OK, but seriously, OFFLINE BOUNCE!
 

So I finished mixing an album this afternoon. I thought hey, I'll just print a few stem files this evening.

I went out, listened to the mixes in the car, made some final changes, and started to print stems.

I'M STILL PRINTING STEMS!

This is a job that should take about 1 hour. In real time, it is now about 3 hours and counting. I now understand fully why more people are leaving PT when time is an issue.

I have done some advertising, some mixing of cartoons, but it was all on DP with offline bounce. Now that I think back, I would probably still be printing those stem files.

I understand that old code must be a PITA to work with, but offline bounce seems like a no brainer these days. I have heard the argument about listening to your mix ect ect ect ect......I still do, and I did before. Only with offline boucne, I listen to it before I FTP it to a mastering house. Not while I print it, then check the final, then realize oops, then fix, then listen to the mix, then check the final........

I could buss things out, but in these mixes I don't have any extra busses left. PITA

Seriously,

It's time to get into the new age.

Charge me 200 dollars, I don't care. I just lost valuable sleeping time, and much needed rest before tomorrows session starts.

Did I mention that I typed all of this while I was waiting for the Guitar Stem to be finished.

Re: OK, but seriously, OFFLINE BOUNCE!
 

Let's see, Protools LE has never been designed to deal with film post-production for your precious stems, and has always been known to render in realtime, as in Real-Time-AudioSuite (RTAS). It's been that way for what, 7 years?

So who exactly caused your sleeplessness?

Don't lose any sleep over it...

Re: OK, but seriously, OFFLINE BOUNCE!
 

LOL

I see what PTLE is just fine. I have used it and preferred it since 5.1.1.

I was frustrated because I needed stems, stems take time to make, on DP (a program I don't particularly like) It would have been done in an hour.

I also stated that I would pay for that feature.

Please include it.

I am a huge PT fanboy. Trust me.

Re: OK, but seriously, OFFLINE BOUNCE!
 

I agree with Kris. This is a feature that Pro Tools desperately needs.

Re: OK, but seriously, OFFLINE BOUNCE!
 

Me too ...on the proviso this includes MIDI non-real-time processing.








filosofem

Re: OK, but seriously, OFFLINE BOUNCE!
 

Here, here!

Re: OK, but seriously, OFFLINE BOUNCE!
 

I routinely record live shows where I process 2+ hours of 2-track recordings and need to run them through a bunch of plugs to tidy them up.

I've made the same request of Digi for years to release a Protools-like editor that can bounce fewer track counts faster than realtime. If you search the forum you'll find my requests to update Digi's old software called Sound Designer, which actually pre-dates Protools, and was designed to do exactly what I need.

Long story short, I'm way ahead of you, and it's not going to happen.

And non-realtime Midi is a contradiction of terms. It's one thing to make a player piano play faster, it's another to tune it to a higher pitch.

Sorry for being a dick about it, nagging for the painfully obvious for years will do that to you.

Re: OK, but seriously, OFFLINE BOUNCE!
 

I agree, much needed, yet I can’t see it happening… (Coding nightmare/impossibility for TDM & they won’t give LE something that HD hasn’t got…)

However, most of you already know this, but there is a faster way of doing stems in PT that I will mention just in case some reading this thread doesn’t know about it…

Create as many stereo audio tracks as you need stems, assign each one a different aux bus input.

Send whichever tracks are required for each stem to whichever stem bus using aux sends.

Arm all stem tracks and record all the stems in once pass.

Select the newly recorded stem tracks in the region view & ‘export selected files as audio’ at whatever bit depth and sample rate you require…

Cheers



N

Re: OK, but seriously, OFFLINE BOUNCE!
 

Hello. This has indeed been talked about and requested for a long time, and I know I have posted this information many times before. But for the benefit of those who may not know this, Pro Tools used to be able to do offline bounces. This was back in the day before it used TDM technology. Back in those days you had the option of bouncing in real time or faster than real time; the option to bounce faster than real time was taken out when Pro Tools went TDM. This was also before the LE line ever existed.

The reason for this option being taken out is that it is impossible for TDM to do a faster than real time bounce, it can only be done in real time, regardless if there are external I/O considerations or if it's a completely in the box bounce. So when the LE line was introduced it is obvious to infer that Digidesign did not want to give it functionality that the TDM big brother was incapable of, so they have chosen not to give LE this feature, even though there is absolutely no technical roadblock for it. It is an arbitrary limitation of the LE line, one of many that it has.

Now given all this background I think we can reasonably assume that LE will most likely never have this functionality until the flagship software can also do it. And as long as the flagship software is TDM based it remains a technical impossibility. One can truly never say never, but we can safely assume it won't happen.

As mentioned by others, if an offline bounce is absolutely imperative or a dealbreaker, then one must choose other software to do this. However one workaround inside of Pro Tools is to record to disk instead of bounce to disk. Route the tracks through a bus to a stereo audio track and either record in Quick Punch mode or Destructive mode.

So say the session is 2 hours, you starting recording and find a mistake at the 42 minute mark. If we were bouncing to disk we would have to start from scratch again, but when we record through busses to an audio track we can just punch in and move on. After the 2 hours are done we are left with a stereo track that can be consolidated and then exported as a stereo interleaved file. Consolidation and exporting are faster than real time processes. So in this scenario the file would be ready within 3 hours or less, whereas in bounce to disk if there were many interruptions it could be 4 or 5 hours or more.

It's not faster than real time but it's much faster than bounce to disk.

By the way, any professional gig in my opinion demands a quality control stage where one makes sure that the final product is 100% kosher. Theoretically an offline bounce should not have any mistakes, but I have had many errors from an offline bounce in the past. So I would never hand off an offline bounce without first listening to every second of that file to make sure it's OK. It's the quality control stage. So bounce to disk actually does help in this matter because it serves as the quality control stage at the same time the final mix happens.

Re: OK, but seriously, OFFLINE BOUNCE!
 

I was out of buses. I suppose I could have disabled tracks and used the xtra buses, then re enabled the tracks and disabled the previous tracks, then assigned the buses.

I rarely do stems for music, but it was requested. PT for me is a music DAW. I would never dream of using it in a situation that required offline bounce. This for me was a rare occasion.

I still want offline bounce though