Cheshire Omnimedia

Just a quick reminder for today’s Studio Moral of the Day: Only you can prevent forest fires.

I mean, actually, that only you can say no to Quicktime. Updates that is. I should have listened to my own advice.

The other day I was having troubles on my PC with the transport stopping as soon as I press play. It’d backqueue a few milliseconds, and then stall out. After a few attempts, it’d let you play. Further exploration revealed that I was in AIFF as opposed to WAV. (More on why I prefer BWAV over AIFF in a later SMotD.)

I presume that the side grade to a non-standard QT release is what did me. Transcoding for a music video is what got me, I think.

. . . on your studio computer.

The Studio Moral of the Day goes like this:  You shouldn’t have your DAW connected to the web.  That goes for Macs as well as PCs.

Why Macs?  Because they’re essentially PCs in terms of interest to the hacking community.  I mean, sure they’re different under the hood.  But if you believe that your Mac is safe just because it’s a Mac.  Well. . . Keep on thinking that.  Your clients will come to me!!! (I keed, I keed!)

Taking that a step further, one of the best practices is to Dual Boot your computer if your studio comp is also your personal comp.  That essentially allows you to have an OS for play and an OS for work.  My laptop has a stripped down version of Windows XP for remote work.  Games, typing, browsing, iTunes, all that’s on the other OS.

Another thing that people forget about:  On your “work OS” if you’re dual booting, you should disable auto updating.  On that Apple side, seemingly innocent updates to Quicktime can bring your DAW to it’s knees.  Same thing on the PC: an update to Internet Explorer could do you in.

This Studio Moral of the Day is a handy no-brainer in ProTools that’ll help you manage your session.

Ever struggled at what to name a comped track after you comped it and are ready to consolidate? Or managed to have a playlist labeled .02 when it’s really take 3?

When you queue up a track for a vocal, think of the virgin track as your comp. As soon as you create it, go to a new playlist. Your Lead Vocal will now be labeled Lead Vocal.01, which should be interpreted as Take 1. This will help when your talking to the vocalist and she/he refers to take three. There’s less to think about, as you have take three as Lead Vocal.03. You comp to the Lead Vocal playlist, so there’s no need to make a Lead Vocal Comp playlist like I used to do.

It also makes your consolidation easier to read and manage in the region bin. (You’ll notice a trend in my last few Studio Morals!)

So today’s moral goes something like this: How do you exchange files between different programs and clients? Is there a fool proof way?

The answer is of course, yes. But getting there can be a bit of challenge.

Audio files are what makes the world go round regardless of what software you use. The idea is to consolidate your files, so that each track is one continuous file. You can then exchange the actual files without any session data (ie. .ptf) back and forth: everything stays in perfect sync.

Each DAW is different of course, and your particular DAW probably handles this function differently.

In Protools, you consolidate by highlighting the beginning of the track to the end and selecting “consolidate” from the edit menu. It’ll fill the blank region space with silence. However many edits you’ve done will be made into one big file. You will want to do this with every track. (You should label each track before consolidating, as in PT it’ll name the new audio file after the track name.) In the Audio Files directory you’ll find the newly created files.

Other programs have similar things. In Cubase it’s necessary to put a silent audio clip at the beginning and end of the track.
All of the files should have the same length and be the same size in the file browser. This also, coincidentally, is the same as the NARAS P&E guidelines for archiving projects.

There’s the whole business of OMF interchange, and while reasonable, I’ve found the best practice is to consolidate and ship. There’s no ambiguity then, and every DAW should be able to support it.

Studio Moral of the Day: Backup everything, every day.

That’s what I do, and so far it hasn’t bit me. Note that in the previous post, we’re buying more hard drives for backing up projects. A best practice is to have the last few “versions” backed up, and to have that hard drive unmounted during session work.

Some audio applications will “look” into all the hard drives if they’re on- you don’t want that, hence unmounting the drive. You should have 2:1 backup space to project space, ie a Terabyte in backups for 500 gigs of storage.

At the end of the day, make a safety copy of the project, and label the safety directory with the date. You should keep a couple of “days” around to be safe. That’s for when you consolidate those drum takes and get rid of the source files- on accident. (Another day why that might “accidently” happen.)

Studio Moral of the Day: Last SMotD we talked about exchanging sessions between different DAWs, this one’s a bit different. Let’s talk about exchanging files between Protools studios.

If you haven’t had a chance to look at the NARAS Producers and Engineers Wing info it’s probably a good idea. It goes in to further detail then I will here.

Here’s what we’re trying to avoid:

This is pretty common site for mixing engineers to get from inexperienced engineers.
Luckily for us, this is completely a file management issue. To make this as fool proof as possible, you should first consolidate all of your files if possible. This will make eliminating the “extra” files easier.

First, make sure to label all of your tracks clearly. This is a two part thing, it’ll make it easier for the other engineer to know what tracks are what, and will make it easier to see what you’re really doing in the region bin.

The gist is that only the audio files you need are in the session. You want to have everything you need in the Audio Files directory. Nothing extra there, or in the region bin. You’ll want to account for everything on your playlists as well. Usually if your sending things off to mix, you probably won’t want anything playlisted as you’ve (hopefully) made those decisions.

Now if you’re obsessive compulsive like me, you’ll still want to keep all your extra audio and the session file that accesses it, so you’ll save a copy (different then saving, or save as) of the session that you’ve been working on. Don’t overwrite the session you’ve been working on. You might want to come back to it later. The copy is what you’re sending off.

So a checklist of things to do:

1) Label your tracks
2) Consolidate
3) In the Region Bin, Select Unused Files
4) Then select Remove from Session.
5) Then Save Session Copy as and make sure to check copy all audio.

Whaalaa! Everything consolidated and clean. Ready to be sent off.

Pitfalls to watch out for:

Playlisted Files sometimes won’t be deleted.
Autocreated regions can be hidden, and won’t “let go” of the audio files.