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bayswater wrote:I agree. It would have been a lot easier for everyone if MOTU had just called Soundbites Regions like everyone else.

Well, it might have helped if I had actually bothered to crack the manual, too. I pride myself on the fact that I never have to do any heavy mental lifting to get around DP or hunt it down in the manual -- most of it's just that straight-forward and logical to find with a couple of clicks. Also, I keep forgetting that DP's audio side, while highly, HIGHLY evolved from where it was back in the days of DP 2 (when I started using it strictly for MIDI composition), isn't as highly-evolved as its MIDI side, so while the ability to do what I needed to do was there, it might not be as obvious as it is when you need to perform a complex MIDI task. Again, I see where I got confused!

I think you get pretty close to seeing a list of audio files if you set the Soundbites window to View By: Filename. It will display a hierarchical list of Files and Soundbites with flippy triangles so you can hide the Soundbites, and just have a list of Files. I'm not sure this a purely a list of source files: it will at least show files from Bounces, Merges, etc.

Of course! That also sounds close to the way I'm used to working with audio files/tracks. I cut my teeth on Vision DSP, where you could open a window to see a list of your audio files. You edited said audio in the context of the audio track, just like you do in DP, but that operation was never represented in Vision. Each chunk of remaining audio was simply labelled whatever the name of the corresponding audio file was on the waveform itself. The markers were all added under the hood, I guess, until you opened Vision's waveform editor and compacted the audio file. So all you really dealt with were audio files, not even "regions" or "clips" -- they existed, you just had no way to look at them other than your edited audio track.

waitsongs wrote:

FMiguelez wrote:You can avoid that behaviour by unchecking the Sounbite Edge Copy (or a similar name) in the SE's minimenu. This way, next time you edge edit a SB, it won't create any copies.
But they are not new audio files anyway... They're just pointers to the parent audio file.

Just beware that, with Edge Edit Copy turned off, your edits to that soundbite will be reflected everywhere else you may have used that soundbite (which can be a real shocker if it's not what you intended!).

Pardon me for skimming this thread, as I'm really behind on Forum stuff, and I don't really have time to catch up right now, but this particular issue is extremely important. The way I work, it would literally be impossible to finish a mix without "Edge-Edit Copy" turned on. Without it, any edit you make on any soundbite will affect ALL instances of that soundbite throughout the sequence. As Waitsongs said, it can be a real shocker!

Shooshie

NazRat wrote:Pro Tools changed from 'regions' to 'clips'. Who knows why? It must have been an upper level management or marketing decision. Setting clip volume sounds sexier than setting region volume. Though I think I like soundbite volume best.

That's what they call audio (and video) regions in the Avid Media Composer so they wanted the terminology to be the same when doing things like OMF exports between video editors and sound editors.

Ah, so there is a good reason for the change.

I always equate "soundbite" with "audio file"...

Maybe you do but that's not what is going on. Your audio file remains intact.

mikehalloran wrote:

I always equate "soundbite" with "audio file"...

Maybe you do but that's not what is going on. Your audio file remains intact.

Er, yes, that's why the rest of the paragraph you took that quote from goes on to use that quote as an explanation as to why I mistook "soundbite" for "audio file". I do think there needs to be more of a differentiation between the two, but in understanding why there's a whole subset of soundbites under a non-destructively edited audio file, I guess I can see why it has to be that way. For that matter, the whole business of "soundbites" could take place under the hood, only leaving you to deal with your actual resource audio pool.

Armageddon wrote:There should be a way to display (and edit) the list of actual audio source files separate from Soundbites, though -- that would be a huge help!

Well, there is. In the SB window, there is a column for "Source." If the source is "editing" it's a soundbite by your definition. If it's imported or from a recording or a freeze, it will be reflected in the source column as such.

rockitcity wrote:

NazRat wrote:Pro Tools changed from 'regions' to 'clips'. Who knows why? It must have been an upper level management or marketing decision. Setting clip volume sounds sexier than setting region volume. Though I think I like soundbite volume best.

That's what they call audio (and video) regions in the Avid Media Composer so they wanted the terminology to be the same when doing things like OMF exports between video editors and sound editors.

Of course I don't know why they did it, and that's a good reason, so it's probably correct. But "Region" has always had a particular meaning for me in DP, and it always irked me that Logic and others kind of stole that meaning when they used "Region" in a specific way, when it's actually a very general term. Region is defined as "an area or division, esp. part of a country or the world having definable characteristics but not always fixed boundaries."

When you select anything in DP, you have just created a region. The boundaries are never fixed; they represent the characteristics you have just selected for. That, to me, is what a region is all about. Logic essentially defines regions for you. It tells you how a region behaves - as a group that stays together and moves as a unit. People come to DP looking for THAT in a region, and are disappointed to find that DP's regions are pretty meaningless unless you provide the meaning. That, to me, is one of DP's biggest attractions. It's as if Logic were to say that a region must be "Texas," or "Ohio," while DP says regions can be "The West," or "the greater Chicago metropolitan area," whatever you need for it to be.

So, it's nice to see PT moving away from using "Region" in a very specific way, and moving toward using a more appropriate word: clip.

Shooshie

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:

Armageddon wrote:There should be a way to display (and edit) the list of actual audio source files separate from Soundbites, though -- that would be a huge help!

Well, there is. In the SB window, there is a column for "Source." If the source is "editing" it's a soundbite by your definition. If it's imported or from a recording or a freeze, it will be reflected in the source column as such.

Easier to use the option to organize the Soundbite list by File. Then you don't have to scroll around looking for the Source column.

bayswater wrote:Easier to use the option to organize the Soundbite list by File. Then you don't have to scroll around looking for the Source column.

I'll try it that way! I assume the soundbites (meaning, the individual sub-soundbites branching off from the source audio) disappear, anyway, once the audio file is compacted in the wave editor?

Armageddon wrote:

bayswater wrote:Easier to use the option to organize the Soundbite list by File. Then you don't have to scroll around looking for the Source column.

I'll try it that way! I assume the soundbites (meaning, the individual sub-soundbites branching off from the source audio) disappear, anyway, once the audio file is compacted in the wave editor?

Maybe. Seems to me that it depends on whether edits are destructive. Many waveform editor functions are destructive but there is an undo list that might want to keep the around. In any case you can just close the triangles beside each audio file and never see the soundbites listed. A couple of keyboard shortcuts can get rid of unused soundbites and keep things tidy.

waitsongs wrote:(And who would ever want to just listen to audio, when you can watch flashing lights and spinning numbers at the same time?)

LOL! Nothing beats Pro Tools for audio editing, but I've learned to appreciate this feature.

Not sure if this was mentioned, but there is a 'Select Unused Soundbites' command in the Soundbites mini-menu, then you can 'Remove From List'. I use these 2 all the time after editing to clean up the SB list and just leave Soundbites that are actually being used in the project. This is probably obvious, but just to be clear, these commands doesn't do anything destructive to the audio files or compact the project, etc.

DanielCoe wrote:

waitsongs wrote:(And who would ever want to just listen to audio, when you can watch flashing lights and spinning numbers at the same time?)

LOL! Nothing beats Pro Tools for audio editing, but I've learned to appreciate this feature.

You'd get some argument here.

Shooshie