Migrating from Sonar - midi questions

[noiseboyuk]

OK, I'm jumping ship from Sonar for several reasons - poor working with video / time sigs; 64 bit incompatibility with Eucon etc, I need Pro Tools for sound dubbing work so since I've already got it I'm also seeing if it works for me midi-wise. If I don't like PT for midi, then I'll go for Cubase which I've demoed and strongly like. In theory PT9 can do pretty much all of what I need though, so I'm seeing if I can save myself double the learning curve and some cash!

I'm trying to think about workflow. I'm really just taking PT9 baby steps, but keep finding things I strongly dislike... it could well be my ignorance of the software at this stage of course, hence this post. So here are some ill-tempered gripes, some of them not more than niggles, some potentially major.

1. Batch selection of track properties - can't find away to batch select, say, 16 midi tracks to route all outputs to VE Pro. Also no auto-increment of midi channel numbers?

2. Track name width. This could be a biggie. 12 characters? REALLY? And - worse - in micro mode there seems no way to not have it further collapse to 5. REALLY?!!! That's absolute rubbish, if true. I know you can use the....

3. ...comments field, but that has problems of its own. Very poor legibility of black on grey, any way of changing this?

4. Key bindings / mouse modifiers. No way to change these?! REALLY?!!!

5. Selecting tracks to audition instruments only possible by pressing record arm? REALLY?!!!!

6. Unable to double click a clip to enter the Midi Editor? REA... (ok, no more REALLYS)

7. Needing to double click the metronome to switch on / off for playing back / recording? (I realise there is a global on / off in the transport section, but not individually for playback / record).

8. If I just want to bring a midi note forward ahead of the grid... what's the quickest way to do that? I see I can spot it which opens a hideous dialog. Just, you know, disable snap for a moment and drag a fraction.... anything like this?

I've tried to RTFM and google for help on these, but had no luck so far. Grateful for input - if most of these are features and nothing that can be done about them, it actually makes the decision pretty easy and I'll order Cubase right away, but if I'm an ignorant fumbling newbie then I'll try some more!

[Nightworker]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

OK, I'm jumping ship from Sonar for several reasons - poor working with video / time sigs; 64 bit incompatibility with Eucon etc, I need Pro Tools for sound dubbing work so since I've already got it I'm also seeing if it works for me midi-wise. If I don't like PT for midi, then I'll go for Cubase which I've demoed and strongly like. In theory PT9 can do pretty much all of what I need though, so I'm seeing if I can save myself double the learning curve and some cash!

I'm trying to think about workflow. I'm really just taking PT9 baby steps, but keep finding things I strongly dislike... it could well be my ignorance of the software at this stage of course, hence this post. So here are some ill-tempered gripes, some of them not more than niggles, some potentially major.

1. Batch selection of track properties - can't find away to batch select, say, 16 midi tracks to route all outputs to VE Pro. Also no auto-increment of midi channel numbers?

Dunno

2. Track name width. This could be a biggie. 12 characters? REALLY? And - worse - in micro mode there seems no way to not have it further collapse to 5. REALLY?!!! That's absolute rubbish, if true. I know you can use the....

That's all you should need. usually PT will automatically crop out letters and give you something that you can relate on even with missing letters (in mix window)

3. ...comments field, but that has problems of its own. Very poor legibility of black on grey, any way of changing this?

I don't know about changing the colors, but I know it's possible to assign colors to different type of tracks. Although I don't know if it will change the font color over the background color. If you are having trouble reading, use caps and instead of narrow mix, use the normal format.

4. Key bindings / mouse modifiers. No way to change these?! REALLY?!!!

Nope, as far as I know you can't

5. Selecting tracks to audition instruments only possible by pressing record arm? REALLY?!!!!

There is a way to do it, it's called Auto Input and Input Only Monitoring. Also if you don't have TDM, then you can bus your track to an unused Auxiliary track and you'll be able to listen to what you play without record enabling.

6. Unable to double click a clip to enter the Midi Editor? REA... (ok, no more REALLYS)

That doesn't exist in PT as you have a Edit window and Mix window always present. You can simply toggle between them (if you're on a single screen) by pressing ctrl+=

7. Needing to double click the metronome to switch on / off for playing back / recording? (I realise there is a global on / off in the transport section, but not individually for playback / record).

That's a first, never had that problem. I only need to click once on the metronome to set it on or off. Double clicking on it actually takes me to the Tempo editor window.

8. If I just want to bring a midi note forward ahead of the grid... what's the quickest way to do that? I see I can spot it which opens a hideous dialog. Just, you know, disable snap for a moment and drag a fraction.... anything like this

If you have all three tools selected, you can simply click on the note to highlight it.

I've tried to RTFM and google for help on these, but had no luck so far. Grateful for input - if most of these are features and nothing that can be done about them, it actually makes the decision pretty easy and I'll order Cubase right away, but if I'm an ignorant fumbling newbie then I'll try some more!

That's why the forum exist

[noiseboyuk]

Thanks for the answers, Nightworker, much appreciated! A few matters arising..

Track characters:

Originally Posted by Nightworker

That's all you should need. usually PT will automatically crop out letters and give you something that you can relate on even with missing letters (in mix window)

Hmm, not in my case. I'll be building a template of 200 midi tracks or so normally in micro mode, often similar variations of instruments - I honestly couldn't understand the dozen I had in a test case on 5 characters. This alone is I think is pushing me towards Cubase, where you can define your own length.

Originally Posted by Nightworker

There is a way to do it, it's called Auto Input and Input Only Monitoring. Also if you don't have TDM, then you can bus your track to an unused Auxiliary track and you'll be able to listen to what you play without record enabling.

I've just looked at those and it isn't quite what I mean (I think) - in the other DAWs I've used, you can usually click anywhere in the track header and it auto-selects that track. Maybe I misunderstood the manual, but neither of the above helps much in that area. It's a niggle really, I could get used to it I think.

Originally Posted by Nightworker

That doesn't exist in PT as you have a Edit window and Mix window always present. You can simply toggle between them (if you're on a single screen) by pressing ctrl+=

Great, sounds like something I can get used to, thanks!

Originally Posted by Nightworker

If you have all three tools selected, you can simply click on the note to highlight it.

Sure, but it always snaps to grid in grid mode, and in Spot mode it opens the dialog I don't want... I'm after a simple snap on/off toggle really?

Mucho gracias!

[dterry]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

1. Batch selection of track properties - can't find away to batch select, say, 16 midi tracks to route all outputs to VE Pro. Also no auto-increment of midi channel numbers?

Easy: select tracks then Alt-shift to send all to the same midi destination/port; ctrl-alt-shift to send all to incremental ports; alt will send all tracks (in the session) to the same port. Super fast - one reason I prefer PT for scoring over Nuendo, etc.

This works for all I/O assignments in PT - makes it quite fast to setup a project or full template. I converted my scoring template to PT in 2 hours. Took me twice as long in Nuendo.

2. Track name width. This could be a biggie. 12 characters? REALLY? And - worse - in micro mode there seems no way to not have it further collapse to 5. REALLY?!!! That's absolute rubbish, if true. I know you can use the....

Agreed, but if you think it through you'll end up devising a workable naming scheme - I use underscore to force separation between words so I get the right truncation. Wasn't happy with this limitation at first, but now it's trivial, considering that most DAWs don't have room for more than 12 in a mixer channel anyway.

3. ...comments field, but that has problems of its own. Very poor legibility of black on grey, any way of changing this?

Change the color saturation and/or brightness in the color panel - helps if you are using color tracks, otherwise, it's grey.

4. Key bindings / mouse modifiers. No way to change these?! REALLY?!!!

No. PT needs some user-definable shortcuts, but my suggestion is to just learn PT's shortcuts - they are faster and more efficiently laid out than other DAWs. That alone helps think through workflow speed and efficiency. Aside from, that PT needs several midi shortcuts.

5. Selecting tracks to audition instruments only possible by pressing record arm? REALLY?!!!!

No. If you are referring to midi tracks, just turn on midi thru in the Options menu.

6. Unable to double click a clip to enter the Midi Editor? REA... (ok, no more REALLYS)

Yes, just go to Setup-preferences and select what you want double click to open.

7. Needing to double click the metronome to switch on / off for playing back / recording? (I realise there is a global on / off in the transport section, but not individually for playback / record).

Correct - I just mute/unmute it on my mix-controller.

8. If I just want to bring a midi note forward ahead of the grid... what's the quickest way to do that? I see I can spot it which opens a hideous dialog. Just, you know, disable snap for a moment and drag a fraction.... anything like this?

Get to know the smart tool and tool switch function keys - dropping in and out of grid mode becomes a snap. There are key commands for changing the grid and nudge values as well - use nudge set to ms and you can nudge midi events without snapping to note values.

Slip mode is F2 and Grid is F4. In slip you can nudge by ms, or drag the note manually. I've found this method to be way faster than Nuendo/Cubase because audio and midi work the same way, so I'm not constantly changing mindset, or tool layouts (Nuendo has a different tool order/layout for midi than audio...seemingly minor, but it adds up when you do hundreds of edits in a day).

The best way to approach PT for midi work (or anything really) when coming from another DAW, is to approach it as a clean slate - forget the other DAW for a day, and just resolve to sit down with PT, the shortcut guide, and the manual, and learn how PT works. You might find it faster and more logical than any other DAW. I did.

[dterry]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Sure, but it always snaps to grid in grid mode, and in Spot mode it opens the dialog I don't want... I'm after a simple snap on/off toggle really?

See my post above - you want slip mode, not spot. Spot mode lets you send a region/clip to a specific location - hence the dialog. Slip is editing without snapping to grid.

[noiseboyuk]

Thanks v much Dterry - a wealth of useful stuff and you've stopped me pressing send on the Cubase order for the moment! Love the auto-increment tip, fantastic. Still the display thing is the biggest problem for me at the moment (and that EUCON can't control midi CC in PT - Logic and Cubase both have workrounds for this).

Once I have 200+ tracks, seeing what is going on and what is going where is obviously critical. OK, here's a typical name that I'd like to use in micro mode:

Symphobia String brass + timpani sustain - VE Pro Symphobia Multi 1 ch2

Phew. So I'm going to push some of this information into the comments box. The host name and midi channel I can't see any other way of viewing them in micro mode (it just says V1 - short for VE Pro 1-1 ch2) and I do want to see them.

OK, so I'm going to need plenty of folders or dividers... can't find any yet so grateful for any pointers on that score. Let's say - somehow - I can name a group / folder of tracks String / Brass. I don't need to name every patch with that, so that's some space saved. So I'm left with Sustain + Timpani. Sus+Timp is as small as I can get that. So when I do this, this condenses in PT micro mode to Ss T. Pretty meaningless. OK, so forget the track names almost completely, let's use the Comments field. But that is awfully cramped too. I can label my Symphobia VE Pro multis S1, S2 etc... so S1-02 is meaningful to me, that's ok. But by the time I've written the actual patch name I find those are being truncated too with the "..." at the end. I can't really find a system that can work with such extreme limitations.

It all seems very perverse.... I can't imagine why after a decade this program is still incapable of something as basic as displaying a track name of more than 5 characters!

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

It all seems very perverse.... I can't imagine why after a decade this program is still incapable of something as basic as displaying a track name of more than 5 characters!

Perhaps put the relevant information in the comments field? I do this but I'm not running 200 track templates in micro mode.

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by sunburst79

Perhaps put the relevant information in the comments field? I do this but I'm not running 200 track templates in micro mode.

As per previous post, that's not big enough either in micro mode (or mini mode). That's the trouble with big orchestral templates - you end up with literally hundreds of pretty similar and convoluted instrument names, all being routed all over the place which you somehow need quick reference too.

Found a good deal on Cubase, credit card pocket getting itchy! I've no doubt this can be done in Pro Tools, but I think it would involve quite a lot of permanent compromises and frustrations. As I was pouring over this conundrum earlier of how to condense the info into such as small space, and staring dispiritingly at the result on screen which was hard to read and barely comprehensible... I started thinking "this is nuts". It's just a little annoying that, by and large, some of the biggest problems with PT for this application seem to be almost laughably simple to fix.... "make the column wider!"

[dterry]

No need to have 200 tracks in micro unless you want to work that way of course.

A personal tip I'll share here - separate sections into show/hide views and use memory locations to store which tracks are visible. Just add a marker (num key "enter") and set the time property to none and check "track show/hide" in General Properties.

Program that into x-keys, Euphonix controller's softkeys, etc, and recall as many views as you need. Memory locations can be anything from markers to different zoom height recalls, to full layout and group recalls. Do the same for an "all tracks" view, even store the micro height property with that view.

Strings on one (or just solo strings), Trumpets on another, etc. So much easier than scrolling through 200-300 tracks. Also easier than opening and closing folders as in Cubase/Nuendo, at least for me.

This solved the text problem for me, but I also developed a shortened nomenclature for everything that I could identify quickly. I also work from individual instruments and don't have layered programs with the long names you described, so it works well for me. Fwiw, Cubase's mixer is similarly limited, even though you have a few more characters in the arrange window, so either way, you aren't going to fit a sentence in there and see anything intelligible come mix time, and Nuendo 5's truncation process made no sense whatsoever, so at least I could get PT to truncate to something recognizable. ;-)

[noiseboyuk]

Again, thanks dterry! Off for another session to see how that works - a different concept completely, but that must be the way to go if I do stick with PT by the looks of things. REALLY appreciate the advice.

BTW, with Cubase it is completely configurable with track names - you can define the width in characters and it's limited only by your screen width I think!