PRO TOOLS WORK FLOW TIP

Ever had to go back to a project and update it? How many times were files missing or not labeled properly? Getting into better work flow habits can lessen your headaches and make your life easier.

The first habit to get into is to name your audio files! You may be familiar with what’s what while you’re working on the project, but one month down the road you will have no idea what audio_01, audio_02 is. It’s also a good idea to consolidate your files before moving on from a project. You can do so by highlighting each track in the timeline, making sure that the area highlighted starts at zero and continues until all the audio in the track ends. Then under the edit menu select “Consolidate Regions” (or use the shortcut option>shift>3) You will have then created one continuous file starting at zero. Once you have done this to all of the final audio go to the regions bin on the right side of the edit window and in the drop down menu click on “Select”, “Unused” Then choose “Clear”. The next window that appears will ask you if you want to “remove” or “delete” the files. Choose remove. Now that you have just the final audio in the session go under the File Menu and select “Save Copy In..” and check the box “All Audio Files” in the “Items to Copy” dialog that appears. This will create a new folder with just the final audio along with the session file. Leaving your original session untouched. You can either trash the original files or move them off to another drive. One last thing I like to do is open the new session I created and make sure it doesn’t ask for any missing audio and everything plays fine. Doing this will help remove the clutter from your drives as well as insuring that if the project file ever gets corrupted or you have to use the files in an editor other than Pro Tools you can simple drag the wav files into another DAW and have them all line up in perfect sync!