Using the Workspace browser

- Importing preexisting files into an existing Pro Tools session is something that you will most likely end up doing quite often. Pro Tools offers the ability to import many different file types and the ability to catalog, organize, browse, preview, and import these files using the workspace browser. Let's open a workspace browser. Go to the Window menu, and choose New Workspace. The workspace is Pro Tools's built-in file management and database program. Pro Tools now combines the catalog browser, the workspace browser and the project browser into one unified browser.

You can search your computer and any attached drive for any file you would like to import into a Pro Tools session using the workspace browser. On the left-hand side of the workspace, you can set the location where you wish to browse. The Volumes folder in the Locations tab will list every drive connected to your system. The folder with the name of your session, in this case Workspace Browser, will confine the browser to the current session folder regardless of where other sessions and other associated files may be located. Catalogs allow you to create custom catalogs of media and User confines a search to your computer's user folder.

You can have multiple browser windows open simultaneously and Pro Tools even provides a direct access to the different browser locations via key command. opt + i on a Mac or alt + i on a PC will open a new workspace focused on all volumes. opt or alt + o will open a new workspace focused on the project and you can see that our project name, Workspace Browser, is selected when we use that key command. The workspace browser looks in every hard drive in your system. It will index your attached hard drives automatically but you can force it to manually index any location.

Let's look at that. I'm going to close this browser and the other browser and I'm going to right click on my User folder and choose Update Index for Selected Items. If I release this, Pro Tools will create a new index for that folder. The workspace also allows you to search to find a file. Using simple search, the workspace allows you to search for specific text in file names and metadata. You can click the simple search button or use the key cmd + f on Mac or ctrl + f in Windows to start a simple search. Let's type piano and we can now see all the audio files named piano that are in my home folder.

Pro Tools also offers an advanced search. Clicking the advanced search button or using the key command cmd + shift + f on a Mac or ctrl + shift + f in Windows, will activate or deactivate an advanced search. An advanced search allows you to constrain your search even further. By clicking the + button to the right of the search field you can add more criteria to refine your search. If you want to create a custom catalog of any folder on your drive, you can just right click it. So, let's try that. I'm going to exit the search, open up my home folder, and go to the Exercise Files.

Now if I want to create a custom catalog of this I can just right click the folder and choose Create Catalog from Selection. I'm going to go ahead and call this Exercise Files and hit Enter or click OK. Now, next time I want to import a file from this location, I don't have to navigate there again manually because it's already saved here in the Catalog section of the workspace. Let's do a simple search of the exercise files, again for piano. If you have the exercise files, you should see all the files called piano. If you don't have the exercise files, search for something else that you think may exist on your hard drive.

You'll also see a lot of information about each file on the workspace browser, the name, the kind of file, the size of the file, its duration, and even a waveform of audio files is visible. You can audition the file by clicking the speaker button to the left of the waveform. You can also audition the file by pressing the spacebar. If we right click the Preview button, we can enable Loop Preview or Auto Preview.

We can also disable Spacebar Toggles File Preview if you don't want to be able to use the spacebar to preview files. If you want files to automatically play when they're selected, choose Auto-Preview. And if you want files to loop, choose Loop Preview. Also notice that you can skip around in the file by clicking at different points in the waveform to audition audio at various points in the file. Let's check it out. (piano music) If you want to hear what a loop or a file will sound like at the session's current tempo, just enable the audio files Conform to Session Tempo button.

We click this button here and audition the file. (piano music) If we click this before auditioning, the file will play back at the session's current tempo even though it was recorded at a slower tempo. This uses elastic audio which we'll cover in another video in this course. Once you found what you're looking for, you can import the file into your session simply by dragging and dropping the file into your session's edit window. The workspace browser is a really useful way to find files, audition them, and import them into your session. I'm sure you'll find it really useful in your Pro Tools workflow.