Fast paning weirdness

[Frank Kruse]

Try this:

-Create a mono-track bussed to an LCR-output.
-generate a piece of pink noise (or use some other static test signal)
- draw in a linear pan from fully left to fully right across the LCR over about half a second in time.

now shorten the pan duration by nudging the breakpoints closer together and listen to the result.

Here´s what´s weird. On my system the pan sounds chopped up and not smooth as soon as I make the pan shorter than 9 frames.

Can someone verify this? Is this a bug or a feature?

I have some very quick car-bys on screen that are impossible to pan using PT´s pan automation because they start sounding completely wrong and irregular when they are below 9 frames (@24fps ruler).

Any ideas how I can work around this restriction? The strange thing is that when the pan sounds bad (at 7 frames for example) and I play the session at half speed (shift-space bar) the pan being played is still chopped up allthough now being played over a period of 14 frames. When I create a 14 frame long pan and play that in real-time it sounds fine.

So far I´ve found no way to get smooth very quick pans in PT. How do other people do this?

Thanks,

Frank.

EDIT: I just found this thread on the same issue: http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=261571

But if it´s because of amplitude modulation, why the flip is PT still playing the fade with all the level drops when you play back at half speed. Makes no sense to me.

[nucelar]

Does not happen here (LE 7.4)
Weired.. Have you tried adding extra breakpoints inbetween?
Edit: Duh, I tested it with regular stereo. Nevermind

[tilman]

it´s funny. I tested it while I was in a 96 KHZ session. there the problem
became noticable at 4 frames. now opened a 48 kHz session
there it occurs at 7 or 9 frames.

So I guess the soloution is to work at higher samplerate.


I tested LCR on Protools 8.03 LE Complete Prod. Toolkit

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by tilman

it´s funny. I tested it while I was in a 96 KHZ session. there the problem
became noticable at 4 frames. now opened a 48 kHz session
there it occurs at 7 or 9 frames.

So I guess the soloution is to work at higher samplerate.


I tested LCR on Protools 8.03 LE Complete Prod. Toolkit

Hm. So I´m going to tell the re-recording mixer that all the car bys are in a seperate session and he has to switch the studio to 96k to be able to continue the mix?
Not sure about that.

Seriously: I think it´s a bug, no?
I always thought that if there´s one thing that´s easier and more precise to do in a DAW than on a console it´s fast pan automation. Seems like I was wrong. I guess I´ll have to leave to panning to the mixer. Luckily the film is not being mixed on PT ;-D

Frank.

[tilman]

automation and a lot of plugin stuff perform a lot better at higher samplerates.

seems that the resoloution of protools automation is tied to the sessions samplerate. I bet some other daw programers have implemented more resoloution in their daw automation!


I would check it out! I persume if you do this in a 192 kHz session it will be even less frames before this negative effect appears.

but the answer in the other thread is wrong this has nothing to do with
amplitude modulation.

[tilman]

so what I mean is when the sword fight comes he should switch to 192 kHz.

I bet this glitch exists in every protools version!

[FlorianE]

Frank,

have you tried to bounce your panned cars to another track in half-speed record? Fast automation issues can sometimes be 'bypassed' that way.

Cheers
Florian

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by FlorianE

Frank,

have you tried to bounce your panned cars to another track in half-speed record? Fast automation issues can sometimes be 'bypassed' that way.

Cheers
Florian

Florian,

problem is that when you play a 7-frame pan at half speed (resulting at 14frames) PT will still play back the pan with multiple level drops. You can try it yourself.

(see my first posting)

Frank.

[tilman]

other workaround would be some 3 CH panorama plugin by a third party developer

[Postman]

Adding extra break points makes a HUGE imporovement. I'll post some screenshots and come back here with a link.