My Top 5 Basic Workflow Tips for Nuendo 11

Hi there Phil Pendlebury here and hope  you're having a super mega large day   and for viewers from the middle east assalam  alaikum so today I'd like to talk about Nuendo   11. I've picked five of my favorite general  workflow features from Nuendo 11 that i think   you might find useful Nuendo from Steinberg  is a super versatile post-production solution   and can be used for composing sound design  game audio surround mixing mastering and   many other unique creative purposes it's  packed full of useful workflow features   which are designed to work amazingly well  for beginners and hardened professionals so   what I'd like to do today is introduce you  to Nuendo and give you a rundown of my five   favorite and most useful basic features of the  application so let's load up Nuendo and get going okay so the first thing I'd like to talk about  is workspaces I'll read you a little bit from   the Steinberg website and then we'll go into it in  more detail workspaces organize your windows and   specific dialogues for frequently used workflows  multiple workspaces can be defined each saving   the size position and layout or settings of  important windows and dialogues such as the   project window mix console or transport panel  you can switch between different working modes   quickly via the workspaces menu or as I like to  do using key commands so let's have a closer look   all right so here we are in Nuendo 11  and I've got a reasonable size project   set up now just watch this I'm not going to  touch anything other than a couple of keys yes indeed so how do I do that it's all down  to workspaces which are controlled from the   workspace menu up here you might find like I do I  work on a single 4k display which is quite large   and having the project showing over the entire  display even if you bring up the mixers separately   can be sometimes a little bit awkward to work with  so I've got a few workspaces defined in advance   and the basic principle is this you  set up the screen how you like it   so I'm going to put the window here I'm going to  bring up the mixer let's get that out of the way   and we'll move the mixer down to the bottom   let's open up a midi part and we'll put  the midi editor over on the right hand side so yeah that could be quite handy for  editing midi while still looking at the   mixer and while still seeing the project  so we'll then go to the workspace menu   add workspace this global or project global  means that your workspace will be available   in any project and project as it says means  that your workspace will only be available in   this particular project so we'll give  this a name we'll call it midi edit okay so we've now saved that  workspace so how do we recall it   well at the moment it's hidden because  there's only a certain amount that are   actually visible on this menu but what we  do is we go to the organize workspace dialog   and if you scroll down you'll see that the one  I've just created is the bottom of the list we can   move it up until it's visible on the menu so I've  moved it right up there second one in the list   and now we can view it here and very  simple let's go back to full screen and then midi edit there you are so the beauty  of this is very very quick to bring back the   screen layouts that you've made also setting a key  command which is like i have done here makes it   much much quicker so without even using the menu  alt one takes me to the full screen alt two now   brings me to the second workspace that is in  that list so let me just put that back how it was   I can move midi edit down underneath my others  and then we'll set a new key command for that   so how do we do that we just literally  click the space where it says key commands and there it is workspace seven   if I now want to assign let's say alt number  seven and that's it done so now we can easily   bring back any of those workspaces by just  pressing the keys alt seven there we are so there you go that's workspaces extremely  powerful take you a few minutes to set up once   you've set them up you will find them extremely  useful and of course I'm on a big 4k display   here but some of you guys will be using more  than one display so you can set your windows   wherever you like and bring them back saves you  a lot of messing around while you're working   so that's workspaces all right let's  move on to track visibility management   have a complete overview of all tracks in your  project by dynamically displaying only the tracks   that you actually want to see it's really useful  various viewing agents can help you by instantly   bringing the right tracks into focus meaning  you can maintain a full overview of your project   at all times you can show and hide individual  tracks and determine the position of certain   channels in the lower mix console okay so track  visibility well once again the reason I picked   this as one of my favorites is because it's a nice  way to organize and declutter your screen I've got   a project open here the same one that we were  looking at earlier and it's actually not too bad   as it is but bearing in mind that this is on a big  4k display and as we were talking about earlier on   the workspaces that i use for instance  like this tend to kind of help   but let's go back to the full screen and  let me show you how track visibility works   there's a menu here that gives us the ability  to filter different track types which is great   and very simple we can get rid of certain tracks  types that we don't want to see on the screen   so at the moment we're just looking at  audio we get rid of that we see nothing   and there we see instrument tracks only but  normally you'll have that set to all track types   what we have next to it here is the visibility  agent as with everything else you can set key   commands to do this as well which we'll get to  in a minute so let's try a couple of examples   what I've got here for example is actually a  music track but there's some sound design at the   beginning let's say i only want to look at that  particular area and i don't want the rest of these   tracks all cluttering up my screen what i can do  here is use one of the track visibility agents to say only show the tracks with data   where the cursor is and there we have it so  basically now wherever I have that cursor   it's only going to show me tracks that have data  at that position so let's reset it back to all   and we'll go through each of the settings so  the first one would be showing all tracks which   is the normal configuration showing only  selected tracks all right so we want to   work on the bass and the drums so we'll select  those tracks and let's work on the band as well but we don't want to see anything  else so those tracks are now selected   show only selected tracks and there you  have it once again we'll reset that back hide selected tracks will do the complete opposite   so we've hidden those away so they don't get  in the way and we can see everything else let's go back show tracks with data so let's  make a couple of dummy tracks   just to show this feature we'll put them in here  doesn't matter really midi let's make five hello and there are our tracks now there's nothing  on them at the moment we might use them later   but at the moment we're not going to use  them so again we go to the track visibility   and show tracks with data so those will now  disappear as you can see or as you can not see   because they don't have any data on them  okay so how about show tracks with data   at the cursor position so I've got my  cursor here let's put it right there   so this track isn't under the cursor  the data on this and of course all   these particular ones will disappear as  well let's just check that that works   and there you go very similar to show tracks with  data but it will be only at the cursor position   muted tracks well that speaks for  itself really let's say we mute that   i quite often do this if I've recorded a  guide vocal like I have here for example   so actually let's use that as the example that's  my guide vocal which is muted all my guide vocals   are in that folder and there's the artist's actual  vocal now when I'm mixing the track i don't want   that to get in the way so very simply go to  here I've muted tracks and my guide vocal has   now disappeared but it hasn't disappeared because  it's still there in the project it's just hidden   now taking that a step further like we did with  the workspaces you can set up key commands to   access these very very quickly and you can also  use them in macros and so on but that's a little   bit more advanced we'll get to that another time  but let's just quickly show you how to set that up   in a key command so we'll take for example show  tracks with data at cursor position if I select   that right now showing you what it does and  then go back to normal we go to key commands and let's go to visibility we  can type it in the search here we can find it here so we  want to use show all channels   with data at the cursor position this  one here so we simply select it we add   a key command let's make it alt nine hopefully  it's not assigned to anything and that's done so now all I have to do put my cursor  wherever i want press alt nine and voila   and while we're at it you could have also set  one to show all tracks which will bring it back   to normal so there you go that's the track  visibility agent and another feature that I find   extremely useful for productivity and workflow  the track import feature is hugely helpful   audio instrument midi code marker and video  tracks can be imported directly from other   Nuendo or cubase projects and you can import audio  instrument and midi tracks either as new tracks   or as new track versions of existing tracks  really useful to bring in certain things   from other projects whether it be the actual audio  or midi or just the settings of those tracks so   let's go and have a look at that so track import  is an extremely useful feature let's quickly run   through how that works okay so for example let's  bring up my mixer I've got my vocal channel here   and normally what i will do if i remember is the  particular project that I'm working on I will go   and save a track preset so all these particular  plugins and the EQ and various other things will   be saved as a track preset but there's a few  scenarios when that might not be quite enough for example you've forgotten to save a track  preset and you're in the middle of a project   and you suddenly think ah I want to bring the  vocal channel from that previous song that I've   been working on or I want to bring in a particular  instrument setting now the beauty of import tracks   is that you can use it to bring in the  settings from an entire track but also   the actual information itself so if we moved out  the bottom let's just close up some of this stuff   file import tracks from project so what we're able to do now is look at a previous project  let's take this one for example and there we have all the tracks that were in  that previous project not the one that we're   working on right now including the markers  so the options here track data to be imported   events and parts so that means  all the events and parts that are   in the track that we're about to choose  channel and inspector settings automation etc we can collapse the list we can expand the list   and so on that's pretty self-explanatory  so let's go to the vocal from that particular project so we select it  here we want it on a new track but I don't   want to actually import the vocal itself i only  want the track which contains all the information   so all I do is deselect this keep  the channel in inspector settings   press ok and there it is the tracks appeared  at the bottom there's no data on it but all the   information that was on that track previously  are ready to be recalled as another example let's load up the test project again so I had a drum track that I was  working on in this particular project   and I want the actual drum part because  it's similar to the one that I'm working   on right now or I might just  want to edit it a little bit   i don't want to put it into the existing tracks  although you can do you can easily just place it   into an existing track I want a new track that  contains the drums from my previous project   these options give you choices of  where to place your particular part   so at the moment I've got my cursor in the middle  of the project so that won't really do much good   I don't want it there I just want it to go back to  where it was originally and as it says here events   and parts are inserted at their original time code  position regardless of the start time relative   they're inserted at their original  position relative to the start time   so let's choose absolute  position we'll use the drums   let's uh if we pick another let's use a base  as well and both to new tracks off we go wait a couple of seconds and there they are at the bottom of the project  ready to be moved into whatever position you like   the nice thing there of course is that  all the midi data is there as you can see   but also the instrument itself with  all the settings however I had it   in that previous project super useful and  super handy import tracks from previous project   so the next thing I'd like to look at is disabling  tracks according to the Steinberg website system   resources can be conserved by disabling audio  instrument midi and sampler tracks that you   do not want to play back or process at a given  time disabling a track zeros its output volume   shuts down all disk activity and processing for  it this can be really handy for example if you   want to make a big template and then disable some  of the instruments but still have them rooted and   all the other settings and then bring them  back into play later on so I'll show you how   I do that now I'll give you a scenario here  I've got one of my default projects open   and as you can see there's quite a lot of  instruments and things all set and ready to go now if I were to open that project with all  those instruments and settings activated   first of all it take quite a long time and  secondly it would be using a lot of CPU a lot of   memory etc so the beauty of being able to disable  tracks is it really saves on system resources   but it's not just disabling  them it's enabling them as well   set it up as a key command for example so  let's find something that might be useful   I have a key command set up to disable  or enable a track it's a toggle switch   so I've got my drums here there's nothing  on it at the moment and the track's disabled   if I enable that track press my key command  as you can see the track becomes active   and there is the drums however i had it set before  I disabled it and not only that you can also see   here that the routing is all set and  any inserts and sends that I've set up   are also remembered hugely useful so what I have  here is a project with pretty much everything   I need for basic songwriting I've got another  one for sound design got another one for movie   composing and so on and so forth each project  can be opened really really quickly and I can   just enable what I need so I've got for example  spitfire epic strings here let's open that up   enable it and having a quick look  there it is and it's already rooted   to my group however I like it and any  other settings that I've made in advance   so what I like to do is set all this stuff up in  advance and then disable the tracks and save it   as a template saving it as a template is  quite simple we just go to save template   new folder if you like give it a name and then  off you go that's not really what this was about   this was just about how to disable and enable  tracks and incidentally if you don't have a   key command set up for that you can just right  click on the track drop down to disable track   and there you go and of course the same thing  applies to enabling the track right click   drop down enable track and there it is extremely  useful and something that I use almost every day   channel batch export actually it's now called  multiple track export in the export dialog   use this option to mix down several channels  simultaneously an individual file is created for   each channel and if you activate a channel type  in the list all channels of this type are selected   and I'll show you how we do that right now all  right so we're on to number five which is channel   batch export this one again extremely useful and  I know I keep saying that but that is why I picked   these particular features so normally when you go  to export your project let's bring up the export   audio dialog you will export your main outputs  as a single file channel batch export enables you   to export multiple tracks simultaneously  there used to be a little button up here and   in older versions there still is but basically  there's no need for that now because as soon   as we select multiple we have the option to  choose as many different channels as we like   this can be really useful for example if you  want to just export all the groups as you can   see here I've got groups guitar drums percussion  faces etc so let's just clear everything off and if we want to select groups only  we've got a little drop down here   and that's all the groups selected  at once we now press export audio and you will get a separate track for each group   depending on how you've got things set up  over here which is for another tutorial   you can also go into the naming scheme editor  and choose how you would like each file to appear   I won't go into that now but there's ways to get  pretty much any result you want and then we just   press export now aside from that okay let's remove  that you can also of course select individual   channels and you can also mix them and once  again if you wanted to only export all your   effects channels we've got a little drop down  there the other feature is to be able to search   so base for example there's all the  different base channels let's select that one get rid of the search the other feature  that you may find useful is to have this   little button here pressed which will sync the  selection to the tracks that you've got selected   on the project or on the mixer so okay i just  want to export my guitars and drums and percussion and i press the little button there so  now any tracks that i select on here as you can see they're also being replicated here   once you're ready make sure you've got your file  format and everything set up how you like it   export audio and you will end up with a separate  file for each of those tracks extremely useful   and finally a little bonus job cues I know  I said five but this is number six and   it's kind of related to the previous subject  because it's all part of the export dialogue   job queues can cue up to 20 different  jobs comprising stems eg dialogue Foley   atmospheres and music etc and everything that can  be configured in the export audio mixdown dialog   including different time selections formats  name and export path in a single list   exporting them separately but all in one operation  so it's basically as it says it's queuing up jobs   so let's have a look at that one yes it's a bonus  feature and I thought this really ought to be in   here because it's something that's extremely  useful and also related to what we were just   talking about so this is the job cube it's at the  bottom of the export dialog and you expand it open   and there we have a space that we can add separate  export jobs so let's go back to what we were   saying earlier on first thing I want to do is  export all my groups so I'm going to select that   I've already got my locators set to both ends of  the project so we'll leave them where they are   and we'll add to the queue it shows you all the different things that are  going to happen here as you can see and it shows   you where they're going and what they're going to  be called which is marvelous all right so we'll   just collapse that list and let's make another  one let's go to main outs and we want to do   an mp3 that your client might want to have a  quick listen to so I've got an mp3 preset here   not that that's relevant you can set it up  however you want and we'll keep it at the same   positions so it's going to be the entire track  the main outputs and we'll add that to the cube   and as you can see there would be the  name of the file and the location mp3   let's collapse that so i don't know have we  got any markers yeah let's say we only want to   export the verses here we'll go to a single  export and we'll go to the verse vocals   it doesn't really matter because we're only going  to export what is in the verse markers in between   the cycle marker of the verses so I've got cycle  markers here set up for that verse which is there   I've got the verse vocal selected  I'm going to add that to the cube   and as you can see there cycle marker that's  the name of the file and that's the location   it's going to end up and you can create up to  20 of these let's do all the BVs we have to go   back here again let's do all the BVs and we'll  do those as a 16-bit file but we'll do it over choruses and all the verses chorus  and so on and we add them to the queue   and there they are just marvelous these  are the kind of time saving workflow   enhancements that Nuendo has and it's just  amazing once we're all ready we've got   all our jobs set up start the queue  export and off you go make a cup of coffee   and when you come back everything will be done  exactly how you wanted it that's the export queue the thing is this was just five of my favorite  workflow tips there's loads more things like this   and I hope I'll get a chance to share those  with you at some point in the near future   so there we have it that was my five favorite  basic workflow features from Nuendo 11   plus a bonus feature as well I hope  it helps you and I hope you enjoyed   watching and I look forward to seeing  you again sometime soon cheers for now

Channel: Phil Pendlebury

Views: 911

Keywords: phil pendlebury, video, music, composer, guitar, original, musician, song-writer, guitarist, pilot, film, tv, game, sound, cubase, nuendo, steinberg, sound design, production, wavelab, plugin alliance, uad, waves, orchestral cues, variax, stratocaster, telecaster, flying v, rock music, pop music, dance music, production live stream, music live stream

Id: gMRXP8yC7dE

Length: 30min 7sec (1807 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Funghie]

All of these apply to Cubase too.

[u/Funghie]

Not for advanced users but some may find it useful.