Steve, Sorry for the delayed response but this is a difficult question to answer. Everything depends on your goal. If you want to know the program well, there's no shortcut to reading the reference Guide. Yes, I know, it's like fifteen hundred pages but it contains essentially everything you need. Naturally, skip the video chapters. You probably don't need to worry about sync and surround material as well. An enormous amount of material is repetitive but it helps emphasize key points. As blind users, there's a disadvantage we face in that on-screen changes are not easily detected and those very changes speak volumes about functionality. For example, trimming the right edge of a clip boundary with a keyboard shortcut goes completely undetected unless you specifically read the length counter to verify the behavior. Naturally, you don't need to verify the behavior once you know how it works and what's going on but nowhere in the manual will there be an instruction to check the length counter. A sighted user immediately sees that the clip has clearly become shortened. What a blind user needs to understand is that the shortcut trims the right boundary of the clip and the user has to logically deduce that, if the clip has been shortened and it's still selected, well then, the selection must itself be shorter. Hey, let's check the length of the selected clip. Guess what?
I simply use this example to illustrate how, when reading the manual, blind users need to use deductive reasoning to experiment and verify results. This, in the end, makes for a deeper understanding of the environment. I've never, ever said that learning Pro Tools is easy. In fact, it's quite difficult in a way, especially for a blind user, but it's absolutely worth it. There are people who only need to edit audio files and they struggle with other applications and platforms. Meanwhile, Pro Tools is, hands down, the best audio editor out there and it's ninety nine percent accessible. And the one percent that isn't accessible is stuff that's so esoteric that you'll never need that functionality. Mind you, I'm talking about audio editing and not the entire scope of what Pro Tools can do. So, with virtually complete accessibility through keyboard shortcuts alone, some users will simply not read the chapter on audio editing and look at the keyboard shortcuts list and experiment. All that said, a proper tutorial on audio editing would probably go a long way but it has to be done well. There's nothing as bad as a disorganized and poorly executed tutorial. Perhaps that's something that I might tackle at some point. We've gotten a bunch of new users and I'm afraid many of them are not inclined to put in the daunting amount of work to learn how to do basic editing. Some get it instantly and others struggle. If I can carve out some time, I'll put something together. Best, slau > On Mar 17, 2018, at 10:56 AM, Steve Matzura <[email protected]> wrote: > > While I consider myself a reasonably efficient stumbler (LOL), what's a > better method of self-learning Pro Tools? So far, the concepts are clear > enough, but moving within the environment sometimes bogs me down because I > don't yet know where to find things in specific windows or dialogs, not to > mention which windows to keep open in order for shortcut keys to work > properly, so I do spend a lot of time fumfering around, opening things to see > what's inside, and eventually finding what I'm looking for. So far, I've > hacked my way through laying down a few audio tracks, and from listening to a > demo Slau posted in the PT WhatsApp group, have been successful at some very > basic editing. The next thing I want to tackle is adding an effect to some > recorded audio, and then jumping into MIDI-land, particularly via Komplete > Kontrol and other VST instruments I have installed. I'd also love to have a > short-list of what I should stay away from--things that don't work, that we > can't use--so I won't be tempted by them. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
