Avid ProTools

ProTools is much more than a mixer. It's essentially to audio what Avid is to video. My workflow is to cut in Xpress Pro until picture lock, then pull all of my audio and a QT movie into ProTools and proceed with audio editing. I do foley, sound effects, music, ADR editing, and final mixing in ProTools, then export that audio information and bring it back into Avid for going out to tape or encoding for DVD. There's actually a very small learning curve with ProTools. I was surprised by how quickly I learned the general control of ProTools. Now learning audio editing is something I'm still working on, but ... :)

ProTools varys in expense depending on what hardware you buy with it. The cheapest ProTools setup is the Mbox, which is a small USB device that allows recording of two channels of audio. The Mbox, however cannot sync with Mojo and would be a completely independent piece of hardward as far as Avid in concerned. There has been some speculation that Avid will eventually have Mbox drivers for the rest of us (Studio users enjoy an increased level of interoperability) and then you could feasably use Mbox for audio monitoring and Audio Punch-in within Avid. (Keeping my fingers crossed, as the Mbox is actually the setup that I have.) Mbox will set you back about $450.

The other ProTools option that's in the realm of affordability is the Digi 002. This is a firewire device that allows the recording of 8 audio inputs and has a built in mixer. The 002 can be used as a mixer withing Xpress Pro for controling audio automation, etc. If you have the "Cujo" version of Mojo (the one that shipped with Studio, and I believe shipped to anyone ordering a Mojo after Studio came out) then you can sync the 002 with Mojo and then capture video through Mojo and audio through the 002 (the 002 has XLR inputs, so for some edit bay configurations the ability to use the 002 in tandem with Mojo is a real bonus). The Digi 002 will set you back around $1,500 I believe.

I went with the Mbox because I didn't need the 8 audio inputs of the 002. I just don't do that much recording. A friend of mind has the 002 and it is an amazing piece of hardward, but the needs / cost / coolness argument didn't go over with my wife, so I went with Mbox. :grin:

If you can afford it, there's a lot of interoperability that's added to the Studio package that those of us buying gear in pieces don't get. If you're not going to go with Studio, then you should probably think of Avid and ProTools as being completely seperate programs that will never meet and shake hands (not yet anyway). Most people I know even have them on entirely different computers. Avid says that ProTools and Xpress Pro HD shouldn't even be installed on the same computer, but I've got both installed and nothing has exploded yet. I can have them both open at the same time, but I wouldn't want to anyway.

The last thing I'll add is the DV Toolkit. This is a plugin that you can purchase for ProTools which will allow it to open and export OMF files. That way you can pack up your Avid sequences as OMF, open them in ProTools and your ProTools edit window will look exactly like your Avid timeline. It's a great asset, but it's also $1,000 which is too rich for my blood. I just export a QT with burned in TC and then export each of my audio tracks one at a time from Avid as aif and import those into ProTools as seperate tracks. Not as pretty, but it works for me.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Chris
 
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