Producing With Pro Tools

In my third installment about optimizing Pro Tools performance, I’m going to cover consolidating audio regions and thinning automation data… two techniques you can use to improve the performance of larger Pro Tools sessions. If you’ve tried all of the techniques I recommended in the first two installments about this topic here on my blog and Pro Tools is still acting sluggish, try these out.

Editing density is one factor that can seriously slow Pro Tools down. Each edit in Pro Tools instructs your hard drive to find a piece of audio on the drive. For instance, if you’ve edited your drum tracks with Beat Detective, you may have thousands of small audio regions on those tracks. Making the hard drive find those little pieces of audio all over the drive in rapid succession slows the drive down and thus makes playback more difficult. To combat this, you can consolidate the tracks. Consolidating means creating a brand new single audio file that combines all of the regions on track into one.

Here’s how I consolidate tracks: First, I make sure that all my edits are clean… that is, I make sure there are fades and crossfades places at region boundaries so there are no editing click/pops. Second, I make a duplicate playlist of all the tracks I want to consolidate. I do this in case I ever want to go back to the final edited version before it was consolidated. Third, I highlight all of the regions on the track. Finally, I choose Edit > Consolidate. Pro Tools creates new audio file that combines all of the edited audio regions into one region.

In the screenshot below, you see a large number of edited audio regions on the left, with some of the regions muted. On the right, you see a consolidated version of the edited regions. Note that the muted regions are processed as silence in the consolidated file.

Consolidated Regions

Although not as intensive as audio data, automation data can cause your Pro Tools session to choke up too. Let’s say you have volume, panning, and mute automation on each track, plus send automation and a number of automated effects parameters. All of that automation data is made up of a large number of tiny data breakpoints. To fight this, you can thin out your automation data on your tracks to help reduce the load on your computer. You can tell Pro Tools to automatically thin out your automation data automatically after writing it in the Preferences. Choose Setup > Preferences > Mixing. In the Automation section, check off “Smooth and Thin Data after Pass” and then choose the Degree of Thinning (none, little, some, more, or most). I’d recommend trying “more” first before jumping to “most”. The “most” setting has the potential to make your automation too choppy.

In the screenshot below, you can see the same region with all of the original automation data on the left and the thinned automation data on the right. For this example, the Degree of Thinning is set to “more.”

Thinned Automation

You can also manually thin out automation by highlighting a section on a track and choosing Edit > Thin Automation. This command uses the Degree of Thinning setting from the Mixing Preferences window.

Stay tuned for more ways to save processing power while using Pro Tools…

With all the plug-ins and virtual instruments available in Pro Tools 8 now, it’s easy to run out of processing power and memory (RAM) within a session, especially if you’re running PT on an older computer. You might hear “rice krispies” (snaps, crackles and pops) while playing back, or even see error messages when you’ve reached the limits of your computer’s capability. In Part I of this topic, I shared how to optimize Pro Tools’ Playback Engine for the best performance. Here, I’m going to share a couple more ways to optimize performance within your session.

Make Inactive
The easiest thing to do in your PT session to lessen the load on your CPU and RAM is to make anything you’re not actually using in the session INACTIVE. You can make effects plug-ins, virtual instruments, sends, outputs, and other items inactive… even entire tracks can be made inactive. What does it mean to be “inactive?” Essentially, the inactive item does not function in the session and uses no system resources. However, the settings of the item are still saved with the session… SO, you can activate the item at any point while working in the session and all of its settings will still be there.

How do you make something inactive? To make an entire track inactive, select the name of the track and choose Track > Make Inactive. You can also Right-click the name of the track and choose Make Inactive from the dropdown menu or click the track type icon (at the bottom of the track’s mix channel) and choose Make Inactive. To make a certain plug-in, instrument, send, output, etc inactive, press Command+Control (Mac) or Control+Start (PC) and click on the item. Inactive items and tracks are greyed out.

In the screenshot below, the Xpand2 instrument and the Instrument tracks’ output (Bus 1-2) are inactive, as is the entire Audio 2 track on the bottom. Right-click on the name of the track or an item to access the “make inactive” option as shown here.

Record Virtual Instruments As Audio
Virtual instruments consume a lot of processing power so it’s a good idea to record their outputs as audio when you’re done working on them. Once you’re happy with a track you’ve made with a virtual instrument, record its output as audio onto an audio track in the session.

Route the output of the Instrument track to a bus (e.g., Bus 1-2). Create an audio track and choose that same bus (Bus 1-2) as the track’s input. Play and record the output from the instrument track. Then, make the instrument track inactive so that if you need to go back and edit the original instrument track, you can simply activate the track later and work on it.

Stay tuned for more ways to save processing power while using Pro Tools…

With all the plug-ins and virtual instruments available in Pro Tools 8 now, it’s easy to run out of processing power and memory (RAM) within a session, especially if you’re running PT on an older computer. You might hear “rice krispies” (snaps, crackles and pops) while playing back, or even see error messages when you’ve reached the limits of your computer’s capability. However, there are some ways to get around the issues… and I want to share a few with you here.

First, quit any other applications that are running along with Pro Tools. Those apps take away precious RAM and processing power that could be allocated to Pro Tools. Then, within Pro Tools, visit the Playback Engine window (Setup > Playback Engine). Set the CPU Usage Limit to the highest percentage available. This allows Pro Tools to take control of most of the processing power in your computer.

If you’re editing or mixing (and not recording any more tracks), set the H/W Buffer Size to a higher amount like 1024 Samples. This enables your computer to work with larger chunks of data and makes audio processing less intensive. Boosting this value beyond 1024 (if you have the option) might cause your user interface to act sluggish. Use your judgment. When recording, set the H/W Buffer Size to a lower value (32, 64, 128, or 256) to reduce latency.

Choose the highest number of RTAS Processors available so Pro Tools can utilize your computer’s multiple processors. You may also check the “RTAS Engine” checkbox if you’re experiencing recurrent RTAS errors that interrupt playback and recording. This option may degrade your audio playback quality on virtual instruments, but you’ll see less errors and thus your workflow won’t be interrupted as often. However, be sure to uncheck this option when mixing to ensure the highest quality of audio playback.

The DAE playback buffer determines the amount of memory allocated with Digidesign Audio Engine (DAE) to manage disk buffers. A smaller buffer size might improve the speed of playback/record initiation if you’re experiencing lag time when you press Record or Play, but it might also make it more difficult for slower hard drives to play or record tracks reliably. A setting of “Level 0” might even make it impossible for your hard drive to read data fast enough to play back a PT session. A larger buffer size might improve the performance of a session with a huge number of edits; however, large DAE buffer sizes tend to increase the time lag before playback or record initiates.

I’d leave the DAE Playback Buffer parameters in their default states (Size = Level 2, Cache Size = Normal) unless you’re having an issue that Digidesign specifically recommends you to change those values.

Stay tuned for more ways to save processing power while using Pro Tools…