Cutting blank space at the start of my session

[Dr Wobble]

I have a really basic question, one which no amount of Googling and video watching on Utube has been answered.

I've recorded a session, just drums and rythm guitar. As usual there were a few false starts, fluffed notes etc. I've used the trimmer tool to get to where I want the track to start, so have a white space, then the coloured waveforms. For the life of me I can't delete/cut/remove this white space/unwanted portion.

On a reel to reel I would get out a knife and splicing block and cut it off. How do I do this in Protools? I noticed that certain tools only work when the mouse pointer is on the "timing" bar. Do I need to alter settings/preferences?

I've watched a few "Protools for beginners" video's, all assume a level of knowledge I don't possess or skip stuff/go too fast. I'm not stupid, but need a really good "how to" basic guide-any ideas?

Thanks for looking, A.

[Stig Eliassen]

I'd start by having track and edit selection linked, and timeline and edit selection linked. I think that will minimize the confusion.

You can click'n'drag multiple clips to wherever you want. You can select all (any) clips, cut (X), type in a start point, and paste (V). That's just a couple ways.

Key commands I use a lot during editing, with Key commands focus (a...z) enabled:

A= trim start to insertion
S= trim end to insertion
D= fade in
F= crossfade
G= fade out
Z= undo, undo, undo!
Ctrl+click a clip with the Grabber tool to snap clip start to the insertion point.
Ctrl+Command+click a clip with the Grabber tool to snap clip end to the insertion point. This is on a Mac (OS X).

[Dr Wobble]

Thanks for your help, I'll try your suggestions.

A

[acmost]

Originally Posted by Dr Wobble

For the life of me I can't delete/cut/remove this white space/unwanted portion.

Check what your "scrolling" options are. Without opening PT, It seems I remember one of them, maybe 'continuos' or whatever it's called always gives a white space at the beginning.

[Stig Eliassen]

Originally Posted by acmost

Check what your "scrolling" options are. Without opening PT, It seems I remember one of them, maybe 'continuos' or whatever it's called always gives a white space at the beginning.

Good point. Scrolling options Continuous and Center Playhead "steals" the left side of the edit window.

Thanks.

[albee1952]

I always set scrolling to PAGE here As for blank space, my 2 cents, but it doesn't matter to me. I simply drop a memory location at the start of the song, no matter where it ends up When it comes time to Bounce To Disk, I highlight the area of the timeline that encompasses the whole song(and maybe a smidge extra at each end) and bounce. I can then open the bounced file and trim the ends(I generally DON'T try to "master" during mixing, so trimming the ends is easily done in my "mastering" phase and usually do that in Wavelab)