profools has not pitch/vari speed control???!!!!!

[elloweez]

I just got protools off a friend and already I have a problem. There is no pitch control on the program correct? I called 2 diffrent people at protools and they both said that it didnt. They mentioned somthing about compressing the tracks or somthing, but I would think it should be alot easier than that to speed up or slow down the song. In fact the little digital akai 12 track i bought about 7 years ago can do this. Anyways one of the guys said that I might be able to find a plug in that can do it but he had no idea where. Basically I am having a very hard time believing that protools actually left out somthing so basic. Can anyone help me out with any info at all?

[Lord Alvin]

You can get an external clock that runs at several different sample rates. This doesn't give you as much flexibility as having a VSO on a tape deck, but it does work. The best way to do this is to run a slave to analog tape, track the overdubs, and dump back to Pro Tools. I know that many people don't have these tools, but that is how I had to do it. I just ran into this problem the other night in a project studio I was working in. I agree that it is a pretty big oversight on Digi's part.

[saxmangrr]

have you used time expansion/compression?? that's probably what the tech was talking about with compression.....that's what stretches out/squeezes audio and changes the pitch. There's pitch shift too...they're pretty crude, but from reading your post I think these will do what you want. They're up in the audio suites plug-ins. Let me know if i'm being a total tool and you already knew this stuff!!!!

[leigh]

There's not a general pitch control, no. There is a playback shortcut to play back at half speed, though, I think it's shift-spacebar. But I'm pretty sure you can't record at half speed.

Leigh

[jerrymac]

you can records half speed by hitting shift-apple spacebar in ver 6.x
i'm not sure if it works in the older versions.

jerry

[moogrocker]

Are you trying to speed up or slow down a section kinda like when you manually mess with the speed of a reel, so its its not a consistant pitch change? I think there's an easy way to do it, but I'm not exactly positve since my pro tools is at my studio and not infront of me and therefore I will probobly do a shitty job explaining it.

First pull up the time compress/expand plugin on what ever you want to shift.

Next Set the the control that does the shifting up for automation (again since its not in front of me I couldn't tell you the exact button, so if you don't know how to set up plugin automation check the manual).

If you've gotten this far your almost done! Now look to the left of the waveform that you want to shift and there is most likely a block that says wave (I think). Click it and you should have a list of things like volume, pan, etc, and your time comp/exp control should be there. Click on it and now the line going through the wave will control the automation of the "pitch shift". Go to the section you want to mess with and with the finger make some dots at each end (this is so the rest of the track will be uneffected by the "pitch shift" and make sure the outside lines stay at neutral).

Now between that gap bend the line to your liking and presto it will speed up and slow down then go back to normal.

Come to think of it, this will probly only work on your stereo bus cause if you use it on a single track it will mess up sync. I hope this is what you were asking.

Little things like this are great for making your client think you are a genius.....

John

[joel hamilton]

Lock protools to a tape machine or a BRC via smpte and vari speed away!

I use a BRC for this very purpose.

[penrithmatt]

i'm not near the pro tools rig now,but i'm pretty sure that if you have the digi USD then you can varispeed as you would on a tape machine.i think if you look at peripherals it's in there.it says VSO.one thing to think about though,variseeding on a digital machine usually means that the sample rate changes.this may be okay for some things,but if it's for vocals,where yer having to slow the machine down to make it easier to sing high parts or for timing issues then be warned that this is gonna be at a lower sample rate.............

[joel hamilton]

I just had to do this yesterday. simply take your clock source from something that is variable, or take smpte from something that is variable.
I prefer the clock source method, for ease of operation.
If you have an ADAT BRC you can do it with one cable.

Set your PT hardware clock source to "external" and pitch away!

I did it at home a few years ago with the 001 and an AARDSYNC via spdif.

I think it was the aardsync, whatever, it works even via spdif after PT freaks out with the " not valid " clock source crap. simply "OK" out of that and keep varispeeding.