How can I move from Pro Tools to Logic and back?

[BkkJohn]

Hi, I hope this is a reasonably appropriate place to post this...

Does anyone have experience doing projects in Logic AND Pro Tools? Here's my situation:

I have instrumental tracks for 12 songs I put together with PTHD (on Windows). Now I'm going to Germany to record the vocals, and the singer's favorite studio is Logic only. The owner said, "No problem, just bring WAV or AIF files." Aside from the fact that I don't know how to use Logic and will thus be completely lost in the studio, can this work?

With a bit of work, I can make audio tracks that go from start to finish and can thus be imported into Logic without too much confusion (I think). These are orchestral arrangements and some songs are 40-50 tracks. Or I could do some mixdowns and hope that's good enough.

But what happens then? I assume Logic has some similar funtion to loop and record multiple vocal takes. What kind of data does that create and how do I get it back into PT? Would I have to expot a long audio file containing all the takes and then manually cut up the takes? Or lots of little audio files?

I don't want to edit the vocals there. My plan is to return to my own studio with all the vocal takes and edit them myself in PT in the normal way.

I would love to say "No thanks, it's Pro Tools or nothing", but it's a small town and this studio has the best mics and engineer in town, and the singer has worked with them before.

Thanks for help on this!

[seek]

The solution is simple, export and save your sessions as OMF files. If your using an HD system you will already have Digitranslator 2.0. If you are using Pro Tools LE you will need to obtain the Digitranslator license (generally stored on an Ilok.)

If you are using FX or plugins in logic or Pro Tools and need them to translate it would be a good idea to print those tracks. This is very common. Hope this helps!

[xxicjoy]

Why dont you just bounce a stereo temp mix , or stems??

[BkkJohn]

Originally Posted by xxicjoy

Why dont you just bounce a stereo temp mix , or stems??

The problem isn't so much in going TO Logic (though I would rather show up at the recording session with unmixed tracks so better monitor mixes can be created), but in getting intelligent data back out.

Excuse my ignorance of Logic, but I assume there's some method for looping a section of audio and recording a new take on each pass, then stacking them up and editing them. Well, what will I get if I re-export all that back to Pro Tools? Is each take a separate audio file, and will they all line up properly? Or will I get one long audio track that will have to be cut into pieces and stack? That's a lot of extra editing.

I'm also nervous that the engineer told be to bring WAV files and not OMF, which suggests he's not familiar with this at all. Which makes me uncomfortable paying $55/hour for a a 2-day lockout session.

[edadema]

Originally Posted by xxicjoy

Why dont you just bounce a stereo temp mix , or stems??

I think you are over complicating this.This guy gave you the answer. Just 2 track it. Then AAF export it from logic... Problem solved

[BkkJohn]

Seek: Thanks! I do have DigiTranslator.

As usual, the devil's in the details. I selected every track (MIDI, audio, Aux, etc.), then selected File -> Export -> Selected Tracks as new AAF/OMF, kept all the defaults in the dialog, and got an error that some "region groups and/or loops will be dropped." I selected Continue, and got a folder with a lot of audio files and an OMF file.

Then I closed the original Session and selected File -> Open and opened the OMF file, bringing up the Import Session data dialog. I got 37 MONO audio tracks, named A1 to A37. No MIDI or other tracks were imported. No groups, no tempos, key sigs or markers, no automation data. So it's definitely not seamless, even between Pro Tools sessions.

I suppose I could use OMF to at least import the audio files into Logic at the right places, but when we're done recording vocal tracks, I'll have to use Import Session Data to grab just the vocal tracks and then do lots of cutting and pasting.

Option 2 is to go somewhere else where they have Pro Tools. This seems by far the easier option, especially since I can keep editing in the hotel room.

[seek]

Yeah it can still be a slight pain. That is why I mentioned printing or laying back the tracks in question (ie midi ect). It is not flawless. Worst comes to worst you can export the logic sessions as OMF and import session data when you get back from your travels. For now worst comes to worst I would maybe break it down into stems? Just to kind of consolidate 37+ tracks. Hope it works out, sounds like a cool adventure non the less!

[seek]

Just read your last post. You can also timestamp your regions and then spot them. Or start your session at a certain time and just make giant blocks of your audio regions (start to end of the session) and spot them as well. In this case you would be able to just bring in your wav / aiff ect.

[Shifted Music]

I think the best way is as other have suggested merge the file and bring some sort of stems so its a little more manageable.

Getting them back into pro tools is a little less easy but you can use the export region definitions to files. then spot them back in line in pro tools.

I usually rename the files with the bar number to make it easy.

Also regions in Logic work a bit different... So what I do is that when I have the looped takes and each one is lets say 16 bars and I have them all starting on a round bar number. Like 16.1.1. I would use the command to ake region into new audio file. . . or something like that. then the region and file are the same length for that region. . rename with the bar number. do that for all the takes then it will be fairly easy to get them back in.

unless of course the singer needs many many takes to get it right. . then either way it will be a nightmare.

I tried OMF a couple times with little or no success...

[BkkJohn]

Originally Posted by seek

Worst comes to worst you can export the logic sessions as OMF and import session data when you get back from your travels.

Another fly in the ointment - The Logic Forums report that Logic has never worked right with OMF, that audio files get corrupted in import and export.

Plus, I will lose any regions made with Loop Record, so I'll have to make new ones by hand.