Playlists

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Playlists

Playlists are one of the most useful and most misunderstood features of Pro Tools. They allow you to have much more information in one session. You can try many more radical types of editing and processing without risk of losing the original source material

A Pro Tools playlist is an ordered list of all the regions, edits, and crossfades that occur on a single track. It is the list of things to play in a certain order and at certain times. Information such as type of automation, available plug-ins, or any other mixer data is not stored in a playlist. Only the audio regions and any crossfades associated with them are contained within the playlist. Each track can have essentially an unlimited number of playlists. This makes it possible to use multiple playlists for all sorts of things described in these subsections.

The playlist functions are accessible from the Edit window in the left-hand area, where the name of the track is listed, as shown in Figure 6.51. You can duplicate a playlist, by creating an exact copy of the current one. Duplicate playlists can be used to perform radical editing without losing the original source material. If you want to return to the source material, you merely have to return to the original playlist.

Figure 6.51. The Playlist pull-down menu listing any playlists linked to this track. You may also create new or duplicate playlists and delete any unused playlists.

You can also create a new, blank playlist. Blank playlists can be used for recording additional takes onto one track. Each take can be recorded into a new playlist. Each track can have a virtually unlimited amount of playlists, even though you will only be able to listen to one of them. Blank playlists can be used to extend the tracking capabilities of Pro Tools LE beyond the 32 track limit (I'll describe a detailed, step-by-step method for doing this later in this chapter). Playlists that are created in one track will be visible in the pulldown menu for that track. Playlists created but not used from other tracks will also be available from the secondary pull-down menu, other playlists, shown in Figure 6.52. One playlist cannot be played on two tracks at the same time. Only unused playlists are available from the playlist submenu.

Figure 6.52. This secondary pull-down menu lists all unused playlists that are linked to other tracks.

If you select one of these other playlists, the playlist you select will now be played on the current track, regardless of what track it was created on. Once any playlist is made active ( active meaning that you will actually hear it) on any track, it will no longer be available to other tracks in the playlist menu. This might be confusing at first, but it provides a high degree of flexibility in managing playlists while keeping the clutter on each playlist menu to a minimum.

Here are some suggestions for playlist use:

• Record multiple takes on one track. Create a new playlist for each take.

• Use the Duplicate Playlist function to create backup copies of edited playlists before performing radical processing or editing.

• Move a playlist from one track to another accurately. Create a new "dummy" playlist on the current track, then go to the destination track and use the secondary pull-down menu and find the first playlist. The dummy playlist frees up the original, making it accessible to other tracks.

• Exceed your system's track count or voice capability. Each playlist can function as a virtual track. You will not be able to hear extra playlists that are not active in a track but you can keep the data within one session.

Being able to export a session with more than 32 tracks to a Pro Tools LE system is helpful for people who have a TDM system in one location and a Pro Tools LE system in another and wish to exchange sessions between them. The larger TDM session must be prepped for this to work.

Following is a step-by-step method for transferring TDM sessions with high track counts to smaller LE systems limited to 32 tracks, without losing any data:

1. Organize the TDM session so that the first 32 tracks are the ones you would like to open first in the LE system. You will not be able to immediately play any tracks after the first 32 in the LE system. Don't worrythey won't be lost.

2. On each subsequent track after 32, create a "dummy" playlist by choosing New from the Playlist menu, as seen in Figure 6.52. You can shift+select all of these tracks and use the Command+Option+Shift modifiers to create the new dummy playlists for all selected tracks at once. These dummy playlists should be blank, as they will be deleted. Again, don't worry.

3. Select all of the tracks that contain the dummy playlists starting from Track 33 on up.

4. Choose File > Delete Selected Tracks. I swear, don't worry!

5. Here's the trick: A dialog box opens that gives you the option to delete playlists that are not assigned to any track, as shown in Figure 6.53. Just say No! All of the playlists will remain available to the first 32 tracks of the session even when it is opened in Pro Tools LE.

   Figure 6.53. This dialog box appears whenever you are deleting tracks that have multiple playlists assigned to them. In order to keep playlists as part of the session when transferring to Pro Tools LE, click No to retain these extra playlists in LE.

   

   
   

6. Open the session in LE. All of the extra playlists from the larger TDM session will be available as other playlists in the playlist menu. Voil !

NOTE

GROUPING AND PLAYLIST FUNCTIONS

Performing playlist functions on grouped tracks will affect all members of that group. If you choose New Playlist from one member of a group , all other members will have new playlists created for them at the same time. You will not be given the chance to manually name each one. They will be given automatically generated names with appended numbers , such as .01, .02, and so on. If you have several playlists for all members of a group with the same suffix for each playlist, switching from one to another on one track will switch all of the grouped tracks to that same numbered playlist. This technique can be used to switch between the original dialog playlists and the new, sweetened playlists on several tracks at once.

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