How to find the current number of audio/insrument/MIDI tracks and basic/routing folders in a PT session?

[John André Lium-Netland]

Hi,

I’ve tried to find info about this elsewhere, but with no luck.

I assume there is an overview of how many audio/instrument/MIDI tracks that currently is used in a session. Since there is a limit to how many such tracks and folders you can have, it’s important to know. I’m working on a big documentary project with loads of tracks and folders, and today I was warned that I have reached the limit of routing folders. In PT Studio that is the silly low number of 128. While in the Ultimate version the number is 1024.

Anyways, I’d like to know how many audio/instrument/MIDI tracks I have, to know how far I’m from the limit here.

Does anyone know where to find such an overview?

Best,
John André

[Slau Halatyn]

HI John,

If you use the Track List pop-up button to show only the various track types, you can very quickly use the Flo Tools Speak Shown Tracks feature by pressing Option+Shift+W and have VoiceOver speak the number of tracks shown for that type. Remember, however, that the filtering doesn’t distinguish between routing folders and basic folders. I’m not sure if there’s a limit on the number of basic folders but, if you don’t specifically need the routing and processing aspect, that might be a work-around for track number limitations. Of course, doing post-production for film and video almost requires those higher track counts.

Another work-around is to use an auxiliary input within a basic foder. That way, you can technically get the benefit of the routing and inserts while still being able to collapse tracks. Just a thought.

HTH,
Slau

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[John André Lium-Netland]

Thanks! Great suggestions!


Sendt fra min iPhone.

> 1. feb. 2024 kl. 16:49 skrev Slau Halatyn <slauh...@gmail.com>:
>
> HI John,

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ptaccess/41D0F6BE-11F4-4D27-A978-0604BAA890BD%40gmail.com.

[John André Lium-Netland]

Hello again,

Since I have a lot of files placed in nested folders at least 4 levels down, the option-shift-W command will only tell me the number of shown tracks of that type in the folders that are open. There is a way to open all nested folders, that is to option click on the folder icon, but even with Flo Mouse I have not had success performing this procedure, since I do not know exactly where the folder icon is in the track list.

Any suggestions? Or is there a shortcut to expand all folders in all levels?

Best,
John André

> 1. feb. 2024 kl. 16:49 skrev Slau Halatyn <slauh...@gmail.com>:
>

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ptaccess/41D0F6BE-11F4-4D27-A978-0604BAA890BD%40gmail.com.

[Slau Halatyn]

The icon itself for the open/close state in the track list isn’t visible to VoiceOver so it’s not possible to route the VoiceOver cursor to it easily.I’ll see if I can come up with a work-around.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ptaccess/64D7A41F-52B9-4890-B0E4-F26F62F43753%40a-pro-studio.no.

[Slau Halatyn]

Hi John,

OK, I found a solution for your issue. To perform a modified click on the folder icon, interact with the folder track and navigate toward the bottom where the name plate appears. VoiceOver speaks the name of the track and erroneously reports it as a pop-up button. To the left of the name plate, is the track type, again, erroneously labelled. If you perform an Option-click on this icon, it will expand or collapse all folders. remember, however, that nested folders retain their open/close state so you might expand the top level folders but have a few closed nested folders. You can repeat the process on nested folders and continue expanding. Once all folders have been expanded, Option-clicking a top-level folder will collapse and expand all folders. That’s the expected behavior for Pro Tools. If you close one of the nested folders, it’ll remember the state of that particular folder and keep it closed unless you specifically expand it. This memory for the open/close status extends to the show/hide status of tracks contained within folders. In other words, if you explicitly hide tracks, they will remain hidden if you show or hide and open or close a folder. Pro Tools remembers the state which is as it should be. Anyway, I just opened a session with a bunch of nested folders and tested this and, with the filtering of folders, the whole reporting of numbers by flo Tools works nicely and the Option-click works consistently as long as the control is visible. Don’t display all inserts and all sends if you can avoid it and remember that Pro Tools displays about 16 tracks per view in the Mix window. beyond that, you’ll need to either scroll to track to make sure it’s the first item on the left hand side of the window or scroll with Option+Page Up and Page Down.

Hope that helps,
Slau

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[John André Lium-Netland]

Hi Slau,

Thanks a lot for the solution on how to option-click the folder icon. And for your suggestions. I have a few comments:

•The limited number of routing folders is shared with the limited numbers of aux tracks, so when you have used 128 routing folders like I have, there is not more room for aux tracks either. So even though your suggestion to add an aux tracks in a basic folder with other tracks is great, it won’t help.

•The option-click work-around to open/close folders is also great, but it’s not a good solution to use the option-shift-W shortcut to hear the number of shown tracks, for example audio tracks, because with such a number of tracks that I have in this project, and the large number of nested folders, the FloTools command use just so long time to calculate what to read, that it hangs.

Really, I wish there was a simple window in Pro Tools, under Setup/Session that simply showed me the number of tracks used in a project, grouped into different track types. Should be a simple thing to fix. :)

But thanks for your help Slau, and the suggestions will absolutely come in handy anyways. :)

Best,
John André

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