Pro Tools Tutorial.

We had a Avid Pro Tools tutorial and learnt about the basics of using this digital audio work station. Pro Tools is a very popular software used for music and also post-production, it is a multi-track software-based digital recording and editing system. Allowing you to be as creative as you possibly can, creating different sound effects and mixing sound into certain films and television programmes.

"The first-generation Pro Tools system was released in 1991, supporting four tracks of audio. Eventually, using additional cards and interfaces, these Pro Tools systems expanded to support up to 16 tracks of simultaneous recording and playback." (Cook, 2013)

The edit window is where you would do all the editing by cutting, trimming, moving, copying or deleting the audio files. So once you edit an audio file by trimming it and so on, there is always a way to get back to the original audio file. 

If you have recorded or get given recordings to edit from then you can import them into Pro Tools and use the drag and drop onto the tracks or drag the audio from the clip list.

The zoom, which is the magnifying glass tool that allows you to obviously zoom in and out of the certain audio files to allow you to cut as close and accurate as possible, there is also a different way to zoom into the parts where you would like to edit from by clicking and dragging to and from the certain parts and it will automatically zoom in to make your changes to. There are also certain shortcuts on the keyboard to use certain tools.

There are four different types of editing modes; Slip, shuffle, spot and grid and all four do different things. 

Slip is the main mode that you would want to edit in most of your footage from as it allows you to edit and move selected parts where ever you'd wish to and if you delete certain parts it would leave a gap in it.

Shuffle is another type of editing mode when you drag and drop audio files into the timeline then it snaps to the nearest audio clips, leaving no gaps and it does not allow overlapping either.

Spot mode allows you to only move it to specific time locations within the time line. So a box with pop up asking you to sync it with the beginning and the end of the clip.

The last editing mode is grid which is mainly used for musical applications and works like "snap to grid"

Cook, F. (2013). Pro Tools 101 an Introduction to Pro Tools 10. Boston, Mass: Course Technology PTR.