Steve, The problem with trying to do automation without a control surface is that the automation process will change the parameters to the automated values unless you either drag a fader or draw in the values by eye. If you did know, for example, that you wanted to drop the level of a track by, say, 6 dB, you can do something as specific as that fairly easily. Let's say your track is starting out at 0 dB and you've already begun the automation process by putting all tracks into Automation write mode at the beginning of the session, enabled volume automation within the Automation window and engaged the transport.
After stopping the transport, move the transport to the playback position where you wish to make the drop in volume. 1. Put the track into Auto Write mode again. 2. Change the volume level of the track to minus 6 dB. 3. Engage playback but don't stop the transport right away. The last thing you need to do is write automation to the end of the session. There's a keyboard shortcut for it that I don't remember because I use a dedicated button for it on my control surface but you can find it in the Edit menu. Once you press that command, Pro Tools will prompt you asking whether you want to write the automation to the end of the session. Press OK and you're set. If you don't press the command to write to the end of the session, the automation will only write the minus 6 dB level to the track for as long as the transport is engaged. This would be handy, of course, if you only needed the track to be lower for a few bars or so. As with many things in Pro Tools, there's another way to do this. You can instead use Latch mode so that when you enter automation record mode, whatever your current value is, it'll write it to the end of the session automatically. This, of course, is great if you want that effect but not at all helpful if you just want to overwrite some automation in the middle and keep the rest of the automation moves. Further still, you can make a selection range and experiment with levels during playback and, once you've achieved the right level, choose "Write to Entire Selection" which will write the last level set to the entire selection range. Automation is extremely powerful and at the same time very dangerous. It's easy to have things go awry. For that reason, a control surface is really a super handy accessory. I don't think I'd try much automation without a surface myself. Hopefully that helps a bit. slau On Mar 18, 2012, at 2:55 PM, Steve Martin wrote: > Hello, > > Been reading the manual trying to figure out how to do automation snapshots. > Basically i have a project i am working on that starts out with 2 > instruments and i want to drop the volume of one when the third instrument > kick in. I cand so far see how to do fade in/out and volume automation using > the fader and moving it during playback. But is there a way to set the > volume at specific levels and have it automatically snap to those different > levels during playback withough using the fader approach?
