ProTools for Beginner Voice Over

hey it's Randy from voices and today we're covering everything that you need to know about using Pro Tools for voiceover and because Pro Tools offers a free version of their software it's not going to cost you anything to get started okay the first thing that we need to do is create a new account over at Avid so I'm going to go here and log into my account that I've already created once you've added the free version of Pro Tools to your account you can go ahead and view my products here and we need to download Avid link Avid link is basically a software that runs on your computer and houses the licenses that you own for Avid products now it is a free software but you still have to have Avid link to open Pro Tools on your computer but let's go ahead and open up Pro Tools so this is the very first window that you'll see when you open up Pro Tools and you can see we can set our session parameters here and we can also label our sessions we're going to call this demo for the purposes of today's demo and we can also create and use templates which we'll get into in just a minute and down below we have some additional parameters so I typically recommend using broadcast wave as your file type sample rate 48 kilohertz is fine bit depth 24 bit is typically what we would recommend I i o settings we're just going to leave that the way it is for now and we want to make sure that interleaved is checked next we'll choose a location and I'm just going to save this to my desktop for the purposes of today's demo and we'll go ahead and create the session now if you're totally new to Pro Tools and this is a totally new experience this may be a little bit overwhelming to look at for the first time there are two different windows that open up by default there's the edit window and then there's the mix window and you can access these by doing command and plus which will toggle between the two windows typically we're going to be living in the edit window this is where we'll be editing our files the mix window for voiceover we're going to set up our mix the way we like it with the plugins that we like it and then really never have to touch this window again so let's go back to the edit window now before we add any audio tracks or anything like that or set up the rest of our template the way we want it the first thing that we want to do is go up to setup and then click on playback engine and the playback engine is how we choose which device that we're going to use so you can see here playback engine and it's giving me a few different options so I can use my MacBook Pro speakers I can use the display speakers that I'm using I don't have an interface plugged in or a microphone plugged into my computer but this is where you'd go to change to your microphone before setting up anything else now I'm just going to go ahead and choose Pro Tools aggregate i o but this is where you would put in your interface if you're using one below that we have our Hardware buffer size and this is where we can set our latency so 32 samples would be a very very small amount of latency 1024 samples would be a very large amount of latency we want to put it as low as we can without our computer getting any hiccups or anything like that so typically around 128 something like that should be a good place for minimal editing but let's go ahead and press OK the next thing that we want to do is set up our i o that means the ins and outs going into our computer and back out from our computer so let's go ahead to setup again go down to IO now this is where it's going to look different depending on what equipment you're using so let's go to the input section here and we want to make sure that the input is set to our interface or our USB microphone depending on what we're using and we want to make sure that our output is set to our interface or our USB micro phone depending on which one we have so just make sure that those are set right and we can go ahead and press ok ok now it's time to set this session up like a voiceover session and then we can create a template from it and make tweaks down the road but let's go ahead and create some new tracks to get started so I'm going to do shift command n to create a new track and right now it's set up to create one new mono audio track which is perfect so that's our voiceover track I'm going to press shift command n again it's going to create a second track and I want to change this to stereo Master fader now to do that I don't even have to use my mouse I can hold command and press right which is going to change it from mono to stereo you can see there right and left goes back monitor stereo you can even go to 5.1 if you have that option and then I'm going to keep holding command and press down and it's going to cycle through the track types once we've got that set up we can even name them if we want to so I'll call this dialog not audio and I'll leave the other one set as master and we're gonna go ahead and click create so the first thing that we want to do is make sure that our microphone is set to the right input so we've come over here to the i o section click that and you can see our microphones there under interface now if you don't see i o or inserts right here just go to this little drop down on the left side here click that and you can see all of the different options that you can add within this view now I want to make it as easy as possible to open Pro Tools and start my workday so I want to include anything in this template that I think I might use on a daily basis so an EQ and a compressor I'm probably going to use those every day so let's go ahead and add one to this session before we create a template with it so I'm going to go EQ and I'm going to add one of the ones that comes with Pro Tools so EQ 7 band you can see I have more plugins than you might have in your Pro Tools depending on how many third-party plugins you've purchased but that's okay the default ones are totally fine to get started with so we're going to add the channel strip which also comes with this so I'm just going to go ahead and hold command and click on both of these and you can see once they go Blue that means they're not even active they're not costing any DSP from your computer they're simply just sitting in the session ready to be used when you want to use them so that's perfect okay now we're all set up and ready to start recording now a few people like to have additional dialogue tracks that they can record to so I'm going to go ahead and click duplicate maybe just add two or three more uh tracks with all the same plugins and everything and what I'm going to do is bring them down here below my master just by dragging them down you got to click on the uh the title and drag down and I'm going to make inactive so these are just sitting there ready to be used if I ever want to use them they're just kind of nice to halves you can also import some music into Pro Tools and just have them sitting here if you want to use music to get yourself hyped up or to get in the right mindset for a particular read so now we're all set up and ready to go to create a template from this so I'm going to go up to file and save as template and we're going to go ahead and put this in a new category that we're going to call voiceover and the name of it we're going to call voice over template so now you can see when we open up Pro Tools now we can go create from template and we'll change from getting started to voiceover and you can see there is our voiceover template so I'll click that and we can go ahead and change the name to today's date whatever today's date may be at the time and just like that we have our session open we have our dialog track with our effects ready to record we have some backup tracks ready to go a master fader we are all set to start our day of work with like three clicks so templates are going to save you a whole lot of time and now you can name it by today's date or by your client's name or however you like to organize your own sessions now I've got my session set up with a very fancy microphone from my Apple earbuds ready to record just for the purposes of today's demo but I can show you sort of how this works so you can press the I here which is input monitoring and now I can actually hear myself I couldn't before but you can see it is input monitoring which is really really nice for playing back an existing part and then having input monitoring on there so you can hear exactly what you're doing and then I'm going to go ahead and press record enable when it's flashing it means it's ready to to go I'll press enter so I know I'm at the beginning of the session and then three on the number pad which will start recording you can also start recording from up here on the transport as well but I'll go ahead and press three now I'm going to go ahead and record some dialogue and you can use option and mouse wheel to zoom in and out so in and out with the mouse wheel left and right will make the waveform larger or smaller that's not actually changing the volume or amplitude it's just changing the size of the display and you can also drag this to make one waveform bigger or option and click and drag to make them all bigger another tip here is let's say we're done and that's our whole voice over we're really happy with that what we can do is Click control option command and down and that's going to stretch these out so they all fit onto the window and then I'm going to press option A and what option A is going to do is going to stretch the whole window to the size of this clip so if I press that then we know this is the entire duration of that audio file up here at the top we have a few different tools that we can use so we have the trim tool which which is going to allow us to grab this and delete stuff that is prior we also have the select tool which would let you select a region and you can you know delete it with backspace we have the Grabber tool which lets you move things around and then a couple other tools that aren't used all that often the one I want to pay attention to is this bar that goes above this is called the Smart Tool and I actually really prefer to work with Smart Tool because it actually utilizes all of those tools in one space so if you go to the bottom half of the clip it's grabber if you go to the top half selection and if you go to the beginning it is the trimmer tool so this is really handy because you never have to change through tools and then there are a couple little shortcuts that you'll want to know if you want to get rid of all of the content before a section so let's say I'm right here and I want to get rid of all of this over here I can press a if a isn't working for you it means that this little yellow button here isn't selected so I can go ahead and delete this let's say I wanted to get rid of that and let's say I want to get rid of everything after this bump there I'm going to go ahead and press s I can also highlight an area right here and press F to create a fade which is a great key command f for fade it's very easy to remember and I can fade it at the end as well now editing in Pro Tools is really really quick so if I were to go through here I can press command e and that's going to allow me to create Cuts so let's say I want to put a cut there cut there cut right here right here and right there and let's say I wasn't happy with any of the intersections so I want to get rid of that I want to get rid of that and that now you can press the little squiggle right beside number one I forgot what it's called and change the mode over to shuffle What shuffle is going to let you do is grab a region and snap it back to the next one and this can be really really useful if you're doing a massive podcast where you need to you know cut out section section section section and then stop stop them all back so that works really well and then I'm going to switch back to slip mode using that same key and this will let you move regions freely so what's really nice about Pro Tools is how clear the editing is so let's say this first take here I got to right here started a phrase and then I messed up and I was unhappy with the ending of it so I went back and started that phrase again so I know that this peak right here and this peak right here are the same word you can just drag this over and you'll see it does a really really handy overlay so you can line those up perfectly so that you can maintain the pace of your Reed then what I'm going to do is zoom into that transition just a little bit I don't need to get too detailed here too Surgical and I'm going to drag this over right before that word starts you can see there's a silence right about there I'm going to go down to the bottom of the region and you see it turns into that Crossfade icon so I'm just going to click and drag create a little Crossfade and then that is going to give me a really really seamless edit between those two parts So Pro Tools I really love it because it is very very detailed editing another thing that's really nice is that it's non-destructive editing so when you're using something like audacity for instance every move that you do writes that information to the original file all of the information is saved in this Clips window so at any point let's say I edited for an hour and something went wrong I missed a whole section I know that I can just drag one of these original Clips down and it's going to bring back all of that information that I've missed it's all living in your session and you can see if I go to the project folder where this session is there's an audio files folder and there's complete audio files of all of the things that I've recorded in this session okay and finally we get to exporting so let's say that I am quite happy with this middle section here this right here is what I want to send to the client so I click on the back one or the front one it doesn't really matter but just click on one of them and then shift and then click on the end one and it's going to give you that whole section we could do what's called a consolidating I typically don't like consolidating unless I drag this to another session I always want to keep my edits the way they are but let's go up to this one now and I'm going to do shift option three and you see it turns it into one audio file which is just really nice for organization I'm going to highlight that region do option command B for bounce option command and B today's date that's a perfect name for this project we're going to keep it as a broadcast wave we're going to keep this all all the exact way it is you're going to notice it's going to the session folder to bounce to files so where exactly is that going well that's going to our session folder to the bounced files folder so it actually already creates a bounced files folder which is so nice so you always know where bounces of your files are unless you choose to put them somewhere else you can always send them to a different folder or something like that but this is really great we have nothing in our bounce files folder yet but as soon as I bounce this we'll go ahead and click OK it'll offline bounce which means you won't hear it but it'll bounce a little bit quicker than real time and now if I go back to this folder you can see I open up bounce files and we should have today's date now one of the great things about Pro Tools and one of the huge advantages over other Daws is that it's still recognized as one of the industry standards now there are other Daws that are creeping up and gaining reputation and popularity but Pro Tools has been one of the industry standards for the past 30 years and what's great about that in the voiceover industry specifically is that a lot of the clients that you're working for ad agencies production houses large format Studios most of them are going to be using Pro Tools as their main dedicated Daw which just makes the communication and sessions a little bit easier for you anyways that's it for our video on Pro Tools I hope that this was helpful for for you if you have any questions put them down in the comments below I am a Die Hard Pro Tools fan and I've used it for many years so I'm more than happy to answer any questions that you have as always happy auditioning and we'll see you in the next one voices

Channel: Voices

Views: 5,824

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Id: Fcp9rz_SE9c

Length: 13min 28sec (808 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023