Analog Tape to Protools to ultimately end up in DP?

Trachnyne · Post by **Trachnyne** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:39 am

Hey folks. I have a question relating to Protools working with Digital Performer. Right now, we have a project for my band that was done in an analog studio (1" tape - 16 tracks). We did Rhythm section, and some guitars. Nothing is mixed. Our engineer has the ability to transfer the tape into Pro Tools. Unfortunately for me, I do not have the same version of protools as he does. He has 7.4 and mine is 7.1 (LE) I believe. Regardless, I want to ultimately import these tracks into Digital Performer on my machine to finish tracking and mixing on my own.

My question is this: Once he imports into Pro Tools, what is the best way to get the files out of PT into DP? Would i be better off just importing the raw audio files into DP? Is there a way to save a project in pro tools that can easily be opened with DP? Again, none of the tracks will have any mix data (pans, levels, or even plugins for that matter).

Any advice, or experiences would be GREATLY appreciated. You folks here haven't let me down yet! Thanks for the great resource!

-B

HLStudios · Post by **HLStudios** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:43 am

i believe u need to export it as an OMF project in pro tools so u can easily open it in DP..

Trachnyne · Post by **Trachnyne** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:51 am

That is what I *thought* to be the case, just wanted to confirm.

Thanks so much for your help!

-b

kassonica · Post by **kassonica** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:53 am

HLStudios wrote:i believe u need to export it as an OMF project in pro tools so u can easily open it in DP..

That will require digi translator and its an extra (read $$$) add on.

Consolidate all files in pro tools, save and just import them into DP is another way,

jayjo19 · Post by **jayjo19** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 12:05 pm

ask him to "save copy in" of the pro tools 7.4 session he has. with that, you have the option to save the session as an earlier version of pro tools.
then you can go ahead and consolidate every track to start at the same time and import them in DP (the easiest and cheapest way when you have pro tools LE!)

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 12:11 pm

If the files all start at the same time, which I suspect if it's just a tranfer from tape, and nothing else is done in ProTools. It seems like the easiest way would be to just import the raw audiofiles into DP. And if you're on line for DP6 no convertion there is necessary. If you have no plans to go DP6 yet, maybe he can record to SDII in ProTools (that is possible, right?).
Make sure he names the tracks/audiofiles properly before so you don't have to sit and figure out what each file is.

Mr_Clifford · Post by **Mr_Clifford** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 5:00 pm

I'm pretty sure you'll find that a PT 7.4 file will open in 7.1. Haven't tried it myself but PT generally go to a new integer version when the file format changes significantly (ie. a PT6 file could be opened on any version of PT6).

If it's just a transfer form analog tape in PT (ie. no multiple playlists and not a whole lot of edits) you can pretty easily just transfer over the audio files and spot them to their timestamps.

andrewwilde · Post by **andrewwilde** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 7:52 pm

FutureLegends wrote:If the files all start at the same time, which I suspect if it's just a tranfer from tape, and nothing else is done in ProTools. It seems like the easiest way would be to just import the raw audiofiles into DP. And if you're on line for DP6 no convertion there is necessary. If you have no plans to go DP6 yet, maybe he can record to SDII in ProTools (that is possible, right?).
Make sure he names the tracks/audiofiles properly before so you don't have to sit and figure out what each file is.

I've just done this with about 200GB of WAV data Protool'd from around 50 2" 24-track tapes, 24 WAV files per PT project/tape. Different scale to you, but if you're not going to wait for DP6's native WAV support, here's the few minor hassles I encountered, FWIW:

You can multi-drag the WAV's direct into DP5's Tracks window, and it'll convert to SD2, but the track order will be seemingly arbitrary, and I found that DP was, rightly or wrongly, picking up a non-zero start time, thus placing the resultant soundbites way down the timeline. Plus the conversion dialog that DP chucks up is a bit confusing, and there's no progress bar; annoying for me, having so many to do.

So I purchased Sample Manager for $70 (they do a 15 day fully featured demo - very efficient program, great for batch processing audio in all sorts of contexts, I've subsequently found), and used that to convert the whole lot to SD2 before creating the DP projects; as well as saving DP from having to convert, it also sorted the start time problem (though I guess this may mean that in other contexts, important start time info may have been lost ?). Then made sure all the audio files where sort-friendly named, the Protools output seemed to have defaulted to 'Audio 1-01.wav' thru 'Audio 24_01.wav', so I changed them all to 'Track 01' thru 'Track 24' (File Buddy is great for that kind of task). And having done that, creating the DP projects was (nearly) a cinch. Last point of note that I found was that dragging 24 SD2 files straight into the Tracks window, whilst correctly creating tracks and being virtually instantaneous, still gave an arbitrary track order; but dragging the files into the Soundbites window, and then dragging from there (with the 'View By' set to 'Name') to the Tracks window nearly gave perfect results; for some obscure reason
(I assume this is something of a bug), there's always one track out of order, and it's not always the same one (go figure !?!); a nuisance, especially when plodding through creating 50-ish DP projects - but manageable.

Other than the above, I've found it straight forward and glitch free. (Mind you, trying to make sense of 20 year old track sheets and scribbles on the back of tape boxes, when many of the tapes contain multiple cues on different batches of tracks on the same part of the tape, is a WHOLE different matter !!).

Incidentally, rather obviously (I missed this first time!), make sure your DP Project's the same bit depth as the Protools output, unless you happen to want to convert. And as previously stated, this assumes all the WAVs are the same length, start to finish.

Hope some of the above may be of use.