Hi Peter, Glad to hear of your progress. Until someone manages to write some kind of scripts like JAWS had for Sonar, the use of Pro Tools will never have the same type of accessibility as Sonar with scripts. There's a give and take, of course. Pro Tools is accessible out of the box with no need for anything else, no scripts that break when a new update or version comes out. Sonar was apparently painstakingly slow at creating a slew of tracks and naming them quickly which is a cinch in Pro Tools. Nothing compares with the speed of editing in Pro Tools. But when it comes to figuring out which tracks are record enabled, it's not possible in PT to simply query with a keystroke. Workflow is a personal and perhaps quirky thing. I don't judge how other people decide to work but there are many options. For example, if I want to record enable the third and ninth track within a session, having a control surface, I simply press the third and ninth record buttons. Once I've done that, there's no question which tracks are record-enabled. For the duration of the recording, there will be no reason for me to query anything because I chose to record enable the third and ninth tracks. To further simplify things, as always, it helps, but it's not necessary, to hide tracks which are not being used or do not need to be up front and visible. In this case, I can hide all but the third and ninth tracks. Since tracks that are hidden cannot be in record mode, it greatly decreases the range of possibilities and one has only two tracks to deal with in the Mix or Edit windows.
Let's say you were dealing with twelve drum tracks. It's easy to group the drum tracks, hide all other tracks and, while selected, pressing Shift-r will record-enable the selected tracks. The same Shift-modified shortcuts work for mute and solo. There's no need to query which tracks are record-enabled because, if the tracks are selected and one track is enabled, they're all enabled and, if you're getting signal through one track, you're getting signal through them all. Bringing up the Item Chooser in the Mix window and typing r e c will display the record buttons currently visible in the Mix window. Arrowing down the list, one can determine the status of the record buttons quickly. One can even rename the buttons to reflect which tracks they belong to. While this tends to work, it's not persistent between sessions because, of course, every session is a new file but, if you use templates, I believe it's possible to name the buttons and this will propagate to subsequent session files that are created from the template. This is theoretical and I know it works to some degree but I don't use that workflow myself. An Avid control surface is a large part of the efficiency for using Pro tools with VoiceOver. While it's possible to use Pro Tools without a surface, I'd never consider doing that long-term. I sympathize with the notion of going from something that was more familiar and worked quickly and easily to something that is quite different. with analog multitracks, it was easy to tactually feel which record buttons were flipped up in record mode. Those were the days, of course. What can one do? :) I find that I'm regularly discovering little ways of being more efficient, even after years of using Pro Tools. Again, what works for some, might not work as well for others so it's difficult to predict what might be good advice or confusing information. Just like anything else, I suppose, the more you use it, the more you'll find your path. Cheers, Slau On Jun 2, 2016, at 8:46 AM, Peter Bosher <peter.bos...@bbc.co.uk> wrote: > Hi All, > > After using PT in earnest for a couple of months, I’m now reasonably > confident with basic editing and mixing, including things like inserts and > sends and using some plug-ins, but I still find it way, way slower than using > Sonar with Caketalking, and I’m wondering whether anyone has some tips to > speed things up. > > For example, if I want to know whether track 7 is muted, or check which > tracks are currently armed, or the volume setting for track 12, or any number > of things like this, I can do it with a couple of keystrokes in Sonar, > whereas in PT, even using VO hotspots, It still seems to require quite a lot > of VO cursoring around. > > I’ve seen references to Keyboard Maestro. Would that help with this kind of > thing? Could anyone give a few examples of tips and tricks you use to speed > things up? > > Best, > > Peter > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to ptaccess+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ptaccess+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
