There are a million different tips and workflows that users can employ within Pro Tools. Knowing the most efficient ways to reach your end goal, or maybe even just having a few tricks in your bag can make a huge difference. In part 1 of this series, I wanted to have a look at 5 simple and efficient methods to speed up your production.
1. Learn The Most Basic Keyboard Shortcuts.
While there many Keyboard shortcuts to learn for Pro Tools, learning them all would be quite a considerable challenge, learning some of them them in small bites, especially the ones that you can use daily is a great place to start. We will revisit this concept through the rest of the series.
Opening the dashboard to create or open a session: Ctrl + N
Open a session without the dashboard: Ctrl + O
Close a session: Ctrl + Shift + W
Save a session: Ctrl + S
Save and close PT: Ctrl + Q
Create a new track: Ctrl + Shift + N
Bounce track dialog: Ctrl + Alt + B
Commit (freeze) dialog: Shift +Alt + C
Solo the track(s) that your cursor is on in the edit window: Shift + S
Mute the track(s) that your cursor is on in the edit window: Shift + M
2. Focus Keyboard Command
Using the keyboard focus gives you the ability to take many multi key shortcuts and convert into a single key stroke. Keyboard focus is also platform independent, so it is the same on PC or Mac. The most notable are:
R to zoom in
T to zoom out
B to split a clip
C and V to do standard cut/paste,
P to move cursor up,
; to move cursor down,
A trim to cursor from the start of the clip
S to trim from the cursor to the end of the clip
E to zoom in and out from the cursor
To turn on "Keyboard Focus", click the a..z button above the edit window scroll bar.
3. Change Your Plug-in List To Show Category And Manufacturer In The Preferences.
Busy plug-in lists can be overwhelming to search through. A quick way to narrow them down is to select Category & Manufacturer in the preferences. This will change the option from just being all eq’s grouped together in a list, to separating them by developer as well. You can view just Avid's Plug-ins (as an example) if you wish.
Now You Can See Plug-Ins Listed By Both Category And Manufacturer
4. Speed Through Naming Tracks Using Shortcuts
When you have your track name dialog pulled up, don’t hit OK or next, Just hold down Ctrl and use the right and left arrow to move to the next or previous track to name.
5. Duplicate Tracks
Instead of creating new tracks all the time, duplicate a similar track. When the dialog box pops up, you can select or deselect the media, I/O, inserts, busses, volume, pan, etc. There is also tick boxes if you wish to not copy some of these options. The shortcut is: Shift + Alt + D
