Reasons To Use DigiBase
OK, so I admit that I don’t use DigiBase (Digidesign’s built-in database browser in Pro Tools) all that much. Seems like I’m not alone in this fact. However, I did just learn about a couple of features that will make reaching for DigiBase a lot more frequent for me.
1. Unmounting Firewire drives. It always bothered me that I couldn’t unmount/eject a hard drive using my operating system as long as Pro Tools was running. Well, there’s a way around that. From within Pro Tools, choose Window > Workspace to open the Workspace browser window. Click once on the hard drive that you want to unmount/eject so that the name of the drive is selected. Click the little toolbox button in the upper left corner of the Workspace browser window, and you’ll get the menu shown in the figure below. Choose “Unmount” and there you go! That’s weird, wild schtuff. 
2. Auditioning loops that conform to the session tempo. In Pro Tools 7.4, Elastic Time helps even when auditioning loops from the Workspace window. You can now select a loop to preview how it will sound at the open session’s tempo. Simply click on a loop to select it, click the “Audio Files Conform to Session Tempo” button, and then click on the Preview button. Pro Tools will conform the loop to the open session’s tempo. If you like what you hear, you can simply drag and drop the loop from the Workspace browser into the Track List in the session’s Edit window and Pro Tools will automatically create a new track for that imported loop. Pretty slick!
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Unmounting - finally!
Thanks for the unmount tip!
This is great for when I use my iPod to check my mixes.
I use to have to make cd’s of my mixes to check them out on different sources (car, stereo, boom box etc…). Now I just copy to my iPod and hook it up to my car stereo etc… without wasting cd’s or rebooting Pro Tools.
Great!
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