How to separate at transients for the WHOLE GROUP of tracks at once??

[kaiwelch]

So I'm trying, as I can only imagine many have tried to do in the past, to separate clips at transients for the whole drum group.

The group is highlighted, and I also tried selecting all the tracks in the group first - but each time I perform the operation, it separates each track at transients slightly differently (because the transients are in slightly different places on each track).

For easy editing, I need all the regions to be uniform throughout the tracks.

How do I do that? Please and thank you for any help.

-Kai

MacBook Pro 2.1, Protools 10, OSX 10.8.4, DIGI 002

[ZEUSS]

Use beat detective and not the "separate" command in the menu.

[Stig Eliassen]

Make an edit group with all drum tracks. This is so you can maintain the phase relation between the tracks, regardless of editing method.

Now you can put the cursor in any of the tracks, and all will be selected.

[nigelpry]

Use beat detctive. Remember that when you are making selections etc in the edit window to do this type of work you keep the beat detective window open all the time. It is not a popup window that you have to close to carry on working in the edit window.

Most times, depending on the nature of the material, beat detective will ignore transients that are also picked up on other mics, that's what it is dsigned to try to do. But if for some reason it fails then you need to adopt a slightly more invasive approach to using beat detective.

Make sure you understand the whole of Chapter 30 of the reference guide on beat detective, and pay particular attention to page 618 on defining a beat detective selection, 630 on separating multiple tracks, and 635 to 637 on 'normal' and 'collection' mode, and pay particular attention to collection mode.

Chances are you want to separate all drum tracks, but only at the location of kick and snare hit transients. Maybe Tom hits too?

1) Disable the edit group if you have set one up. Move the kick track to be the first track in order of the drum tracks, and put the snare track immediately below it. Put the Toms below that if you do want to analyse the transients of those too.

2) Make a selection on the kick track, say the first 8 bars of music, assuming to have a steadyish beat and tempo to avoid further complexity. This will give you something easy to practice on.

3) Capture the selection, and define it.

4) Analyse the selection in beat detective and add the transients in collection mode. Once you've adjusted the sensitivity so you only get the transients you want, choose Add All.

5) Press the semi-colon ';' key to move to the snare track below (assuming you have keyboard focus on). Then, analyse the snare track, and after adjusting sensitivity, choose to add unique, so the snare transients get added to the kick transients. Do the same with the tom tracks if you need to.

5) Press the P key to move the selection back to the track track, then press shift + ; to keep the selection and add the track below. Keep doing that until the selection covers all drum tracks. Now if you perform clip separation it will separate all the drum tracks, but only at the exact location of the kick and snare transients on the kick and snare tracks.

Or, if you prefer the shorter version of this post .... RTFM ;-)

[kaiwelch]

Thanks so much y'all - using beat detective now and having better luck. Still confused as to why protools would have the "separate clip at transients" command separate each track at a different place, in SPITE of the drums being grouped and the group being active, but hey - I guess this is really more Beat Detective's jurisdiction anyway!

Thanks again for the quick replies.

Kai

[Rich Breen]

Originally Posted by kaiwelch

Thanks so much y'all - using beat detective now and having better luck. Still confused as to why protools would have the "separate clip at transients" command separate each track at a different place, in SPITE of the drums being grouped and the group being active, but hey - I guess this is really more Beat Detective's jurisdiction anyway!

Thanks again for the quick replies.

Kai

Agreed it would be nice to be able to assign a 'master' track to PT and tell it separate a group based on the transients on the master track, but alas, Avid will need to hire some more development engineers before that happens...

Nigel's detailed instructions are good, and you should read them and understand - there will be a test in the morning. I usually just do a shortened version of that - normally I just want to conform to a single track like kick or snare, so I don't end up using collect and 'add unique' mode much, but it's good to know about...

Now, back to the books for you young man.

later,
rich