Hello,
I'm a Cubase/Nuendo user, but I have to start using Pro Tools 10, as almost all of my clients are requesting it, especially if they mix somewhere else. So I bought and installed it, and I have a couple of very basic questions if someone would care to help. I'm using a MacBook Pro, late 2011.
1. With the demo projects that come with PT 10, if I try to select a track to edit, every time I select, ALL the tracks are selected at once. I tried to find help on this. I looked up "link, linked tracks, groups" and I could not find out why all tracks are mimicking the behavior of any single track (including expanding, automation, etc). When I finally looked at the "All" group, I decided to disable it. That seemed to allow me to edit tracks. But I must be missing something here - do I have to always disable the main group to edit an individual track?
2. I'm confused about the timeline. How do I set project in/out points? I'm used to setting that region in Nuendo, and it sticks the whole time I'm working on the file. It seems that the locator points in PT10 always move when I move my cursor. Do I always have to set new in/out points every time I want to export? If so, how does one ensure that the song length will always be the same? I did some initial reading here too, but came up short.
Thanks in advance for any help.
And now, I just *have* to rant for one moment - if only to help things improve in the future. Here's my very first install experience. Please skip it if you don't want my sob story.
1. Put disc in and installed PT. That seemed to go fine.
2. Tried to register. First I went to my account on Avid's site. I could not find anywhere to register the software. After a while, I looked at the yellow card that comes with the software and found that it says to go to
www.avid.com/reg. So I did.
3. After filling out the registration form (without the release code) I hit submit. Got an error saying my session timed out. So I did it again. Same thing. And again. Gave up.
4. I decided to just launch PT and see what happened. After loading the plugins and startup, it launched a registration form. Aha! So I tried to fill it out. But all the text boxes were BLACK!!!! Couldn't see what I was typing until I highlighted my text! Man - this is starting to get stupid. I finally got all the way down to the end, but still had the release code to fill in for my registration. Um, where is the release code? My yellow card has nothing even vaguely resembling this - unless it's on the white sticker, and then it's not 4 digits like the XXXX implies onscreen when you're filling out the form. So I tried a few things, and failed. Gave up and opened my first support ticket - yup - on how to register. Oy.
5. Finally I went to try to update to 10.2. Yow!! It's really hard to find the updates online! I ended up searching for it using the search function online and eventually found it. Downloaded 10.2 and installed it. The install failed. I unplugged my iLoc and reinstalled, and it worked.
That's my story. It's a harsh intro to Pro Tools. I'm hoping I got all my bad luck out in one day.
Thanks for listening.
Johnny