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Working With Playlists
Track playlists are an excellent way to stay organized and make the most out of Pro Tools available track count. By allowing you to create a virtual “stack” of tracks on a single track, playlists are a lifesaver when it comes to managing multi-take tracking and editing sessions and can save you time at virtually any stage of production. In this weeks Pro Tools corner I will walk you through the basics of track playlists in Pro Tools and give you some tips on where and when to utilize them in your workflow.
Playlists Basics
Pro Tools manages all media in a session through the use of “regions.” A region is an alias or “pointer” to a file on your hard drive. By storing file references as regions, Pro Tools can efficiently manage all audio and midi without building up unnecessary data on the drive. By using regions Pro Tools can reference the same file on your hard drive multiple times throughout the session. Essentially a playlist is just a collection of regions arranged in a certain way. You can think of a Pro Tools session as a collection of regions that point to files on your hard drive and a set of playlists that tell those regions how to place themselves in the timeline on specific tracks.
All audio, instrument, and midi tracks can make use of multiple playlists per track. Pro Tools allows for a virtually unlimited number of playlists and while I am always skeptical about those “virtually unlimited” claims, I have never been in a situation where I wasn’t able to use as many playlists as I needed. A track is allowed to pull forward one playlist at a time. For example, if a track had 5 playlists associated with it, only one could be showing and playback on that specific track.
Accessing a Track's Playlist Selector Menu
A tracks playlist selector can be found to the immediate right of the track name, represented by two arrows (one pointing up and one pointing down):
From the playlist selector you can access a track’s existing playlists, create a new blank playlist, create a duplicate playlist (a playlist containing the same regions as the currently active playlist) or delete unused playlists.
To create a new empty playlist, click on the tracks playlist selector and choose “New…” You will be prompted to enter a name for the new playlist. The playlists name is synonymous with the track name.
You can proceed to record or edit on this new playlist without having to worry about losing what you did on the previous playlist. This is great for tracking out multiple takes of a performance and picking or “comp-ing” the best ones later. To return to a previous playlist, or see the available playlists associated with a specific track, again click on the tracks playlist selector. Remember a track can only play back one playlist at a time.
Editing across playlists:
The beauty of playlists lies in the ability to edit between a tracks alternate takes. Since the timeline and selections remain unchanged you can easily cut, copy paste between several playlists quickly. Often this is done during “comp-ing” or creating a composite take of the best parts from multiple separate passes, sort of like an “ultimate” take if you will.
Example of editing between 3 playlists:
I have two existing playlists, “loop 1” and “loop 2,” I want to create a composite of those two in a third playlist.
I start by creating a new empty playlist called “loop 3.”
I can switch back to loop 1 and select the first 2 measures and choose Edit > Copy.
Now without touching the selection, I can select the loop 3 playlist again and choose Edit > Paste. Since the timeline selection never changed everything stays in perfect sync.
I can continue to switch between playlists and copy paste between them seamlessly.
To delete unused playlists:
Choose “delete unused” from the tracks playlist selector. A screen showing all unused playlists in the session will appear. Select one or shift click to select multiple playlists to delete. Remember only playlists that are not active can be deleted.
Playlist Tips:
- Playlists will synchronize with edit groups. For example, if you created a group of 8 drum tracks and selected “new playlist” on the first track in the active group, all 8 tracks would automatically get a new playlist and the playlists will remain synchronized as long as the group remains active. This is great when recording/editing multi-track drums.
- Playlist names follow track tracks, to rename a playlist just pull up that playlist and rename the track.
- Playlists are a collection of regions only, and do not include track automation data. Each track in Pro Tools only has one set of automation parameters (volume, mute, pan, etc) regardless of playlist selection.
- Any un-unused playlist can be accessed from any compatible track. For example, if you were to create a new playlist “Bass.tk2” on a track “Bass,” you could pull up the unused playlist “Bass” on any other compatible track in the session by selecting the “other playlists” menu (by compatible I mean, audio playlists only work on audio tracks, midi on midi and instrument tracks, etc.)
- Deleting playlists does not delete the included regions from your regions list. Likewise, when choosing “select unused” from the regions list, any regions hiding in un-used playlists are counted as being “used” in the session and will not be selected.
- Unfortunately you cannot “automate” the switching of playlists, but playlists can be manually switched without stopping playback (it may take the audio engine a few seconds to recognize and switch over to the new playlist).
- Use the duplicate command before editing to “try out” ideas on tracks while still being able to return to the original take. For example, duplicate a tracks playlist before using beat detective or audiosuite plug-ins.
- If you plan on comp-ing multiple takes with playlists, create a new empty playlist before recording, that way the playlist number automatically stays in sync with your take number without having to manually re-name. You can go back and use the empty original playlist to do your master comp.
- To create a new playlist on every track in your session, hold down OPTION (Mac) or ALT (PC) when selecting new.
Pro Tools tid bits:
- URS released Classic Console Strip Pro for Windows XP
- UA announced the UAD Nevana X2 DSP cards for Mac OSX and Windows XP/Vista featuring classic Neve console emulations
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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