Do you mix film soundtrack in PT or DP?

supersonic · Post by **supersonic** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 2:36 am

HI everyone,

I have been using DP for 18 years and PT on the side (a lot less). Among the things I do is mixing film sound. I was wondering what your take on that was. Have any of you compared the two platforms directly?

MikeInBoston · Post by **MikeInBoston** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 11:39 am

I guess nobody has an opinion on this. We mustn't have any film composers on the forum. I'd be interested in a response to your question, too.

Mike

frankf · Post by **frankf** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 1:11 pm

Ok I'll bite. Both! My studio is DP, but if mixing elsewhere it might be PT.

supersonic · Post by **supersonic** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 4:44 pm

I also meant full soundtrack. Not only music but dialog and fx included. What do you think about the ease of use of one versus the other?

frankf · Post by **frankf** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 7:09 pm

I generally have no input on where the film (audio) mix is nor do I usually go to the mix so I'm back to "can't help you," sorry.

jbyerly1 · Post by **jbyerly1** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 7:31 am

I mixed an 1 ½ hour Independent film on DP 7.5 and with Waves and DP had everything I needed to mix a 5.1 and Stereo. My only issue was getting them a cut which was speeded up for (and I can't remember right now) another format. I have not messed with DP time stretching ability since but it would not work for me then. By the way, I brought it over to DP 8 at the end.
DP automation makes FX and Dialog very easy once you know what you want to do. The files I received were some what pre-mixed and DP played the automation seamlessly. Hope this helps.
DP has very strong tools once you learn them

supersonic · Post by **supersonic** » Tue May 05, 2015 4:09 am

I know DP more or less inside out as far as mixing is concerned but not so much PT. I was wondering if someone had experience in both worlds.

musicman691 · Post by **musicman691** » Tue May 05, 2015 4:37 pm

supersonic wrote:I know DP more or less inside out as far as mixing is concerned but not so much PT. I was wondering if someone had experience in both worlds.

I'm in the process of moving back to DP after spending time in the PT world and while I haven't yet done any film work in DP I have done some in PT11.3.1 and it's a nightmare. Working with video in PT as it currently stands is - let's put it this way - I'd rather have a root canal without anesthetic than do anything video related in PT. Lots of glitches and crashes but if you can get passed that then it's decent provided you have the aax format plugins you need. Want more than one video track and you need PT's dsp platform as the 'vanilla' version only allows one video track.

Then there's the matter of PT not playing nice with all codecs.

If you're thinking about going PT be advised you can only buy new PT12 but you get an iLok license asset that gets you PT10, 11 and 12. And right now PT12 has a bunch of issues that make it not worth the time.

I realize this may cross the line of 'comparative daw 101' that James says is a no-no for this forum and I apologize for that ahead of time. I try not to get into that but coming from PT land I have a hard time fighting the urge off (not to defend PT but just offer up my experiences from that side of the fence).

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Tue May 05, 2015 5:22 pm

MikeInBoston wrote:I guess nobody has an opinion on this. We mustn't have any film composers on the forum.

Any chance it might be because it is not in the Digital Performer: Film/Video Scoring & Post Production thread?
http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=6

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Wed May 06, 2015 6:39 am

I'll move it. Makes sense.

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Wed May 06, 2015 6:56 am

Or it might be that once people use DP there's very little reason to bother since there's nothing to actually compare it to when it comes to working with picture. I've watched engineers in top LA post houses struggle with PT when working on my film projects but I've never bought or used PT since first seeing it in action (or inaction, if you will - even if you won't). At the time I was using Editrack on an Atari and couldn't understand why you'd buy it or use such a convoluted program.

I've also talked at length with the top audio guys at Pixar and was told they use PT at work because they have to under some agreement (this was about 10 years ago) but when they go home they use DP.

What I do when mixing any large project is dedicate one sequence and sometimes one entire project to the final mix and use a multi-sequence project for scoring and design, ADR, etc. That way VIs don't get in the way when they're not needed as much (with heavy instruments, etc) and the soundbite count is more manageable. All music cues are generally in one project and no monster templates of hundreds of tracks are ever used or hurt in the process. I know a lot of people do that and have every little articulation on a different track. Personally I find that to be anal retentive but that's another issue for another thread and I'm already waaaay o/t at this point.

I hope that's marginally helpful, Mike in Boston (and elsewhere).

rockitcity · Post by **rockitcity** » Wed May 06, 2015 2:13 pm

A little bit of a zombie thread here, but since it's been resurrected I'll jump in.

A lot of major composers work in DP, but when it comes to the full mix I've never seen it done in DP. When you consider that virtually all the FX and Dialog editors work in Pro Tools of various versions, when it comes time to put it all together, Pro Tools is the common format. Plus most of the control surfaces are Avid on the dub stages so you need compatibility to feed sessions together. Most mixes for TV and features use at least 4 Pro Tools systems on-line. One each for Dialog, FX and Music, and another dedicated as a multi-track recorder for stems and print masters. These run in "satellite mode" as one big system. There are also often off-line systems for dialog and music for making fixes while on the stage. These fixes are then track-transferred to the on-line systems to be integrated with the final units.

Not to say that DP is incapable, it's just not widely accepted across the entire spectrum. If someone were doing an independent project entirely in-house, then you could set up DP to do the job. I suppose you could link multiple systems together with just a timecode feed, but it wouldn't be very elegant. Also, the lack of destructive record and sub-path routing (ex: sending a 5.0 bg stem or LCR foley stem to a 5.1 printmaster) really makes the process cumbersome.

As much as people here generally love to hate Pro Tools, it is the standard that brings everything together.

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Wed May 06, 2015 2:31 pm

Very good points, Rockcity. You are correct AFAIK that PT always seem to have the last word in most pro productions. I don't love to hate PT or anything else. It just so happens I don't like PT just as I don't like Windows, but at the end of the production, they still get the job done.

supersonic · Post by **supersonic** » Wed May 06, 2015 10:54 pm

Now here is what I call real world input. Thanks!

I have done close 50 film projects in DP, scoring and mixdown. Since I did the scoring and mixing and all in-house I could always get away with doing it this way. But now that I am teaching at the Science University of Gdansk (Poland) where they have Protools I feel I need to jump into it on order to give them a real world option. DP is practically unknown here in Poland. I begun using it 20 years ago back in France where I studied at SAE and where I worked for many years afterwards. I have PT11 and have used it sparingly so I know a little bit about it. I love the template system they have. Less cumbersome then DP's.
The multi chunk system in DP is a god send and I would not think of actually scoring in anything else. I am planning on showing them this side of it while concentrating on PT for the recording and mixdown since everyone here uses it (either this or Nuendo). Few questions pop up after what you said.

@rockitcity
- Why do they use 4 independent systems? Can't one big system handle it all? Is it for the redundancy's sake?
- what do you mean by sub-path routing? The ability to send to many destinations at the same time?
- DP has destructive recording though I never use it.

@Musicman691
What do you mean by multiple video tracks?

I use VEP pro a lot. I find it more stable with the big projects? Anyone here doing the same?

What surface control do you use?

DP Control IOS - has this broken recently? I have been trying to us it and it keeps crashing.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

BKK-OZ · Post by **BKK-OZ** » Wed May 06, 2015 11:40 pm

supersonic wrote:DP Control IOS - has this broken recently? I have been trying to us it and it keeps crashing.

I can't really answer most of your other questions, but for this one, I can.
MOTU have acknowledged Control is non-functional on current (recent) iOS versions. If you have an old version of iOS, it may work, and some people here have reported that they have it working, but it hasn't worked for me for over a year now.

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