Exploring AudioSuite enhancements in Pro Tools 10

Applying AudioSuite processing, or rendering as it's now called in Pro Tools 10, to regions or clips as they're now called can be problematic for post-production. Here's why. Let's say I need to apply an EQ to this clip. I'm going to select it and go to the AudioSuite, choose a simple 1 Band EQ as an AudioSuite plug-in, and I'll do a high pass here, and I'll click Render. Now, if I go and zoom in on the clip a little bit, let's say I wanted to crossfade this clip with the clip above. So I would take the Trimmer tool and attempt to pull out the clip a little bit and hey, I have a problem here.

I can't pull the clip any farther out because I rendered it already. In the Optimizing dialogue, in the First past movie, I showed you how to manually work around this limitation. But in Pro Tools 10, there's some new AudioSuite features that can do that work for you. Here's how to tap into that functionality. It has to do with the processing output and input settings. That's these guys here in the AudioSuite plug-in. We have our output window, and we're going to choose Create individual files in this case, and we have our input window, and we'll choose create clip by clip.

With those selected, you should have some numbers lit up now on the bottom of the AudioSuite plug-in. This is your handle length. Currently, it's set to 0. But I can double-click in here and type in 2 and that'll give me 2-second handles. You can also click and drag up or down on this. Let me undo my last render setting, Command+Z, and I'm going to re-render the clip. Now I should be able to take the Trimmer tool and have handles on the outside of my rendered clip, and as you see, I do. I have handle on the front side and on the end.

I have two seconds of handles. Defaults for this handle length can be set up in the Pro Tools Preferences menu. That would be into the Processing tab. And here, I can set a Length default of 2 seconds so that every time an AudioSuite plug-in opens, it'll default to a 2-second handle. You can also bypass handles altogether and just process the whole file, by clicking Whole File. In addition to handles, if your clips already have crossfades or Clip-Based Gain metadata, you can process more than one clip and preserve crossfades in Clip Gain.

Here's how to do that. You can see above, I have a couple regions that have a crossfade and Clip-Based Gain. I select over all of those, and in this case, I'm going to choose to Overwrite files, and I'll keep the input on clip by clip. Now when I click Render, it's going to ask me if I want to make a Non-Destructive or Destructive process. I'm going to choose Non-Destructive, and now the clip has been rendered and as you can see, it kept Clip Gain data and the crossfade, and the whole region has been rendered.

These AudioSuite features are huge in speeding up post-production workflow, and they're one of the main reasons I would consider the upgrade to Pro Tools 10 if you're involved post-production. For a more in-depth look at all the features in Pro Tools 10, be sure to watch another title in lynda.com audio series called Pro Tools 10 New Features.