Undo midi quantize

[Red Raven Audio]

I was experimenting with quantize, since I haven't used it. I selected 16 measures from the beginning of the midi keyboard track I recorded. I enabled the real-time properties and got the window shown in Image 1 which shows the RTP window and the options. My reading suggested that just activating the quantize would apply the quantization immediately. That didn't happen. After some investigation, I can't figure why.

Now, I move to the alternate method, Event>real-time properties, which is represented in Image 2. After choosing the same parameters, I perhaps foolishly, selected write to track. Well, the result was complete doo-doo. Interestingly, it applied it to the whole track, not just the selection.

I know how I got here, but can't find a way to get back to my original. There's no undo option. I know I can just go to a backup, since I haven't made any other changes since. I would like to know if there is a way to undo this without doing so.

Next time I'll try my experiment with elastic audio, but for now I need to undo what I've done.

[Darryl Ramm]

DUC downscales attached images so badly that for larger images you really need to post screenshots to some photo or file sharing site and then post the links here.

In general you should set autosave on (it won't away autosave if Pro Tools is busy) and also practice playing with revert to saved.

However quantize, at least as I would use it is undoable, I'm not following what you are doing exactly. But in my normal use, I'd select the midi notes, right-click on that select event operations > quantize and apply that. Try that with a huge quantization step so you will clearly see it being applied.

[Red Raven Audio]

Thanks Darryl.

I have not used revert to saved in the past. Cool operation. Glad it has no shortcut, I’d be the one to accidentally trip it. I effectively reverted to save by closing the session and choosing don’t save. I lost some housekeeping I worked on for a few minutes. No big.

From what I read and saw on yt, quantizing from the real-time properties menu is supposed to be reversible by just turning it off in that window. Isn’t it supposed to toggle off and on with that button? It doesn’t seem that quantizing something would be useful at all if you couldn’t apply it, listen to it, and then decide if you want to use it or discard/make inactive.

As I said, I’ll investigate Elastic Audio. It doesn’t look like doing it with event>real-time properties is going to work for me. I’ve always cleaned up tracks by hand, tedious. Still I had my hopes. What quantizing did to a simple, three note chord pattern was shocking, unusable, and irreversible. It actually moved some of the notes to the grid and others far away.

[Tweakhead]

From now on try getting into the habit of naming your songs with a revision number at the end. eg "My Hit Song v1.0", "My Hit Song v1.1" etc.
Make an incremented revision every time you are working on a potential change that you may want to go back to.
I prefer this method to auto-save.
Even keep a changelog if you need to annotate significant alterations/edits.

In your realtime quantize screenshot, it doesn't look like you have quantize enabled.

[Stephen Bond]

Pro Tools keeps a record of where the note was originally recorded. This can be restored, even after the note have be Quantised using the Restore command.

Maybe have used the Flatten command?

"Flatten Performance
The Flatten Performance command in the Event Operations window “locks in” the current performance for selected notes, creating a new “restore to” state for the specified note attributes when using Restore Performance.

The Flatten Performance command can be undone.
To flatten the performance:
1 With the Grabber or Selector tool, select the MIDI notes you want to flatten.
2 Choose Event > Event Operations > Flatten Performance to open the Flatten Performance page.
3 Select the note attributes to flatten. (For descriptions of these attributes, see Restore Performance Command).
4 Click Apply."

Stephen