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Pro Tools 7.3 – What’s
New
The wait is finally over and a new update is out just in
time for the holidays! Announced earlier this month Digidesign
is now shipping Pro Tools 7.3, available for direct download
from Digidesign’s website. This week at the column
I would like to share with you some of my favorite new features
and take a look at how the update affects both HD and LE/M-Powered
users. As always, for a complete in depth look at the update
be sure to download the What’s New in 7.3 PDF.
An Update For Everyone!
So I know a lot of LE and M-Powered users were a bit jealous
when Pro Tools 7.2 (an HD only update) came out a few months
back, but when it comes to 7.3 Digidesign has got all of
their bases covered. Many of the cool features that HD user’s
have been raving about from 7.2 have been wrapped into the
7.3 update for Pro Tools LE and M-Powered. The following
are some features included in 7.2 HD that LE and M-Powered
user can look forward to in 7.3:
- Right click functionality for contextual clicking
- Automation displays in real time while it is being written
- New automation indicator behavior
- New behavior options for switched controls when in Touch
automation mode
- Digirack Time Shift plug-in
- Signaltools Phasescope metering and analysis plug-in
- New Group Features (104 total mix/edit groups available with
enhanced dialog)
- Enhanced video support with DV Toolkit 2 (multiple video
tracks, video editing, playlists, HD capabilities)
- Scroll wheel mouse enhancements
- Reorganized preferences menu
- Default EQ and dynamics plug-ins allow for immediate access
to commonly used plug-ins
- Create fades and perform region-based editing in automation
views
- New preference to automatically enable plug-ins for automation
when added to a track
If you are new to Pro Tool’s you may not be aware
of the software differences between the HD and LE/M-Powered
systems. While the main difference between HD and LE is the
dedicated DSP cards, providing higher track counts, higher
sample rates and more power for plug-in processing, the HD
software itself contains an extended feature set beyond LE
and M-Powered. But before you get to worked up over some
missing features, you should know that many of the features
we take for granted in LE today (like the TCE trimmer tool,
object grabber and single key shortcuts) were at one time
only available in HD, Digidesign is constantly re-working
the two feature sets.
Brian’s Top Picks for 7.3 I have to say, Pro Tools is by far the fastest editing and
mixing platform that I have ever worked on, and version 7.3
takes this speed and efficiency further then ever before.
Packed with new additions sure to power-charge your workflow,
here are a few of my top picks in Pro Tools 7.3.
Enhanced Looping Features
If you have ever worked with loop playback (Options>Loop
Playback), you may have experienced the pain of having to
stop the transport to update a looped selection. Pro Tools
7.3 now supports ”Dynamic Transport Mode” allowing
you to modify a looped selection in real-time without stopping
the transport. You can even start playback anywhere in the
timeline without affecting the current selection by placing
a play start marker. With the updates in 7.3 it is safe to
say that loop editing will never be the same.
Open Recent Menu
Never again wonder where you put that last session, or spend
minutes hunting for some folder buried within the depths
of your hard disk. Pro Tools 7.3 now includes an Open Recent
menu, allowing you to access the last ten sessions.
Click Tracks in a Snap
The days of manually creating a click track are over. 7.3
now features a
“
Create Click Track” command that automatically creates
an aux track and inserts the Digirack click plug-in in one
easy move. There is even a preference that can tell Pro Tools
to automatically create a click track in every new session
you create. See this week’s Pro Tip for more info on
this new feature.
“Dynamic Mixing”
Before 7.3, if you wanted to add a track, create or move
a send, change a tracks I/O, or change track ordering, you
had to stop playback. Now you can make all these changes
and more to your mix configurations on the fly without skipping
beat.
Screen Views
If you have ever used Logic, you may be used to a cool little
feature called “Screen Sets.” Pro Tools 7.3 now
allows you to save up to 99 of your favorite screen layouts
or “sets” recalling window size, location and
order on the screen.
Native Support for HFS+ on Windows XP If you didn’t already know, drives formatted for Mac
are different then drives formatted for Windows XP. Each
operating system has it’s own preferred file system
governing the way in which files get indexed, allocated and
stored onto a drive. These files systems are not always compatible,
and while OSX can mount both NTFS and FAT 32 (both windows
based file systems) Windows XP does not natively support
the HFS+ file system used by OSX. With Pro Tools 7.3 Windows
XP users can now mount Mac formatted HFS+ drives without
any additional software (before Windows users had to purchase
and install special 3rd party software to do this). This
is a welcomed addition as many studios work on the Mac platform
and until now, the difference in file systems has often made
cross-platform collaboration a hassle.
Other New Features
- Loop Trim tool enables you to easily turn audio
or MIDI regions into loops
- New Tracks Default to Tick Timebase preference speeds up
loop-based workflows
- Key Signature ruler enables key signature changes and transpositions
- Send to Sibelius command offers streamlined workflow between
Pro Tools® and Sibelius notation software
- Loop Preview and Auto Preview options in DigiBase™
- RTAS® Engine error suppression options
- Additional MIDI recording, editing, and export features
- Time Shift DigiRack™ plug-in delivers superior time
compression/expansion
- Drag and drop plug-in settings from the DigiBase browser
onto empty insert slots or active plug-ins for instant plug-in
opening and setting recall
- Customizable memory locations
- Customizable Zoom Toggle lets you define track view and height
when zooming
- Continuously variable track height allows tracks to be instantly
resized to any height
- HD video workflow support
- Avid® Interplay™ integration on Windows XP (Pro
Tools HD)
- Support for conforming audio from field recorders
- Ability to pull-up and pull-down audio media during import
(Pro Tools HD)
- Supports qualified Intel-based Macs along with qualified
PowerPC-based Macs and Windows XP systems
- Supports Avid Mojo® and Avid Mojo® SDI (Pro Tools
HD)
- Support for recording/playback sessions from Mac-formatted
HFS+ disks on Windows XP (HD and LE Only)
More on 7.3 Coming Up! Stay tuned, in the coming week’s I will take an in
depth look at some of these cool new features and help you
integrate them into your workflow.
New Pro Tip – Get your click on
I mentioned above that Pro Tools 7.3 now features a “create
click track” option. You can find this by selecting
Track>Create Click Track. Pro Tools will now create a
new mono aux track and insert the click plug-in automatically.
If you are still on 7.2 or below, follow these steps to create
a click:
To create a click track:
1. Choose Track>New and create a new mono aux track.
2. Insert the click plug-in under Instruments>Click
3. Enable the click on the transport or by pressing the “7” key
on your numeric keypad. (Make sure View>Transport>MIDI
is checked to see you click and count-off buttons)
Tip: If you solo safe your click track (Command+Click (Mac)
or Control+Click (PC) on the track’s solo button) you
can now hide your click track in the tracks list and use
the 7 key on your numeric key pad to turn the click on and
off at any time. Because the track is “solo-safe”,
you never have to worry about hearing the click when other
tracks in your session get soloed.
Pro Tools 7.3 also features automatic click track creation
whenever a new session is created. You can enable this option
by choosing the “Automatically Create Click Track In
New Sessions” option in Setup > Preferences, MIDI
tab.
If you have a Pro Tools related question that you would
like me to take a shot at answering or have any feedback,
please send it to brian@audioMIDI.com.
I will do my best to select the questions that seem to stump
the most people.
As always, stay tuned to the audioMIDI.com eNews for the latest reviews and new product info.
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