recorded in protools LE, need to mix in sonar

[ethanm56]

hey, important question for the board:

i'm not a complete beginner, but definitely not very experienced in the field of recording. basically, i intended to record a little demo and just do the basic mixes myself in protools LE with the t-racks plugin that came with pro tools. the recordings sound great now for a demo, but they turned out WAY better than i had planned and the project grew much much faster than i thought it would. there's genuine interest in us having an album and we've been getting a lot of shows.

so basically, i know that mixing & "mastering" (i don't intend to get it <i>truly</i> mastered) is well beyond my capability, so i'm going to work with a friend who has plenty of experience mixing & mastering to a level that a first album needs to be.

the problem is, i have songs with twenty tracks in the ptf protools format, and my friend works with sonar. is there any relatively easy way to either:

- convert the ptf file into a format that sonar can open so that all the tracks are in the correct place and don't have to be aligned
- manipulate the individual tracks in pro tools so that they all can begin at the same time as a track that lasts the entire length of the song, so that all we have to do is load each track into sonar

hopefully the way i explained this makes some sense, let me know if it doesnt!

i really really appreciate any help you guys have, and i wish i'd found this community sooner!

thanks,

-
ethan.

[RodC]

Bounce everthing to full lenth tracks, or export look at OMF file format. Sonar will read them, Im not sure if LE will export them.

[ethanm56]

having trouble exporting with protools:

i am using protools LE 7.1.1 with an mbox 2 on an intel mac core duo, tiger 10.4 whatever the most recent version is that isn't leopard. it just wont let me export anything, and it looks like i may not have the DV toolkit, was it implied that i needed that?

[googacky]

You need to consolidate all the files to the same start point. An easy way to do this is to drop a marker at the beginning of your first audio file and then tab to it, shift tab into each track, tab to the end of the regions, and go to edit>consolidate regions. This will rewrite new audio files that begin at the same start point. That way you can just drag the files out of your audio files folder to where ever you need them and import them into your other application from there. This is also good practice for sessions before you archive them. That way in five years if you're in another application and you want to open a PT project, it'll be very easy for you.

The only issue you may run into is if your other application won't recognize SD2 files if that's what your session was recorded with. I hope all this helps. PM me if you have any other questions.

[river]

I agree with bouncing/exporting individual tracks (if PT LE is at all like Sonar in this regard, you have to select/highlight the track to be exported). I use Sonar and have had two experiences with cross platform projects with PT. When you export, select broadcast wave as the file format, it creates a timestamp on the track. Then make sure your friend has broadcast wave selected as the format when importing the tracks. They'll line up just fine because of the timestamp. This is the best method because it eliminates all potential cross platform conflicts.

[googacky]

Bouncing will take considerably more time and attention than consolidating tracks. Unless you're bouncing through plug-ins, I see no reason to do anything other than consolidate the tracks. As long as your session was recorded using a file type that the new platform supports, you should have zero compatibility problems. It's simply a drag and drop into the new software.

[Al_Huero]

Consolidate all the tracks you want to export as described above to a common start point. Then from the edit window (with all of the tracks selected) go to the pane on the right hand side where you should see all of the regions highlighted. At the top of that pane, there's a drop down menu where you can select "export selected as files". Click that, then select the format you want the files exported as and select a target directory.