Pro Tools Help - Finding Original Takes?

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runny_babbit

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Hi. I'm working on a project right now, where each track has already been individually bounced (into wavs). I need the engineer to go back into his Pro Tools to take all of the effects out of the tracks (so we basically have the same individual, full, consolidated wav tracks as before, except the raw recording), so I can get it re-mixed by someone else, but he says that, since we took so many takes, it'll take a long time to find all the OK takes to take the effects out. He says he'll have to listen to the finished, bounced WAVs to piece them all together.

Now... this seems extremely stone-age to me. There has to be a record somewhere. Is it possible to see within the session file which take, and where each part of the wav came from?

I'm not well versed in Pro Tools, or DAWs in general, but it just seems strange. It seems like a relatively simple procedure...
 
what i'd do is just get him to burn the whole protools session folder to a dvd and let the new producer sort it out,,
i've had people bring me dvd's of sessions for that very reason.


but, if his protools session is made up of all the "ok takes", it's easy enough to do what you're asking.



you want the raw recordings, with no effects or twiddling..and you want them all to start at zero so it's easy to line up right??



if so tell this producer to go into the folder of the session you're talking about.

go into the audio folder (where all audio is stored)

select everything then right click and change the icon colour to something like red.. (theres a point to this,lol)



now open up the protools session..

make sure everything plays they way you want it,,in terms of audio regions and fades but forget about effects...they don't matter to us.


tell him to select everything in the session edit window....ALL AUDIO start to finish.


now if he goes to edit>consolodate, protools will dump a new fresh version of every track, one file per track.


they will all be in the audio folder,,,and they will be the ones that aren't red.

right click, arrange by colour, select what you want and take it..

then all you have to do is drag them into a blank session.



your producer may wish to save a copy of the session before he consolodates,,just for safety.

hope that helps.


*edit* one thing to bare in mind is, this will not copy ANY volume automation, pan automation,,,,,nothing like that at all. literally just the raw recordings.
 
Thank you for your reply, Steenamaroo!!!
The thing is, we've combined all of the OK takes into one track per instrument, and he says he's trying to go through ALL the takes we've ever done to try to find which take each part of the final track is from.

Is there some sort of properties menu I can bring up to see where the original source material is?

Or is there the possibility that my engineer was not too organized and we have to reconstruct it from the bottom up? egads:drunk:

*edit*
Ah, the new engineer says he just wants one track per instrument, in raw recording form... does that mean I am screwwweedddd??? Haha.. Or I should talk him into working with the session files...
 
surely that's not an issue..

take vocals for example....

presumably the intro is from 1 take, and the verse from another, the chorus from the 1st take, or whatever???



well,,,if he consolodates like i described,, you'll end up with a wav of that track as it sits in the protools session. good takes only.



make sense? or am i misunderstanding you?


just read your edit...

again,,what i'm describing is what you want (i think!?)

consolodating what's there does exactly that.

you shouldn't need to know what each instruments track is made up of......it just bounces out whatever was arranged in the mixing session.
 
Thank you very much... I will talk to my engineer about this!
Quite honestly, since I am a toddler when it comes to DAWs, and I've never personally worked with the Pro Tools software, I'm not sure of everything you're saying, but I'm sure the engineer will know. I'll ask him about it!!

I asked someone else about my concerns, and his answer was this:

"I assume you "comped" tracks together from various takes or punches. What I would do after the comp was done, edits smoothed out, etc. is to consolidate the track into one continuous file. I would not bounce any effects into it, a possible exception being volume adjustments. If effects were bounced into the audio file later, I would keep the original consolidated file as a separate playlist or track.

If the engineer skipped one of those steps, it is very possible that there is no unaffected comp track to go back to. The only ways to get there would be to reconstruct it, as was suggested, or go back through the project's undo history. Going back through many levels of undo is a dicey procedure... If you try it, work on a copy of the project."

This is what I am afraid of...!!!!!

Anyway, thank you so much for your help.
 
if he still has the protools session the way you like it, then there's definitely no problem.


if for some (stupid) reason, he has bounced each track, with effects on, and deleted the original material? you're screwed,,,,,but honest, who would ever do that??



even if he has done that, protools has a folder called session backups in each session folder.
i think it's possible to turn automatic backups off, but the chances are he hasn't done. if you're stuck you can flick through the backups to find the arrangement you're looking for.
 
anytime,, if you've any problems or any doubts, just get him to burn the whole session folder, and we'll see what's recoverable from there. :)
 
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