PT Surround Panic!

[nst7]

Probably. The new HD converters are right up there with the Symphony IO, with some people even prefering them over the Symphony.

Plus, the Omni is actually designed for surround monitoring, so it should make things easier overall.

[Basstian]

Something you should not ask me. For I ditched the HD converters for their sonic performance and stability.

But I don't want to get something started so I better keep me word.

[tdblanchard]

Originally Posted by seanmccoy

Hey all. Not new to 5.1, but only in other software as I've just jumped to PT a few months ago. Happily learning and enjoying PT10 (waiting for UAD before moving to 11) and feel like I have a pretty good handle on it. I knew I'd commit fully eventually, but I unexpectedly inherited a 5.1 feature in progress, naturally being done in PT HD, that has to be delivered by the 16th. So over the course of the next 10 days I'll be: 1. Buying, installing and implementing PT11 HD hardware and software; 2. Conforming a mix I know nothing about to a new edit; and 3. Learning how to mix 5.1 in PT11 HD.

I've been unable to find any specific information or tutorials on using Pro Tools' 5.1 features. Are they intuitive? Is any of this even possible in this amount of time? Any advice on speed-learning would be greatly appreciated. Suicide recommendations will be...taken under consideration. Thanks, and my apologies in advance for the likelihood of many upcoming questions.

Sean McCoy
Oregon Sound Recording

Hey Sean,
I'd love to hear how things went with your project!
Did the crash course in PTHD send you running to the hills or to the Avid site to find yourself an Avid t-shirt?
We may be bringing in some 5.1 work and I'm a little anxious about it...

[seanmccoy]

Still working on it! Which is good, because I'm getting more time to figure things out as I go, and bad, because the delays are typical of a disorganized, low-budget film. For example, they had wanted to do a screening this week, but changed composers last weekend.

Anyway, from a technical standpoint, all is pretty smooth (though I have made a number of quick trips to the hills and back ). I'm still working off the demo HD license while waiting for my Native card and OMNI to arrive, but I definitely won't be installing them mid-project. Per Marti's advice, as well as my addiction to my UAD plugins, I'm sticking with PT 10 for now. While the I/O options can get pretty complex, I'm finding the surround setup in PT to be mostly intuitive, and thanks to the extra time I've been given, I've been able to learn much more about it through reading the help file and experimentation. And of course this is also improving my Pro Tools technique in general.

I've got much to learn yet, but all in all, I'd say Pro Tools HD was born to do 5.1 mixing. The panner is doing everything I expect, so I'll be very curious to try Spanner at some point to see why everybody loves it so much. I'm still doing dialogue and ADR editing, but should be into full mix mode next week. I'll try to give a more detailed report then.

Sean

[seanmccoy]

I finished a mix last night! I ended up with over 140 tracks, 10 RX3 Dialogue Denoiser plugins (a lifesaver), lots and lots of EQ, and about 10 effects plugins, and the CPU meter hovered in the 45-50% area. PT did occasionally screech to a halt with no CPU spike, with a warning about running out of CPU power and advising me to render my Elastic Audio tracks. Never did, and all was fine (other than the inconvenience). This seemed to happen more frequently when I was really ripping through lots of automation editing. One major crash that required a hard reboot, and one weird moment when I seemed to lose a number of voices and had to exit and restart.

While this was the first full pass and there is still much tweaking to be done, I have to say I'm surprised at how smooth it all went—especially considering the short time I've been using PT. Other than the Elastic Audio thing, I had one recurring issue with Waves plugins (which I'll address in a separate thread), and a host of newbie-oriented questions that will either resolve themselves over time or I'll be back here begging for more help.

Sean