"Improved" Field Recorder Functionality in PT10

[simonchase]

I love the idea of the ability to search folders for alternate legs not found in the session. But in practice I'm having trouble making it usable.

I have 6 tracks I want to designate field recorder guide tracks.
I have a folder with all the original media which I select as an "area to search"
This is when the problems start.
In the task manager window I see that Pro Tools suddenly has about 400 tasks queued all called "searching for files". I guess it's cross checking all the audio on the relevant tracks with the media folder. Whilst it is doing this, Pro Tools is unusable. In theory it's a background task but it absolutely grinds to a halt whilst these tasks are being completed. This would be OK I guess if the tasks took a couple of minutes. But to search for the 400 files took 40 minutes. That's too long to not be able to do anything.

Full disclosure: the original media folder is big (400GB) but that's frequently how much media gets shot these days for a complicated movie.

A workaround is to have a track kept empty and only designate that one track as a field recorder guide track. Then if you want to search for other legs you have to pull the audio onto that track first. But even that sends Pro Tools a bit clunky.

So anyway, I'm back to using Titan and not searching outside the session.

A shame.

[C]

Si,

First off, yes I agree that it should be possible to search the entire 400GB without it taking 40 minutes.

Thinking outside the box could you test copying the sound rolls into folders based on slate numbers and then pointing your R1 session to the folder containing Sc1-20 (for example)

Nowhere near ideal but for the most part it might allow you to use the feature as you hoped and then implement your workaround on that annoying sc65 in R1.

Hope you are well and keeping busy,

Ceri

[simonchase]

Ceri!

Good to hear from you.

Your idea might work but not sure the shoot was that regimented that it would be a simple task to split the files up in this way. And of course a scene from one reel might end up in another.
Really PT should just wait until you right click to perform the search. It would no doubt introduce a small pause at that point but it would be useable.

Hope you're busy and happy too...

Si

[C]

I'd look at trying to do it via the workspace (or Soundminer if you have it), sort by Scene on the metadata and then you should be able to copy to a new folder structure leaving the original rolls stored as shot.

Hope this continues to improve going forward.

C

[SBP]

Hi Simon,

I like the idea of being able to search outside the sessions as well.
-and it is so cool being able to use poly files -no more converting production sound to multi mono.
-and I love being able to playback direct from networked drives.

So many good improvements -however when it comes to searching media outside of the session ie -relinking avid guide tracks to production sound....

From what I've found so far.
On the minus side;
-The initial scan time is long.
-every time you add to or update the 'area to search' the entire scan seems to be redone.
-The scan needs to be done on every system (It would be helpful if there was a database file that multiple systems could access/update) -Please correct me if I'm wrong here -I'm still working my way through all of this.
-Some background tasks seem to choke the system.
- By importing all the production audio into the region bin (sorry clip list) -like we have always done, when the session moves to another system everything is ready to go -no scanning time required.

On the plus side;
-Not having all the production audio in the session file means the real memory use is much lower =less low on memory errors (crashes).
-If production audio is added during production it is not necessary to add these to the clip list.
Once all the scanning business is done relinking is fast.

As we move sessions around quite a bit and also are dealing with quite a bit of media it maybe that we also end up continuing to add the required regions to the clips list -to avoid the long scans. -so close.......

Anyway -I'm still investigating all this and quite possibly there is a way around some of the minus points -would love to hear more thoughts on this.



All the best

Bruno

[SBP]

Just an update -We're now getting scan times around 4 min for 80Gig of production media. -haven't been able to find why the system needs to repeat the scan every time the session is opened.

Bruno