Screen Sharing Pro Tools 9 with Skype
Skype 2.8 for Mac has added a screen sharing feature and Pro Tools 9 allows you to use audio devices other than ones built by Avid.
This means I can now finally Skype with colleagues and clients and converse on the latest project whilst allowing them to see and more importantly hear the project. It took a little bit of time to work out how to do this. I wanted to share the steps I took to save others sometime.
Firstly download and install SoundFlower from this link.
Go to the Application-Utilities Folder and launch the Audio MIDI Setup Application.
Click the + button to create a new Aggregate Device double click the newly created device and name it “PT Skype”. Put a tick in the Use box for Soundflower (2ch) and a tick in the Use box for the normal microphone you use for Skype. On my Mac it is the Built-in Microphone.
Launch Pro Tools 9.
Open the Playback Engine window and set the Current Engine to PT Skype. You may have to restart Pro Tools for the changes to take effect.
Open the I/O Setup and click on the Input tab. Click the Default Button. You should see an input I have named mine Built-in Microphone 1-2.
Click the Output tab. Click Default you should see a stereo output. I have renamed mine Soundflower.
I recommend exporting these settings so you can recall them later.
Now that Pro Tools is outputting to Sound Flower you need to tell Sound Flower which speakers you want Pro Tools outputting to. I want Pro Tools coming out of my studio monitors which are connected via my Mbox 2. So from the toolbar icon I open the Sound Flower Menu and tick the Digidesign Mbox 2 option, see the below screenshot.
You should now hear sound when playing audio in Pro Tools.
The next step is to set up a talkback microphone within Pro Tools.
Create a new mono audio track and choose the input of your microphone. On my Mac it’s the Built-in Microphone. Arm the track and you should be able to hear yourself speaking. See the below screenshot.
The only down side of this method is that you can hear yourself speaking. Reducing the buffer size in the Playback Engine window will reduce the amount of delay.
Whilst Pro Tools is not playing you will hear the armed talkback microphone. As soon as you press play the microphone will not be heard. If you still want it to be heard during playback, select the Input Only Monitoring option from the Pro Tools Track menu. However I do not recommend this.
So finally we have to setup Skype.
Launch Skype. Go to the Preferences window and click the Audio/Video tab. Set the Microphone to Soundflower (2ch). This will receive any audio coming out of Pro Tools including your armed Talkback Microphone.
I believe this method will work with iChat as well but I have not tested it. If you do get it to work let me know.
Editing Voice Overs For A Radio Play
A question that arose from my recent blog post titled Recording, Organising & Compiling A Radio Play…“What method do you use for recording and editing the various audio tracks that make up the scenes of a radio play?““How does the ambient sound of the room effect the finished product?”
Firstly, there are two common ways of recording voice overs in a studio.
Live Recording-This is the method used most in recording of a radio play. The live method involves gathering all the actors in the studio at the same time, each with their own microphone. Scenes are then recorded in real time. This usually produces the most natural sounding results because the actors are playing off of each other. The scenes will not necessarily be recorded in order. This is mainly for logistics. It can be hard to get all the actors together at the same time. There is no point in a supporting actor that only has a couple lines coming in for the entire recording session. This is where pre production planning is important.
Solo Recording-This is the method of recording an individuals lines without the other actors present. Sometimes a director will stand in and read the other actors lines to prompt the actor recording.
Often animations such as the Pixar movies will have an all star cast that never meet because there voices are recorded at different times in different studios.
For my current project I use a combination of both recording techniques. Mostly live recording to record the majority of the script. However the narration is sometimes recorded separately and edited together with the live recording later in post production.
Myself and the director will sit down and listen to the recorded material and make decisions on re-records. These re-records are normally to alter or correct a line that was not delivered how the director wanted it. These re-records are then edited back into the compiled scenes.
Editing
When scenes are recorded with the live method, all the relevant microphone tracks are recorded together at the same time. In other words, even when one individual actor is speaking into their microphone all the other actors microphones will be recording, and to some degree pick up the actor speaking and the ambient room sound. For the type of radio play I’m producing this ambient room sound is undesirable.
To remove the ambient sound picked up by other actors microphones, I go through each track and edit down the audio files to just the individual lines. Making sure to leave a small over lap (about 10ms) between different characters lines. If you don’t leave this overlap there is the possibility that you will hear the silence of no audio between lines. Even silence sounds of something. It is important to keep some constant background noise through out the production.
Below is a screenshot example of different characters lines edited down with slight overlaps.
Recording, Orgainising & Compiling A Radio Play
I wanted to share with you my method of recording, organising and compiling a radio play. Organising any kind of audio recording can become very confusing especially radio and voice over recording due to the number of takes created during recording.
So I’m going to take you through some of the steps and tools I find useful to me.
It starts with a script… For the current radio play I’m producing, Unholy Behaviour, I receive a script in advance of the recording session. I first go through the script and make note of every character that appears in the script and the number of scenes for the whole script. Once I have this information I open a new Pro Tools session and name it accordingly. (In the case of my current project “Unholy Behaviour Episode 3”)
Within Pro Tools I create a separate mono audio track for each character.
I create an edit and mix group for all theses tracks. Linking the mutes and solos within this group.
Using groups comes in useful when mixing and editing, but it is also essential for organising takes.
Now that I have a separate track for each character and that they are grouped I can go ahead and prep the sessions playlists.
Playlists are a way of recording multiple takes on the same audio track. These playlists can be named and arranged how you like.
When recording a script I already know how many scenes are going to be recorded.
I start by naming each track with the character name followed by “Scene 1”.
So for example; Jesus Scene 1, Moses Scene 1, would be the track names for the first two tracks.
Once all the tracks have been named in this way I create a new playlist for the first track. This will add a suffix .01 to the end of the track name.
The beauty of this is that because all the tracks are grouped together (as long as the group is active) a suffix will be added to the end of every track.
An active group is represented by the group being highlighted in the groups window, bottom left of the Pro Tools window. Below is a screenshot so you know what you are looking for.
Clicking the group will active and deactivate it. You can also turn on the keyboard shortcut button which is the little a & z. This allows you to turn your groups on and off using a keyboard shortcut known as “Keyboard Focus”. In this case the key “a”.
So you now have; Jesus Scene 1.01, Moses Scene 1.01 etc.
The next step may seemed confusing but it’s really just repetition. Create another playlist, this should add a .02 to all the tracks. The next part is a little monotonous but the benefit is far worth it. All the tracks, now with their .02 suffix, need to be renamed to “Scene 2” from Scene 1.02. For example Jesus Scene 1.02 needs to be changed to Jesus Scene 2 and so on….
So now you have a playlist something like this for each track;
Character Name Scene 1
Character Name Scene 1.01
Character Name Scene 2
Once again create a new playlist for which will suffix a .01 to Character Name Scene 2. Again create one more playlist (remembering to have the group active so it effects all tracks together) This playlist will be Character Name Scene 2.02, This is the playlist that you will rename again on each track to Character Name Scene 3.
By the end of the process you end with something like this.
Character Name Scene 1
Character Name Scene 1.01
Character Name Scene 2
Character Name Scene 2.01
Character Name Scene 3
Character Name Scene 3.01 etc…
Note that you can create addition playlists (takes) by selecting the scene you want with the highest suffix then creating a playlist.
Which will give you something like this;
Character Name Scene 3
Character Name Scene 3.01
Character Name Scene 3.02
Character Name Scene 3.03
Character Name Scene 3.04 etc…
When you come to record a specific scene select the scene with the .01 suffix (make sure the group is active) record your take then if you want to record another take just create a new playlist. All tracks will suffix a .02. Continue recording like this till you have the take you need.
Be sure to make a note with a pen and paper of which lines and takes were best. You may want to compile (comp) different takes together later to create one good take.
Comping
After completing a recording session, the takes need to be comped into final takes. There are a couple of ways you can do this. Some people create new playlists for comping. I duplicate all my tracks excluding all the playlists. So basically I have blank tracks that match my takes tracks.
Below are my two sets of tracks the highlighted and soloed tracks are the new Comp tracks. These are where my final edits will end up. Below these are the original takes tracks which contain all the playlists that have been created during recording.
You may notice that the comps tracks have their own group. This is for quickly soloing the comps so that any other takes can’t be heard.
The only problem with all these tracks is that it takes up a lot of screen real estate. The solution is in Memory Locations.
Memory locations are often used for setting points in a time line, kind of like bookmarks, that you can easily jump to. I use them for jumping to the start of different scenes once all the scenes are in place.
However there is far more you can do with memory locations.
Below you can see a screenshot of my memory locations we are just going to look at number 1 “Takes” and number 2 “Comp”.
These memory locations make switching between the takes tracks and comp tracks as easy as a click.
Firstly I made sure that all tracks other than my takes tracks where hidden. I adjusted their height to fill the screen and adjusted the session zoom settings. This is the amount of your session you can see in the edit window.
Within the Edit Memory Location window you can see that I have set the Time Properties to None. This means the created memory location will not show in the timeline, only in the Memory Locations window.
General Properties allow you to set what aspects of the current tracks are saved and recalled when you click the memory location.
I have saved;
- Zoom Settings
- Track Show/Hide (This is very important, it makes sure the takes tracks are shown and the comp tracks are hidden)
- Track Heights (Saves the height of all the tracks. These currently maximising the screen real estate)
- Group Enables (This recalls any groups that are active when the memory location is created. Make sure that only the group for the Takes tracks is active.)
- Window Configuration allows you to choose custom layouts that get recalled with the memory location. I will discuss this shortly.)
Just for comparison you can see below the Comps Memory Location active. The takes tracks are all hidden. This does not mean they are inactive or muted you need to make sure you mute the other group of tracks before jumping to and from one another. You can also see from the below screenshot that for the Comp memory location the Comp group is active.
You may have noticed that the Memory location screenshot has one more location called Recording. This Memory Location recalls the Takes tracks just like the Takes Memory Location however it makes use of a custom Window Configuration which is set up for recording. Below is a screenshot of this set up.
You can see I have simply narrowed the edit window and fitted in the mix window to the left of it. This handy for monitoring input levels whilst recording. When recording a specific scene I often hide all tracks that are not record armed during that scene. It gives me more detail of the tracks being used. Once the scene is recorded though I simply click the Recording Memory Location and I’m back to seeing all my tracks. I have also added a big time counter for keeping an eye on how long takes are.
I hope this insight into my production process has been interesting and possibly helped you. There are many ways to use Pro Tools and I am always finding new ones by just experimenting… try it, you never know what tricks you may come up with.
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