Audio Track with Delay Comp Locked On.

On the other hand, Aux tracks always have delay compensation ON.  If you want to turn delay compensation OFF (for example, you are tracking through an aux and need to monitor it without delay) you can Control+Command+Click the “Cmp” Number and delay comp will be bypassed for that track (Grey).

Aux Track with Bypassed Delay Compensation

Sometimes you want to ignore the reported compensation on a track, for example if a track is over budget on delay and you want to compensate manually.  To do this Control+Command+Click on the “dly” number, it will turn grey, and the reported plugin delay on that track will be ignored in delay compensation calculations.

Reported Delay Ignored

There we go… now go compensate for something!

First, you have to turn on delay compensation.  This is enabled in the audio engine dialogue.  You can choose short or long engine (1023 or 4095 samples of compensation per channel).  Once that is enabled, make sure “Delay Compensation” is checked in the options menu.

Once this is on, check your “Dly” indicator in the edit window.

If the Indicator is Green everything is as it should be.  In this case, it is Red, which indicated that at least one track is over the compensation limit.  Let’s check out the mix window to find the problem. Make sure you check View|Mix Window View|Delay Compensation to view the delay compensation numbers for each track.

You will see a variety of numbers below each track:
dly  =  Samples of Delay reported by plugins.
+/-  =  User delay that you can set.
cmp  =  Samples of compensation on the track.

• If you see all numbers are green…

…the track is healthy.

• If the numbers are orange…

…this is your most delayed track.

• If the numbers are red…

… this is a track that is over it’s allotted compensation.

One way to solve this is to ignore the reported delay by control+command+clicking on the dly number (it will turn grey) and then manually compensating the audio on that track by sliding the audio.  If it’s an Aux, you will have to reduce the number of plugins on that aux, or switch some RTAS plugins to TDM (if you have an HD system).

Once you have fixed all red track, double check your edit window to make sure the “Dly” indicator is now green. Hooray everything is now compensated.

Next time we will go over some other ways to fix broken compensation, and special cases where you want to turn off or force compensation.

There are 2 handy ways to use this command…

1. It is very useful when editing dialogue.  Copy a section of room tone (using command+c) and then highlight the section you want to fill.  Press option+command+v and it will fill the tone you copied.  If your selection is longer than the region in the clipboard it will repeat it to fill the selection, and prompt you with a fade window to choose how you want to fade between the regions.

2. This command is also handy if you have some crazy automation on a track and you want to level it out, and just have a straight line of volume automation. For example: If you want to bring the volume automation back to zero after some crazy edit wrecked it, find a section of automation that is zero, copy a small part of it, then highlight the section you want to replace.  Hit option+command+V and it will fill your selection with a nice straight line of automation.

Note: This only works from a digibase browser. ie: Workspace or Project browser. While not quite as handy, it’s still a time saver. Sorry for the confusion!

To toggle through the transport master option (Pro Tools/Machine/MMC) hit Command+Backslash (/)

It will make you smiiiiiiiiile!

I. Frame Rates

The are several frame rates that you will come across in the post production world.

The most common ones are 29.97(NTSC), 23.98(NTSC), 24(Film), and 25(PAL).  When a picture gets transferred from one speed to another the audio will have to change speeds as well (**Note: this is not always true now with some advanced video transfers, but for the sake of this tutorial I will assume traditional speed changes are taking place)

29.97fps and 23.98fps are both slowed down .1% from real time (from 30 and 24 fps respectively). This means that 1 hour of timecode is actually .1% longer than an hour of real time.  This gave birth to drop frame timecode which is used in television. I will not go into drop frame here.

PAL and Film run at the same speed as real time.  That means that an hour of timecode will equal an actual hour.

The table below shows the speed changes between the different frame rates. (please note: all PAL conversions in this tutorial assume that the picture department plays 25fps picture at 24fps or visa-versa. There are other ways to convert PAL to NTSC and PAL to Film that do not incur a speed change)

II. Examples

Example #1 Film -> NTSC
To do pull ups and pull downs in Pro Tools we use the Sample Rate Conversion (SRC) feature on the import audio window. For our examples we will assume your source and destination are all going to be 48k.

1. Make a new session at the bit depth you are working at.  In the session setup window (command – 2 on the number pad) change your frame rate to 24.

2. Open the import Audio Window (shift-command-I) and choose the file you want to pull down.

3. Press the convert button, and check the box that says “Apply SRC” this will enable the “Source Sample Rate” dialogue.

4. Scroll to the bottom of the “Source Sample Rate” dropdown and you will see a category that says “48kHz (Pull Up/Down) Choose the appropriate setting which in this case is “47,952 – 0.1% Down (film to NTSC)”

5. Click Done and it will ask you where to save the file, and then it will import into your session.  You know have a file that is 48k, but plays .1% slower than the original.

III. Throwing PAL into the mix! PAL to Film Speed

(NOTE: In PAL 2 pops are supposed to be 48frames from FFoA.  If this is done correctly, you do NOT need to cut off head and tail pops as I explain below.  I have gotten a slew of projects where that is not the case, so I use the method below.  See comments for a discussion on the topic.)

Here it get’s a little more complicated.  Before you can do the conversion you have to take off any head or tail pops.  So cut your mix to first frame of action and last frame of action (when appropriate).  Then take that file and follow the steps below.

1. Make a new session at the bit depth you are working at.  In the session setup window (command – 2 on the number pad) change your frame rate to 24.

2. Open the import Audio Window (shift-command-I) and choose the file you want to pull down.

3. Press the convert button, and check the box that says “Apply SRC” this will enable the “Source Sample Rate” dialogue.

4. Scroll to the bottom of the “Source Sample Rate” dropdown and you will see a category that says “48kHz (Pull Up/Down) Choose the appropriate setting which in this case is “46,080 – (PAL to Film)”

5. Click Done and it will ask you where to save the file, and then it will import into your session.  You know have a file that is 48k, but plays 4% slower than the original.

6.  Now you will have to pitch your files up 4% to make up for the speed change. (Note: this is only done with 4% changes as a .1% change is not audible)

7. Add head and tail pops back on the file, and you’re all set to play you PAL audio at film speed!

NOTE: When importing audio into Final Cut watch for this bug.