DAW's for post - commencing my research

MontrealAudio

MontrealAudio

Active member
My main line of work is as a mixer. However lately I have fallen into doing post production for small projects (so far, max 1 hour) The frequency of work with post is far greater within my circles and I have been leaning towards that to pay the bills. When I went to school for audio we were trained in PT, Cubase, Audition and Sonar. I took well to adobe audition and became quite masterful with it. Over the course of 2 years since graduation, working in the field I have had countless errors, crashes, hardware failures and mishaps using this software with various pc/windows set ups. So I bought a mac. A brand spanking new 8 core Macpro. Just got it two weeks ago. In terms of software I had no idea where to go. My instincts were to go for PT LE with a mbox, but thats minimum 1,200 (Canadian) and I was kinda tight. So I decided to try out Logic Studio and use Soundtrack Pro 2.

Moving from audition to STP2 I was blown away. This software is so flippin intuitive. I read the manual, did some tutorials and started work on two projects. One feature length action film and one 10 min episode for a web series. STP 2 is sexy. I really like the multitake recording for ADR. Its not as clunky as audition and far superior in terms of intuitive tools and workflow streamlining.

Heres the sad bit. STP is about as unstable as the adobe audition beta. I am constantly bombarded with "your disk cant deliver audio files fast enough, clear HD space or repair disk" while im sitting on two brand spankin new TBs from apple. I get "unknown exception" blah bah, My worst error, is the crash during save and then your session wont open again. Thank god for proper saving techniques. ive googled them all and they were very common. google "soundtrack pro crash" and its a scary sight. (probably should have done this before buying the 500 buck software. I guess logic is cool but not what Im lookin for.

I have two features to with post scheduling approaching soon and a third in the oven. I am the only guy doing the post as these are independent type films with "fairly" small crews/budgets. My work consists of dialogue editing (sometimes sync), full sound design, foley, ADR (have VO studio) mixing (often for broadcast) sometimes I have to score with temp music as well.

As I said, this is becoming more serious and I am under pressure to meet deadlines and I cant be worrying about my software. I need something that can handle working with feature length projects with hundreds of audio files. After a lot of energy and hours spent on a project (I mean a LOT of hours) Id like to sleep and know my project will still be the same tomorrow when I reopen it. ..and so would my clients.

Im still using STP 2 atm as it is all I have and I have to finish whats on my plate. I just do multiple saves and pray for the best. Once it crapped out so hard that no saves would open period. A reinstall was the fix for that, but so time consuming and frightening. I fear that STP 2 will not work for me, perhaps a future release will be stable and I would love to use it, as its sexy as hell and saved me tons of time since switching from audition. Sooo, are my two options, PT LE or Digital performer? Ive never used DP, its def not as sexy as STP 2 but perhaps thats a better option. I was hoping that users here could share their experiences with audio post software. If you edit features, what software do you use? Id like to know more about Digital Performer and PT LE for post. I cant even find a price on the MOTU website. Ill have to call my retailer monday. Hope I can get some good info / guidance here. Thanks in advance!!
 
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I use PT-LE with the DV toolkit on mostly low/no/micro budget stuff and am very happy with it. I sometimes use Digital Performer, but always import the results into PT.

You can use the DAW with which you are most comfortable, there is no "best." However, Pro Tools is the "standard," and if you are going to make audio post your business, having PT is a part of your marketing; it's a name that most indie types will recognize. Also, most of the larger audio post houses use PT, so when you are freelancing you had better know PT inside & out or it will be hard to land those freelance gigs.
 
You need to figure out what's causing your problems with STP 2. If you are using a new Mac Pro and the latest version of STP 2, then you shouldn't have any problems. I'm comparing to my own experience here using a recent Mac Pro and the latest version of STP. STP 1 wasn't that great, but STP 2 in comparison is very stable. I've also never encountered the errors you mentioned even after using STP for over 2 years now.

Maybe you are having these problems due to user mistakes since you are new to the Mac?

Also, if you already have Logic Studio, have you tried Logic Pro itself? It has a lot of the same features as STP and then some.
 
Thank you for your responses.

I am leaning towards PT LE more and more. But I think I want to find someone who works with DP and shoot the shi* with them before I decide. Unclebob, you say you use DP but then import into PT LE, can you explain why you do this? Perhaps (if your willing) take me through your workflow? Im just curious what you take from each program so I can better understand thier strengths / weaknesses.

My STP2 problems don't seem to be user related. Yes, I am new to working with sound on a mac, but my wife has had her G5 for years now and I am familiar with OSX. I hardly think I could be doing anything wrong (I did once get errors for using using 44khz files in a 48k session and that created some problems, I understood that STP would upsample them automatically on import. I read that somewhere. But that was quickly solved by manual upsample.)

If you google "soundtrack pro crash" and look at whats out there. I've delt with pretty much all of them over the last 2 weeks! Yes I have the latest Macpro and the latest version of OSX and STP. I check for software updates daily. If you read about peoples STP crash issues in the forums, you will notice that there are a few users who have never encountered any problems. Cools you are lucky to be one of them. What kind of Macpro do you have? It seems that the problems are more prominent with the new Nehalem series processors. I would love to be able to use STP for the time being while I save up for PT LE, but its not really proving itself worthy. I find the STP 2 UI beautiful and Id love to get to know it in depth.

I have played with Logic pro and I think its great for creating musical pieces, but certain mouse click / shortcut behavior is different and clearly geared towards working with music. Logic will not do the trick for my main work, however I plan to keep it for temp scoring and personal music creation.

Cools, its very promising for me to hear of your successful experience with STP 2. Perhaps the next version will take into account all of the errors and complaints I read from users in the apple discussion forums. Really though, I agree with you. Granted STP is much cheaper than PT, it seems to talk the talk and 500 bucks is a decent chunk of coin still. I don't see how apple can sell software that is as unstable as what I have not only read about but experienced myself first hand.
 
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I've just wrapped up a low-budget feature on a shiny new mBox2-pro running the complete production toolkit. I have to say, its almost worth the price difference over DVtoolkit2 just for all the extra tracks. Add surround functionality, and the price point starts looking a little less monstrous.

Even approaching the maximum track count along with three instances of TL Space (love that TL Space), a handful of compressors and de-essers, and a whole heap of 7-band EQs, the software was still rock-steady. Sure, it crashed a couple of times during the edit, but it ran just as slick as you please during the premix and mix.

I have noticed some strange errors, though. If I forget to switch on my DV transcoder before starting PT then once I turn it on PT 8 starts whining about me having too many devices on the firewire bus. Of course, if I power up the transcoder first, everything's groovy.
 
MontrealAudio said:
Thank you for your responses.

Unclebob, you say you use DP but then import into PT LE, can you explain why you do this? Perhaps (if your willing) take me through your workflow? Im just curious what you take from each program so I can better understand thier strengths / weaknesses.
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I started out as a DP guy then migrated to PT. I use DP because I really like the MIDI implementation, working with softsynths and the like. I'll load up the sampler with sounds for Foley work and do the MIDI sequencing in DP. I then import the MIDI sequence into PT and track there. If I'm doing the score sweetening I pull the score reference track into DP, use my softsynths and external gear to do the sweetening, then track the parts in DP and import the results into PT. Every project is different, so it's nice to have the option,
 
Thank you all for your help, I purchased an Mbox2 Pro factory today. As I stated in my previous posts, the coin was the major issue. That being said I wasnt able to cut the Dv toolkit yet. But hey its a pretty major stepping stone none the less. I think I will be going for the full production toolkit as I do want those added tracks. Im so excited to get testing and see how PT has changed since I last sat in the ol' PT workstation at school. (they had a very old version lol) Sadly, they only supply a 6 to 6 pin firewire cable and my Macpro only accepts 4 pins , doh! On top of that, I live in Montreal where any 24 hour business (except booze, hookers, unhealthy food, gokarting and paintball) is non existent. I will have to grab a 6 to 4 pin tomorrow in the am. I cant wait! Thanks everybody, I hope my PT experience is better than my previous software poopshoot. :-)
 
STP2 has a number of performance issues, some cosmetic, that , to me, keep it out of serious running for feature work. Shorts and video and anything with s small track count is a much better deal. The cosmetic thing is the VERY limited track sizing. ALL tracks have to be the same size and you only get a few choices, and none are actually small. I found anything over say 20 tracks to be almost unusable. Also unless your doing a send to STP from FCP you have no possibility of conforming your project. If you do a send to STP and take a peak at the files you will realize that FCP sent video to STP, so if your on HD you have One Hunkin Project, and your eating up lots of bandwidth with video your not using. It also drove me a bit crazy that it insists on making things into CAF files that hardly any non Apple app can read.

The good parts are that if your within it's comfort zone it works really well (for most people). It is very FCP like in the UI so picture editors feel at home. If you doing a FCP >STP and you do the work flow correctly the conform works really well. You get a STACK of useful plugins and almost 30 gigs of sound files, many of which are quite good. And it came with FCP so it's "free".
MontrealAudio, it sounded like you bought a stand alone version of STP??? Unless they have changed again that isn't possible. It hasn't been sold as a standalone for quite a few years. If you did have an old version that could explain some of your problems. I don't think Intel Mac's were around when STP stopped being sold on it's own.

But as others have said if you want to do post audio PT is the app. If your on your own you can use pretty much anything but the minute your on a crew PT is what they are going to expect you to know. Since you just bought it you must have gotten PT8. Don't sweat the post addons yet, maybe by the time you get the cash Digi will have come out with a stable version... PT8 has some issues with some of the post centric features (at least the HD version does). They are on CS2 and the hope is that CS3 will fix the last of the oopses. PT goes through phases when they seem to bite off more than they can chew and release a version that takes awhile to stabilize but in 10+ years I've used it it's been mostly very stable (especially after the mix hardware and PT4.x).
 
Shootin out a quick reply over the phone here.

I first installed a copy of Final Cut Studio (I think it was HD?) borrowed from a video editor friend of mine. I then purchased a brand new Logic Studio and installed that. So no I did not get STP as a stand alone

With PT, (Still havent gotten a firewire to try it, store opens in 20 mins) will I be able to edit for film/video without the DV toolkit or production kit? Ive been watching the "Make music with PT 8 now" instructional video that it came with. As the tutorial is music based I see no evidence of being able to switch the session format to time code and have snap to frame options. Aside from extra plugins, surround, more tracks and the digitranslator. What am I really missing with PT8 LE in order to do post sound for film?
 
PT Le on it's own doesn't have a TC mode. But yes you can do film post with just Le. It used to be a problem with a little work around (if you open a session that has a TC time line it was still there - so the trick was to set up all the sessions from an TDM system and then have the editors on Le use those sessions). But truthfully other than for conforming I don't think I've used TC in a long time. Everything comes as files these days. The studio I do a lot of ad's out of hasn't even turned on the SYNC I/O in a couple of years. Now if you need to go out to DA88 (we haven't in 3+ years) or you need to sync to tape (not in maybe 6-7 years) then you don't really need TC much. If your working with a bunch of editors it's a touch trickier but not much. Also if your working in reels it is a bit problematic but that doesn't happen much on low budget films.
 
I may have misunderstood here. Are you saying all I need to do is get my hands on a blank session that was set in timecode mode with a protools DV or full production toolkit and it should open in my LE and give me timecode in the timeline? Working with frames is very important. I am doing a lot of SD and dialing in specific frames is key for me. I am often not sent files as I am working on lower budget things, some of my projects are simply video + audio stem bounces. One of the two features that I have coming up will be that way, the other will be an avid export. Really though I need to be able to move the playhead around frame by frame and see where im at in the project time code wise. Can I do this somehow without the DV or Production kit for the time being?
 
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I had a similar unpleasant experience when I did a short film on Soundtrack Pro 2. I too had to pray that it wouldn't crash unexpectedly on me. I figured it was because I was using a Macbook Pro, but apparently even the newest of Mac Pros won't help. I hope they work out the kinks, because the plugins are fantastic. I still love space designer (especially with soundtrack pro 1) - it had presets for practically any environment you could imagine.
 
I apologize for my ignorance, I wasn't aware that so many people were still having serious problems with STP on even new machines.

I guess I must be lucky since I've barely had any problems with STP 2 on my Mac Pro. I'm really surprised that there are still so many problems considering Apple has a much smaller set of system configuration to test in the first place (compared to a developer working on Windows).

Anyway, I hope you find a good alternative. :)
 
I guess I must be lucky since I've barely had any problems with STP 2 on my Mac Pro. I'm really surprised that there are still so many problems considering Apple has a much smaller set of system configuration to test in the first place (compared to a developer working on Windows).
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Consider youself very lucky, there are a LOT of people with these issues. Many have lost all trust in the STP product line. It is just not solid enough for todays professional audio tasks. I have still been using it for smaller things, editing, processing ect.. But large timeline based projects are all going to be in PT (its so rock solid, im in loovve)

I do agree. I also hope STP becomes more stable. I loove Space Designer , as I do a lot of overdubbing, I would love something similar in RTAS form for PT. As I said before I purchased PT LE with the Mbox2 pro and so far I have no regrets. Ive dished out a bit too much already on plugins but hey, can you blame me? Ive also found a nifty little program called TCounterX which is a third party app, that gives you timecode readouts of your mouse curors' position in the timeline. However its made for an older version of PT and Im having trouble getting it to work right.

Heres my question. Apparently this will work. Is anybody here willing to save a blank session for me using thier copy of Pro tools HD or LE with the toolkits for timecode. All you have to do is create a new blank session thats 48khz and set the timeline to Timecode (I believe you click the drop arrow next to "grid" to do this). Save as and upload away.

I should be able to open this in my LE and have timecode readout in my timeline. Id really like to give this a shot and would appreciate any help
 
Cools said:
I apologize for my ignorance, I wasn't aware that so many people were still having serious problems with STP on even new machines.

I guess I must be lucky since I've barely had any problems with STP 2 on my Mac Pro. I'm really surprised that there are still so many problems considering Apple has a much smaller set of system configuration to test in the first place (compared to a developer working on Windows).

Anyway, I hope you find a good alternative. :)
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To be fair STP has changed completely as a product. the current one should really be considered V1. The prior versions were all stereo editors and STP2 is a full DAW. For instance when PT was in it's early versions it crashed all the time. PT didn't become really stable till V4. My guess is that the next version of STP will address lots of issues that have come up by folks now using it as a DAW. And if it isn't dropped by V3 or V4 it will be a real contender. That's assuming Apple actually listens to the users and not the marketing dept.
 
MontrealAudio said:
There has gotta be someone here thats willing to help a brother out?!
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In what way?

As to earlier questions. Are you saying your syncing to tape??? An Avid output is going to be a file unless they are printing to tape. If your running picture off tape my advice is stop NOW. NOBODY is syncing to tape. No major facilities and I don't know of any low budget that went out to 3/4" in years.

You can go and get whatever you want but I think your mistaking old work flow with current work flows.

Why do you need to put things at specifuc TC locations? Is some one giving you TC based notes?
You mentioned frames and that would imply F+F. Le doesn't do F+F in any flavor.

Old school with tape and MIDI trigered samplers and layback to 2" tape TC was a BIG deal. It is still used for a number of reasons in a number of places but is not at all nec for 99% of audio post.

A normal low budget work flow.

I get an OMF and a video file and from FCP an XML, Avid an EDL.
Open OMF and drop in the video.

Work away on that session, possible copy the base session with out the OMF tracks for use with Foley and or ADR.

Copy the session data from the specialty sessions back in to the main session.

Finish the edit add the music as it shows up.

Pre mix in the box.

Final in the box either to stems or often directly to a stereo printmaster.

The Stems or Printmaster starts exactly on the first frame of the video as sent to me. THose tracks drop back into FCP or Avid and snap to the start of their video and the out put the finished film.

If there are changes then I use an application called Conformalizer with the XML or EDL and the NEW XML, EDL to auto conform the session and then tweek. THis does require TC. But you can conform by hand and that doesn't require TC. Ad's have NEVER ever given us any change notes. FCP cant generate a change note and most low budget picture editors don't even know what a change note is.

there are a lot of ways to spot the Foley/ADR but the easiest and cheapest is to just use markers or black regions in the specialty sessions.

This same work flow (except that the final mix was on a stage) works pretty much up and down the scale. We have done hundreds of national spots and everything from no-budget short to medium budget (few mill.) films this way. the only real change when you step up to the big time is that you are going to need to work in reels and that is going to require you line up to TC positions, and your final mix is probably going to digital dubbers.

As to the master session and TC. I don't know that this still works in 8 but it probably does. PT has a bunch of time lines, on Le TC is not an option. BUT the code is there so if a session comes to you with a TC timeline (say the main counter) it will stay that way in Le. You don't have any TC functions, you can't spot to a TC location, but you have the timeline and the position read out. So you can move the playhead to TC positions. This will also work for F+F. The catch is you can't ever change that time line to anything else because you don't have the option to go back. This is talked about on the DUC. I may have been the first to find this but a lot of folks have used it. We did American Gun with a mix of TDM and Le systems using this "trick" and we constantly use it when splitting up work between Le and TDM systems.
 
Thank you kindly for setting me straight, Mr. Noiz2 downloading now.
cheers!

EDIT: Ive got it open however I dont seem to have the time code time line or master playhead readout (thats still mins/secs) I do however have the grid mode set to timecode and the snap onto 1 frame.
Almost there heh, stepping stones right? Ill keep poking around and perhaps If I reopen it in a different fashion I will get diff results.
 
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So I cant seem to get any other results. When I open the file, I get a dialog window telling me that the session was saved in PT HD do I want to use my Mbox , I click yes obviously. Point is, perhaps I need a session from PT LE with the toolkit installed?
 
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