Transferring Sessions/Stems in PT10

[scrnplyr]

I just finished the first half of a project that involved transferring a 10 track session (bass, gtrs, vox) to a bricks and mortar studio to lay down 14 tracks of live drums. I ran into a few problems transferring the session - which we worked around, but I'm concerned about getting the drum tracks back into my computer to finish the session. For practical purposes the rest of the (relatively low bud) project - mix and mastering - will be done in the box. What I want to know for future transfer/collaborations - is there a faster, better way?

What I did:

1. bounced tracks using "save session in" converted to PT 7-9 since the studio is still using PT9
2. compressed files using MAC compression
3. uploaded using mediafire and wetransfer
4. He downloaded the files and the session went ok for about 2 hours until...

What happened:

1. The conversion from my PT10 session to his PT9 caused the entire session to become corrupted (we're guessing) - specifically his low latency setting would not work and eventually an entire day of drum tracking was trashed.
2. I had to go back and combine tracks on my original session into STEMS and bounce them to WAV files and re-upload each STEM/WAV file - a process that took another 10 hours of my precious time (I missed many PAWN STAR and RESTAURANT: IMPOSSIBLE re-runs)
3. He imported the STEMS into his PT9 and the session proceeded without incident (other than a few track placement issues that were easy to resolve)

So, is there a better way to do these session transfers? The STEMS were efficient, but we lost all the parameters of the session which may or may not come back to haunt.

Also, I'm gearing up to do multiple east coast collaborations with several drummers who don't have PT10 (although I'm hoping they will agree to upgrade asap) and the thought of doing multiple STEM mixes and uploads is not appealing.

Any thoughts or ideas are greatly appreciated.

Andy

[crizdee]

Hi,

Safest way is just to bounce stems like you did. 3-4 stems should be enough as a guide for a drummer, bass / guitars / keys / vocals etc so a basic mix can be send to the drummer. then just get back the raw audio files and drop them in the session and get mixing.

Nothing can go wrong this way!

saying that session transfers should work ok, so don't know where it all went wrong with your session!!


Chris

[scrnplyr]

I'm worried about using the raw audio files because of the problems we had with the conversion from PT 10 to 9 - couldn't that be a potential spoiler since he's still using 9?

Having said that, I have a feeling the engineer is not going to want to create 14 drum WAV files and then upload them for "free" - since it's a fairly time consuming enterprise.

Thanks for your response, btw

Andy

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by scrnplyr

I'm worried about using the raw audio files because of the problems we had with the conversion from PT 10 to 9 - couldn't that be a potential spoiler since he's still using 9?

Having said that, I have a feeling the engineer is not going to want to create 14 drum WAV files and then upload them for "free" - since it's a fairly time consuming enterprise.

Thanks for your response, btw

Andy

Hi,

There's no risk at all in using raw wav files! nothing can go wrong and there's no difference between PT 9 and PT10 or any other version of Pro Tools when it comes to raw audio files be it wav / aiff etc. just keep everything at the same frequency and bit rate.

as for uploading or sending the files, again its no slower than sending the entire session. all the engineer has to do is consolidate the 14 takes from the beginning beat 1/bar 1 etc and then send the consolidated audio files. better still put them into a folder and create a zip file and send them as one file.


Chris

[scrnplyr]

Thanks for the info Chris. I'm meeting with the engineer tonight to sort thru the tracks and I will use your info to suggest he send me the audio files.

cheers