Template Ideas

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FMiguelez
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by FMiguelez »

PoliticalBonobo wrote:
FMiguelez wrote: There's your culprit right there. You're duplicating and using redundant bundles because of the aux tracks. Why don't you buss VEO directly to audio tracks instead? Muuuuuuch easier and efficient!
I guess I'll do it that way. The only thing is I won't be able to bounce with tracks with effects/processing applied, since those will be on the audio tracks :(
Not necessarily...

It all depends how you route things. Why would they be "on the audio tracks"?? I'm not sure what you mean or what exactly you want to do.
ALL you're doing if you start using audio tracks instead of "aux--->Audio", is SAVING a bunch of redundant bundles which you can use for much better things, such as separating certain effects, dry submixes, wet submixes, stems, etc.

DP is one of the most versatile and complete DAWs because of its amazing routing capabilities. You may need to sit down, drink a coffee, and write a plan on paper of your I/O structure. Try to be as efficient as you can (use mono bundles for mono sources instead of stereo, etc).

Your template will ALWAYS be evolving, so don't be afraid to experiment.
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bayswater
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by bayswater »

You're still only using about a quarter of the available busses, even with the double routing.
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by FMiguelez »

bayswater wrote:You're still only using about a quarter of the available busses, even with the double routing.
I wish we could have at least like 25% more :)
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bayswater
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by bayswater »

FMiguelez wrote:It all depends how you route things. Why would they be "on the audio tracks"??
I think the problem is that if you bus the VI outs directly to an audio track, that's where any post VI effects have to be, and if those tracks are bounced the effects are not included. Of course they are included in the mix, so it's not obvious that's a problem -- all you have to do is solo the stuff you want to bounce.

But it's still practical to use Auxes if that suits the situation given that there are 198 available.
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by bayswater »

FMiguelez wrote:
bayswater wrote:You're still only using about a quarter of the available busses, even with the double routing.
I wish we could have at least like 25% more :)
I agree. The limit probably has to do with old memory and CPU limitations. Seems going to 256 or 512 should be a reasonable thing to do in 2016.
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PoliticalBonobo
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by PoliticalBonobo »

bayswater wrote:I think the problem is that if you bus the VI outs directly to an audio track, that's where any post VI effects have to be, and if those tracks are bounced the effects are not included. Of course they are included in the mix, so it's not obvious that's a problem -- all you have to do is solo the stuff you want to bounce.

But it's still practical to use Auxes if that suits the situation given that there are 198 available.
This is it exactly. I'm trying trying to have all tracks routed for bouncing with effects, not dry. My last film took me a few hours per reel to bounce each track for my mix guy, and I rarely like to bounce the track dry.

Regarding the number of busses, how do some guys have hundreds-of-tracks templates? I think Tom Holkenborg uses a 2000+ track template and bounces down to ProTools! Maybe he only routes the final tracks after he writes the cue. He's also on Cubase, but I doubt the bus limitations are different.

FM is right that I'll probably be tweaking my templates as I go along. I'm just really hoping to save as much time as possible in the future.
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FMiguelez
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by FMiguelez »

bayswater wrote:
FMiguelez wrote:It all depends how you route things. Why would they be "on the audio tracks"??
I think the problem is that if you bus the VI outs directly to an audio track, that's where any post VI effects have to be, and if those tracks are bounced the effects are not included. Of course they are included in the mix, so it's not obvious that's a problem -- all you have to do is solo the stuff you want to bounce.
PoliticalBonobo wrote: FM is right that I'll probably be tweaking my templates as I go along. I'm just really hoping to save as much time as possible in the future.
I must be missing something because I don't see where the problem is.
Why would the post VI effect have to be in the receiving audio tracks?
If you take you tracks out of VE Pro "dry", what prevents PoliticalBonobo from assigning their FX as sends from within those dry tracks in DP? You could use aux tracks for your effects, and then gather the wet signal and the dry signals in another aux or audio track, and print (or bounce) away.

What am I not seeing? Is it perhaps that you use your FX from the slave machines?
Are you printing your MIDI tracks to audio before bouncing? Even if not, this wouldn't make a difference... :?

Either way, with either scenario, I still don't see why you could not bounce with or without effects...
That's exactly what I do. Please clarify.
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by bayswater »

PoliticalBonobo wrote:Regarding the number of busses, how do some guys have hundreds-of-tracks templates?
Presumably, they aren't trying to set up the ability to bounce any or all of the 200 tracks independently. How many independent signal paths do you actually need? If you have a section with 6 cellos in it, surely you'll route all of them to one stereo bus. Same with other strings meaning 8 mono busses for all the strings. You might have 300 tracks, but do you need 300 busses?

Look for posts by "c0mp0ser" that link to videos showing a large DP template.
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bayswater
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by bayswater »

FMiguelez wrote: I must be missing something because I don't see where the problem is.
Yes, you can route the dry VI outputs to audio tracks then use sends to route audio tracks to effects busses. You can then solo the tracks you want to bounce and get an audio file with effects. The problem is that DP doesn't have a "multiple bounce" capability, so you have to set up each of the bounces and do them one after the other with that sort of routing. If you route through Auxes with the effects, then to the Audio tracks, you can set all of the Audio tracks to record and do all the bounces in one pass.

I usually route directly to audio tracks, record them dry, then do a and "all audio" mix with effects. I can't see mixing a load of tracks that already have effects.

The question I have is why you need more than 200 busses to do the latter routing. Of course, if you want to bounce 300 tracks independently, you can't do it in one pass. But why would you do that? Who needs 300 stems?
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PoliticalBonobo
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by PoliticalBonobo »

FMiguelez wrote:If you take you tracks out of VE Pro "dry", what prevents PoliticalBonobo from assigning their FX as sends from within those dry tracks in DP? You could use aux tracks for your effects, and then gather the wet signal and the dry signals in another aux or audio track, and print (or bounce) away.
That's exactly how I have been setting up my current template. But it appears the problem with that is using up a lot busses. One instrument from VEP would use 4 busses (2 stereo to aux, which has effects, then 2 stereo out of aux to audio track for print).

Sorry for making this confusing and difficult. I do appreciate the input though since I have no one looking over my shoulder in person.
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PoliticalBonobo
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by PoliticalBonobo »

bayswater wrote:You might have 300 tracks, but do you need 300 busses?
You're right, I definitely wouldn't. But if I go the "instrument-to-aux-to-audio" route, that's 4 busses per instrument, which would bring me down to 25 tracks in the template (assuming 100 allowable busses, with no sends being used). That's still more than I would probably need, but activating a few different V-Racks (which are already pre-routed for printing to audio tracks) might hose things up.
bayswater wrote:Look for posts by "c0mp0ser" that link to videos showing a large DP template.
Thanks! Will do!
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by bayswater »

PoliticalBonobo wrote:
bayswater wrote:You're right, I definitely wouldn't. But if I go the "instrument-to-aux-to-audio" route, that's 4 busses per instrument, which would bring me down to 25 tracks in the template (assuming 100 allowable busses, with no sends being used)
Not sure of the numbers here, of the terms. First, there are 200 busses (actually 198), not 100. To route a stereo instrument to an Aux, then a track, you need 4 of them. You don't need 4 stereo busses. So that takes you to 49 tracks. Second, presumably, it's groups of instruments you need to bus, not individual instruments.
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by FMiguelez »

PoliticalBonobo wrote:
FMiguelez wrote:If you take you tracks out of VE Pro "dry", what prevents PoliticalBonobo from assigning their FX as sends from within those dry tracks in DP? You could use aux tracks for your effects, and then gather the wet signal and the dry signals in another aux or audio track, and print (or bounce) away.
That's exactly how I have been setting up my current template. But it appears the problem with that is using up a lot busses. One instrument from VEP would use 4 busses (2 stereo to aux, which has effects, then 2 stereo out of aux to audio track for print).

Sorry for making this confusing and difficult. I do appreciate the input though since I have no one looking over my shoulder in person.
Then the solution is easier than you may think, my friend!

I'll post some screenshots of my custom template. Perhaps it will give you a few good ideas on how to improve yours, especially your busses issue.

This is what my "TV Shows" template main chunk looks like in the TO window:

Note it has 5 main sections>
- The MIDI and Audio tracks going to and coming from the VIS (which are ALL in VI-Racks).
- The Effects section (blue folder at the bottom)
- The DRY Submixes section (pink folder at the bottom)
- The WET submixes or Stems (the red folder at the bottom)
- The "Tools" section (this is where I have a lot of useful stuff, including the tracks to be printed as stems already routed and everything).

[img]http://i1078.photobuket.com/albums/w481/m/Screenshot%26-03-17%0t%2008.0.17_zpslp64bz8d.jpg[/img]
Next, I'll post a more detailed one...
Last edited by FMiguelez on Thu Mar 17, 2016 6:14 pm, edited 7 times in total.
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FMiguelez
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by FMiguelez »

In this one, I have a few folders opened.

You can see here part of the return tracks (from one of the slaves) for the strings section.

They are ALL dry at this point. EACH of those audio tracks has a corresponding send, which goes to the FXs section, where the strings reverb and delay lives. Same for all the other sections.

EACH section has its own dedicated effects, so I can always get stems at the end. THAT'S TEH KEY of my template. It's built around stems, and it's a joy to work like this.

Next, all the outputs of the string section goes to the DRY submixes section (the Strings dry submix). From there, everything, the dry submixes go to the wet submixes. This is where I join the effects and the dry signal from each section.
So I always can control the FX, the dry and the full wet stems of each section.
[url=htt://s1078photobuet.com/sr/mpdio/mdia/Screenhot%202016-03-17%20at%200.52.48_zpncjjutz.jpg.htmlImage[/url]
Last edited by FMiguelez on Thu Mar 17, 2016 6:11 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Tascam DM-24, MOTU Track 16, all Spectrasonics' stuff,
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"In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth." ― Richard Feynman
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FMiguelez
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Re: Template Ideas

Post by FMiguelez »

This lives inside my "Tools" folder.

When everything's ready, and I'm ready to print, I can print all my stems, final mix and master, in real time, in one or two passes, depending on the number of stems I'm using.
I could print everything in one pass, but that would mean dedicating busses exclusively for this purpose, and I had to make a compromise. See? Bussing compromises :)

These tracks are ready to get the signal from each stem (the black tracks). They already have a send assigned to send the signal to these bad boys.
So, all I have to do, is switch DP to 32 bFP, unmute the stem sends, record enable these tracks, and press 3.

[img]htt://i1078.photobucket.com/albums/w481mpmsdio/Screenshot%2016-03-17%20at%208.51.10_zpsu8dwnos.jpg[/img]
Last edited by FMiguelez on Thu Mar 17, 2016 6:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Vienna Instruments SUPER PACKAGE, Waves Mercury, slaved iMac and Mac Minis running VEP 7, etc.

---------------------------

"In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth." ― Richard Feynman
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