

 

The catch may well be that I'm using PT 12 on osx 10.10 so if someone has that around and can chime in I'd really appreciate it. I didn't know any means of sticking to PT 11 on the subscription plan I have so thought 12 should be fairly consistent in terms of its behaviour with Voice over.

 

I was reading peaks just fine before but can't get any consistent behaviour now with the tips in this thread or any combination of hiding and unhiding tracks. Luckily I know my pre-amps ok and should be able to track without input metering for tomorrows session, but I'll probably get some strange looks from some observing musician at some stage when I record super low accidentally or something.

 

I'm not sure if it is something that has changed in PT 12  but I don't seem to be getting a pop up list button for the track list in the mix window, I have a track list table and a group list table. From using PT ages ago on version 8 and listen to the PT with speech tutorials I seem to be under the impression there was a pop up button somewhere for a track list.

 

When I am VO and right arrowing over from the close button of the mix window, the track list table and other bits and pieces come after all the tracks in my session.

 

No amount of paging up or down and such has seemed to have solved this for me and even shrinking down the session to only showing 4 or so tracks doesn't allow me to read meters on all 4 tracks, just a couple.

 

Voice Over does speak that there is a level meter, just not a value for it.

 

Also when trying to option click or command click stuff I'm not getting any real luck after routing the mouse to the Voice Over curser, but I'm new to all this, so there are probably any number of ways I'm shooting myself in the foot.

 

Any quick feedback is much appreciated.

[Slau Halatyn]

Hi Brian,

Well, you've sure chosen to dive in at the deep end, eh? No pressure ;)

It's odd that you would have seen the tracks list table after all of your tracks. I've never seen that behavior. To be clear, though, you are, in fact, seeing the tracks list table in the Mix window? Under the view menu, you can show or hide the tracks list table. I'm not at the studio so I'm not 100% sure but I believe it's under the Other Displays menu. If you're seeing any tracks in the Mix window, that would suggest that they're being shown and, unless you have something on the order of 24 tracks, pretty much all of them should be visible and displaying correctly. Make sure you don't have the "narrow mix window" displayed (under the view menu). I don't know what else to tell you on such short notice. Yeah, good thing you know your preamps and, as long as you're recording at 24 bits, you have loads of headroom. Even at your most conservative, you should be fine.

Slau

[Brian@Wavefield Recordings]

Hey Slau,

Thanks for the response, yeah the track list table always seems to
come after the tracks in the mix window for me..I fiddled with a few
things today and low and behold all meters are showing, and its a
fairly busy template I have for my analog desk with circa 30 tracks.

Got through tracking 4 songs wwith a 3 piece band today so heres to
jumping in the deep end.

Still none the wiser about the exact reason for certain things that
happen with Voice Over in Protools but I get the impression that might
be something I'll have to get used to for the time being.

I did run into a problem trying to playback the session after
recording today but it was down to the input only monitoring mode I
had accidentally selected, or at least that seemed to be it.

I've yet to dive into editing and mixing really but a brief encounter
with the trim plug-in to reverse polarity on a track today didn't go
well, for some reason the polarity would only change during playback,
and then when I stopped and hit play again the parameter reverted back
to its default state...the same thing happened with a gate plug-in I
quickly tried out on a snare track, I adjusted all parameters from
the keyboard while listening to the audio and then when I closed the
window and went off to do something else it went back to the default
setting that were there when I first incerted the plug.

I'm sure its something to do with an automation mode or something.

Sorry for going off topic but its been a long, testing but successful
day in studio.

Brian.

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[Slau Halatyn]

Glad to hear you got through it and lived. Speak soon, Slau

[Poppa Bear]

Hey Bryan, FYI, to toggle on and off Input monitoring it is Option K. If you want to be able to monitor a client without having to press record while a track is playing then you would use this.
Glad that you made the jump back to PT.

[Brian@Wavefield Recordings]

Thanks Nate, yeah Protools is becoming fun already, really liking the
editing and punching features etc. Never really got my head around
that side of it when I gave it a go when 8.0.4 came out.

[Poppa Bear]

Out of curiosity, what command are you using to hit record? I myself use the number 3 on the numb pad, it is quicker than my control surface or command space bar.

[Brian Casey]

Yeah I'm mostly working from the num pad for transport, I have the wireless keyboard and separate wireless num pad so am thinking of getting into having the num pad on the left so I can free up my right hand for hitting talkback on the console when tracking.

Sent from my smart-ish phone!

[Poppa Bear]

Cool. Have you put out any new material?