Freeze Tracks

[sleadley]

Originally Posted by peppertree

You're not gettin it. Digi's business model is to motivate upsales via annoyance. If they implemented a really nice freeze function, why would you upgrade your HD3 to an HD6? You wouldn't. So they don't.

What rubbish! I am sure this is not why it is not done.
S.

[Actionmusic]

I had a reassuring email from a digi employee last year just pre-8 release. I had said one of the real world problems for me was the time taken in bouncing x amount of tracks for record co delivery /archieving ie Freezing tracks. He replied that Digi had many requests for this feature and although TDM didn't allow this they were looking at a macro based way of doing this. He said he couldn't advise on time scale but i've no reason to think this won't appear at some point, and will be very welcome.

BTW if there was anyway of identifying text and track numbers in Quickeys et al wouldn't this be an amazing achievement if someone could program it. They would be held up on high like a god!

Something like - highlight region and press key, quickeys finds unique unused bus (not bolded in list), creates new mono or stereo track with this bus input, reroutes selected track output to this bus, record mode in, record, mute original track/hide.... there it is.

like another poster mentioned, it's not the realtime aspect thats the killer, its the rerouting on a mass scale

Anyone take up the challenge, i'll throw a few beers in the hat (metaphorically)

[relaxo]

I won't copy and paste all the links to my tons and tons of posts on the DUC over the years saying how urgently we need RTAS freeze track in PT and how even for TDM mixers it could dramatically improve their work day in so many ways. There is nothing that even comes SLIGHTLY close to freeze track as the most urgently needed Pro Tools feature. As a V.I. composer and mixing engineer, RTAS freeze track would change my workflow and give me an extra 15-45 minutes a day that I otherwise used real time printing of RTAS tracks and all of the damn associated track management and chaos control of all of the extra tracks required with a "non-freeze track" DAW like we have in PT currently. Hmmm, I'd say easily a real 15-45 minutes a day savings? What does that add up to over a year's time? 150 hours or more? 150 hours = 19 full eight-hour workdays saved every year for every PT composer and heavy VI user out there.

I know for a fact that freeze track is somewhere high or medium high on Digi's target radar for new features. We all need to yell and scream so loud and never let up to let them know it truly is the #1 most important issue. Personally, I'd easily pay over $2000 USD for a "freeze track enabler" asset on my iLok, not to give Digi any ideas, but freeze track is just that crucial.

As I always say, "Pro Tools is nearly perfect now with v8. ...Perfection is just a freeze track feature away for us now."

[relaxo]

Related is the fact that PT8 was a very very smart move. Digi realizes that with every passing year, TDM-style PCI card based DSP processing is becoming and will become less and less important. Sooner or later it will come to be that the software will be the main draw of using PT, not the TDM hardware solution that is 1/2 of the draw now. Rather than new hardware, Digi has been working hard on the PT app, driving it further and further ahead of the other DAW solutions. With amazing EA in 7.4 and the sheer power of PT8, they are really far ahead of everyone else now as a complete solution. I do see them adding RTAS freeze track in this spirit.

[tonwurm]

Originally Posted by prophonic

Although it is not as elegant as Logic, we use a method for freezing tracks on PT which also works for printing RTAS instruments and outboard inserts.

If you set your templates with this in mind, it is a breeze to print tracks in real time with this method. We do it all the time.

http://www.songphonic.com/ProToolsTutorials.htm

This works with PT 7.1 onwards (including 8)

Osman

thanks very much for those nice videos, very good idea. in the time of waiting for a freeze/print macro in PT it helps and seems to be the best solution !!!

[rdolmat]

Originally Posted by Sean Russell

But isn't that Cubase app unable to easily give individual files from a session? If somebody brings in Cubase format sessions, I've always said they need to consolidate and export so we can fly the tracks in. I've never seen this done. I've been told you have to - wait for it - solo and bounce every track!

Not true. You simply highlight all/any audio regions, select 'bounce clips' and you get consolidated audio right there in the session. Open your audio folder, select the newest files, done.

[Howardk]

Originally Posted by tonwurm

thanks very much for those nice videos, very good idea. in the time of waiting for a freeze/print macro in PT it helps and seems to be the best solution !!!

I don't see any advantage in doing it that way, over just routing and recording on another track. Once that is done you can deactivate and hide the source track. I prefer this method because you can then apply plugins to the new track, and your old track has the original plugins used for the print of audio, so the later it is more self-documenting.

Yea, I also want Freeze track for Instrument Tracks!

[Tobias Eichelberg]

Bring it on! Since Pro Tools has no offline, faster than realtime bounce to disk any more (like version 3 had), to be able to freeze VI's would be a good start anyways. Recording VI's simply takes too much time away from the creative process.

Toby