Very large sessions

[nosfoe]

Hello all,
I'm currently working on a feature film that is seven reels long. To reduce the amount of time we spend transporting material and settings from one reel to another I decided to set up all seven reels in one large Pro Tools session, and it works fine so far. The other soundpost-people I know don't work that way, so I would be interested in discussing advantages/ disadvantages of that approach here.

There are about 5000 (if I remember correctly) audio files and even more regions in our session now, spread out over more than 7 hours on the timeline. I know there's a message reminding you to remove unused auto-created regions when there are too many of those, but we haven't reached that point yet. Are there any other "hidden" boundaries that one might bump into when using very large sessions?

cheers.
Nosfoe

[Jamshied]

Nos,

Yer scarin' me!

I don't think there is a reason not to put the whole film in one session - I did this two years ago with a smaller film project, although it was not broken into reels. There was some convenience not having to move settings from place to place. But it got unwieldy as the film progressed, and I decided not to do that again.

I'm scoring a project now; so far 77 cues. And I've got 77 sessions.

[FajitaTone]

you might want to post this in the Post Production forum.

[Intransit]

Originally Posted by nosfoe

Hello all,
I'm currently working on a feature film that is seven reels long. To reduce the amount of time we spend transporting material and settings from one reel to another I decided to set up all seven reels in one large Pro Tools session, and it works fine so far. The other soundpost-people I know don't work that way, so I would be interested in discussing advantages/ disadvantages of that approach here.

There are about 5000 (if I remember correctly) audio files and even more regions in our session now, spread out over more than 7 hours on the timeline. I know there's a message reminding you to remove unused auto-created regions when there are too many of those, but we haven't reached that point yet. Are there any other "hidden" boundaries that one might bump into when using very large sessions?

cheers.
Nosfoe

I would never do this.

[Norad155]

We do this regularly with no problems. Our current project is the only one that we have had a problem with, but it's because we are maxed out on track count, dsp, and every other stat (and it's 2 and 1/2 hours long) the session runs fine... just crashed 2-3 times a day with a long, painful, pinwheel...

But with normal length and density feature films there are no problems doing this. There are few pitfalls... Be careful that you don't blow away any automation down the timeline. (especially when using waves pre-v7 and the awesome automation bug in PT that STILL ISN'T FIXED, that blows away all volume automation downstream.)

Other than that... it works great... very nice when you want to grab settings or regions from other reels, and when it's time to play it back, no stopping for 10 minutes to open another session every reel.

I would never do this.

why not Intransit? Just curious if you've gotten burned and how?

[Intransit]

I'm not sure what part of the post process you guys are a part of. I do composing. So one long session would just be crazy. I just don't see the pro's out weighing the possible cons.

You know I had something weird happen with my automation. I was working on music for a 10 minute long video installation. Once I got to about 7 and half minutes the automation stopped working. I was using Waves version 6 at the time. Same as the bug you referred to?

[Norad155]

I'm not sure what part of the post process you guys are a part of. I do composing. So one long session would just be crazy. I just don't see the pro's out weighing the possible cons.

You know I had something weird happen with my automation. I was working on music for a 10 minute long video installation. Once I got to about 7 and half minutes the automation stopped working. I was using Waves version 6 at the time. Same as the bug you referred to?

Ah yes, we are mixing so it makes more sense for us.
The waves bug is if you are working in latch mode, the pass after a latch pass, it still writes automation to plugin parameters and wreaks havok on your session.

You're automation should work no matter what... Like I said, we daily work on 5, 6 and 7 reel features with all reels in 1 session with no problem at all.

[Mark Wheaton]

When you do music for film where you need bars and beats to match the score, it makes no sense to have all the reels in one sessions, in fact if there are 30 cues over 5 reels you would have 30 sessions, so each could start at Bar one Beat one. It makes sense to have each reel have its own audio files folder. Within each Reel Session folder you might have "save as" PT session files for each Cue. This of course is for music. Also many times, the editing is done in reels, so the time code won't match up unless you have separate sessions for each reel. In other words Reel One has Hour One, Reel Two has Hour Two etc. But in the end you do what works, not what someone else would do.

[Ray JB]

In the final mix I always use a super-session, just a few tracks shy of the max (255) so I can bring in fix tracks. These are sessions with extensive automation, stems, work tracks and all sorts of things. I like it as I'm safe when needing to rebalance if needed at late stages of the mix. I'm not running all tracks actively though, maybe 64-100 tracks active at any one time. However my sessions could well be carrying 9000-plus files. The bonuses are that we can carry temp mix material conformed with the final mix material etc so when the Director asks...."Where is the stuff we used in the temp?", it's seconds away.

Most of my colleagues are employing this approach as well. So we've got super sessions of Music, Dialogue, FX Predubs, FX Fixes etc etc respectively.

Benefits are hugely reduced time for reel changes, which is great in final mix fixes, you can jump around the movie a lot faster....

It's a great technique, only real drawbacks are slower session opening times at the start of the day, or in the event of a crash.

Ray

[Oli P]

I don't do post, but recently had a live DVD to mix, and the entire project was in one session.
It contained two consecutive 2 hour+ shows, plus the rehersal run through...so 7 hours of audio with a full band and various singers for each tune.

Many singers fixed parts of their vocals, and some instrumental fixes were there too...so it was a pretty complex puzzle.

I had a QT movie file of a pre cut...so was able to match all vocals perfectly with the pictures, and get a feel for how the sound would fit with the visual impression...and get the continuity seemless and natural.

It certainly stretched my rig to it's limits...but it worked really well