RE: Starting from zero with PT and VO
No Logic, no Ableton. You're not going to be able to do anything with those programs. You don't need to do anything special to make VoiceOver work with Pro Tools. However, you do need to learn how to use VoiceOver. . If you haven't been using a Mac, you really should get familiar with VO before you try to dive in to Pro Tools. PT is a huge program, with many keyboard shortcuts, and you'll go crazy trying to cram VoiceOver at the same time. It doesn't work like a Windows screen reader, so you'll definitely need time to get your head around it. Bryan -Original Message- From: ptaccess@googlegroups.com [mailto:ptacc...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brian Casey Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 1:05 PM To: ptaccess@googlegroups.com Subject: Starting from zero with PT and VO Hi guys, I'll put my question first, I haven't time to fish around on the group and I'm not too familiar with Google groups, so apologies for the lazyness of this question. Would any of you be kind enough to giv mea link to somewhere that details how to get going with voice over in ProTools if its already been covered on this group, if not would you mind explaining? I've just enrolled in a brand new masters programme in my nearist city doing music and technology, and haven't touched PT before. I'm well experienced with sonar though. Does Voice over start interacting with ProTools from start up or is there some kind of control surface to bring up or a setting to change? I'm a few chapters into the ProTools manual at the moment, so any advice anyone has to offer would be much appreciated. I'll mainly just have to complete projects tracking live instruments between now and Christmas so won't need to do any hugely detailed editing or anything, but will probably have to start mixing stuff. How is Voice over behaving with the bundled plugins with PT? And two more things. There is one module in my course that will be dealing with logic pro, is that totally out for Voice over till next year? I heard tell that Apple were working on it but I'm not really in the loop with these things. I might just get away with using sonar for those parts as I think the logic work in my course will primarily be midi, and it will be flexable. Are there any people out there muddling along with Ableton live, because there are talks of dipping to that also. I'd imagine most programmes have some limited degree of accessability with Voice over at least, as in it will read menus and maybe pull up presets? That may be enough in logic for example. Between that and keyboard short cuts. Finally, thanks everyone on this group, I've been reading silently for the last while, and haven't even touched a mac, used voice over or gone near any Protools hardware yet, but I'm better prepared because of all your questions, solutions and what not. So thanks in advance from an embarrassingly stereotypically wet Ireland! Brian.
RE: VoiceOver with Pro Tools
Here is a thought for monitoring speech. Like Kevin says, use a mixer with several buses as your monitoring mixer. Computer speech needs to be on a strip that you can route to a bus. Connect a pair of open-air headphones to the bus. This is important. Don't use nice closed-back headphones, as you can't hear the room or monitors through them. Don't use ear buds, as they partially block your ear, and attenuate the sound a lot. Big fluffy foam pad open headphones are the thing. You can hear through them, and, since they cover both ears, at least the tiny bit that they do attenuate the sound will be even on both ears. If your mixer supports it, pan the bus hard over, so that the computer is just speaking in one ear. I find that one-ear speech is easy to separate out from conversations in the room. If you need to switch off the monitors and listen through headphones, then there isn't any problem with using good quality open headphones. Sure, they let the room sound in, but they don't over-hipe the bass like closed headphones do. They leak sound, but you don't need to worry about that unless you're tracking in the same room. You can get some great ones for $30 at Best Buy. lol. Good cheap solution. Bryan -Original Message- From: ptaccess@googlegroups.com [mailto:ptacc...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Scott Chesworth Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 2:09 PM To: ptaccess@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: VoiceOver with Pro Tools Hey Herman, I tend to think of the screen reader as being one more thing on the list of noises to keep under control to avoid the volume levels of the session ramping up and up. Depending on your role during the configuration stages, screen reader output can be even more important than the audio itself, so I'd definitely third what Slau and Chuck said about always having the option of going straight into your ear available for those situations. For me, the decision about when to beam Mr screen reader directly into Mr brain is a 50-50 balance between what's practical and what's eligant, practical being you needing to hear fine detail in a noisy control room, eligant being that although your clients are relaxed about the way the blind dude works, they'll be less blown away by having to shout over that robot who talks way too damn much all of a sudden. On a side note which is probably more to do with VO being too chatty rather than session conduct though, I had a revelation that I'm not sure if you already know about. With VO, you can shut the speech up by hitting the Ctrl key. Standard stuff for pretty much every screen reader I hear you say, and you'd be right. But, the differences with VO are two-fold: 1. VO actually shuts up on key release, not key down. Important to know if you want it to be silenced ASAP. 2. Hitting control again will pause the stream of speech from where it left off. It resumes on key release too BTW. I figured this out a couple of months ago when I found myself getting really frustrated with VO seemingly not doing as it's told, I'd be thrashing away at the control button or just hitting it once and holding it down for the next keystroke etc, and it'd still be jabbering away over whatever I was trying to do. Figured I'd mention it here because once you understand how the behaviour works, it's a neat way of having just that little bit more control. It's not documented anywhere I've been able to find either, silly silly Apple! Hth Scott On 9/8/10, Chuck Reichel soundpicturerecord...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Herman, I use to go to great lengths keeping The screen reader in my headsets but most people don't seem to mind the strange voice chattering! LOL I always have it available to flip a switch and Outspoken or VoiceOver runs silent to the client. This is sometimes a session saver especially when you have a over caffeinated musician in the control room LOL Always have that option to run it into the headsets along with the PT session audio Talk soon Chuck Reichel 954-742-0019 www.SoundPictureRecording.com In GOD I trust! All others pay cash! On Sep 8, 2010, at 11:01 AM, Slau Halatyn wrote: Hey Herman, Most often, my clients are fascinated by the screen reader. It's never been a problem. If anything, the control room sometimes gets a bit noisy for me when clients are discussing parts, arrangements, etc. In those cases, I sometimes find it a bit hard to hear the screen reader. I have a pair of earbuds right next to me at all times which I can easily plug right into the video monitor which is hosting the Mac's system output. when folks are tuning up or warming up and I'm taking levels, I use the dim switch on the control|24 to attenuate Pro Tools by 20 dB which is often enough to read levels clearly. Otherwise, just lowering the volume knob substantially should do the trick as well. Of course, if you're recording someone in the same room, there's probably no work-around
Re: VoiceOver with Pro Tools
Yeah, I've tried the bus setup, but found that I never felt comfortable having VO blaring out of the monitors, it's a separation thing, I like to have it coming from a different place to the music for some reason. Given that VO is the only thing going through the Macbook Pro's internal sound during sessions, and the speakers on the MBP seem to be loud enough to hear unless I'm working at ridiculous volumes, I just reverted to the simpler setup. Definitely agreed about one-eared speech being a lot easier to deal with alongside maintaining conversations. I find ear buds to be less intrusive though sound-wise, so long as they're cheapo ones that don't attempt to seal off and isolate. Then again, my ears are friggin' elephantine, so my views could be unusual lol. On 9/11/10, Bryan Smart bryansm...@bryansmart.com wrote: Here is a thought for monitoring speech. Like Kevin says, use a mixer with several buses as your monitoring mixer. Computer speech needs to be on a strip that you can route to a bus. Connect a pair of open-air headphones to the bus. This is important. Don't use nice closed-back headphones, as you can't hear the room or monitors through them. Don't use ear buds, as they partially block your ear, and attenuate the sound a lot. Big fluffy foam pad open headphones are the thing. You can hear through them, and, since they cover both ears, at least the tiny bit that they do attenuate the sound will be even on both ears. If your mixer supports it, pan the bus hard over, so that the computer is just speaking in one ear. I find that one-ear speech is easy to separate out from conversations in the room. If you need to switch off the monitors and listen through headphones, then there isn't any problem with using good quality open headphones. Sure, they let the room sound in, but they don't over-hipe the bass like closed headphones do. They leak sound, but you don't need to worry about that unless you're tracking in the same room. You can get some great ones for $30 at Best Buy. lol. Good cheap solution. Bryan -Original Message- From: ptaccess@googlegroups.com [mailto:ptacc...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Scott Chesworth Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 2:09 PM To: ptaccess@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: VoiceOver with Pro Tools Hey Herman, I tend to think of the screen reader as being one more thing on the list of noises to keep under control to avoid the volume levels of the session ramping up and up. Depending on your role during the configuration stages, screen reader output can be even more important than the audio itself, so I'd definitely third what Slau and Chuck said about always having the option of going straight into your ear available for those situations. For me, the decision about when to beam Mr screen reader directly into Mr brain is a 50-50 balance between what's practical and what's eligant, practical being you needing to hear fine detail in a noisy control room, eligant being that although your clients are relaxed about the way the blind dude works, they'll be less blown away by having to shout over that robot who talks way too damn much all of a sudden. On a side note which is probably more to do with VO being too chatty rather than session conduct though, I had a revelation that I'm not sure if you already know about. With VO, you can shut the speech up by hitting the Ctrl key. Standard stuff for pretty much every screen reader I hear you say, and you'd be right. But, the differences with VO are two-fold: 1. VO actually shuts up on key release, not key down. Important to know if you want it to be silenced ASAP. 2. Hitting control again will pause the stream of speech from where it left off. It resumes on key release too BTW. I figured this out a couple of months ago when I found myself getting really frustrated with VO seemingly not doing as it's told, I'd be thrashing away at the control button or just hitting it once and holding it down for the next keystroke etc, and it'd still be jabbering away over whatever I was trying to do. Figured I'd mention it here because once you understand how the behaviour works, it's a neat way of having just that little bit more control. It's not documented anywhere I've been able to find either, silly silly Apple! Hth Scott On 9/8/10, Chuck Reichel soundpicturerecord...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Herman, I use to go to great lengths keeping The screen reader in my headsets but most people don't seem to mind the strange voice chattering! LOL I always have it available to flip a switch and Outspoken or VoiceOver runs silent to the client. This is sometimes a session saver especially when you have a over caffeinated musician in the control room LOL Always have that option to run it into the headsets along with the PT session audio Talk soon Chuck Reichel 954-742-0019 www.SoundPictureRecording.com In GOD I trust! All others pay cash! On Sep 8, 2010, at 11:01
Re: VoiceOver with Pro Tools
I use an M Audio Project Mix IO with a Macbook Pro. The mixer I use to run everything through was a Mackie 16 42. I could run everything through the monitors or a pair of headphones if I so chose. I could also run a separate headphone mix with nothing but Voiceover in it so that playback could be heard without voiceover in the main monitor mix. I could then use an earpiece with voiceover in it. I don't want my clients hearing any speech if possible, especially through their personal headphone mixes. Hope this helps. On Sep 11, 2010, at 12:24 AM, Michael Huckabay wrote: HI Reeves I am kerius to know what Kind of setup your using in your studio for pro tools and what kind of mixer or mixers control serfices and what not? Are you using a macpro with pro tools hd? Thanks. On 2010-09-10, at 8:45 PM, Kevin Reeves wrote: I run everything through a mixer, then into the monitors. That way, I can pipe voiceover through the mixer and choose to have it run through the monitors or not. The levels being sent to the tracking space for phones are on a separate bus sans the macbook output. Then, no clients hear vo and you can route it to your own pair of headphones via the mixer's front panel. Hope that helps. Reeves On Sep 8, 2010, at 9:33 AM, Herman Fermin wrote: I was just curious to hear from others who are using PT if VoiceOver gets to chatty. Does it distract you or your clients? I was tossing around the idea of using a BlueTooth headset just so I can hear VoiceOver when I needed it nad not have my client being bombarded by speech. What do you all think. When I use Sonar in the studio, sometimes JAWS talks so much that it is extremeley distracting to everyone, or sometimes it's the other extreme. I need to hear something like a meter level and I can't because the guitar player is tuning/experimenting. What do you guys do? HF
Re: VoiceOver with Pro Tools
Great idea. I've done this as well. Definitely agree regarding the 1 ear speech thing. I can kinda multitask with client/musician conversation and speech that way. Sort of reminds me of the way blind hotel reservationists use one ear speech to carry out their job. On Sep 11, 2010, at 9:48 AM, Bryan Smart wrote: Here is a thought for monitoring speech. Like Kevin says, use a mixer with several buses as your monitoring mixer. Computer speech needs to be on a strip that you can route to a bus. Connect a pair of open-air headphones to the bus. This is important. Don't use nice closed-back headphones, as you can't hear the room or monitors through them. Don't use ear buds, as they partially block your ear, and attenuate the sound a lot. Big fluffy foam pad open headphones are the thing. You can hear through them, and, since they cover both ears, at least the tiny bit that they do attenuate the sound will be even on both ears. If your mixer supports it, pan the bus hard over, so that the computer is just speaking in one ear. I find that one-ear speech is easy to separate out from conversations in the room. If you need to switch off the monitors and listen through headphones, then there isn't any problem with using good quality open headphones. Sure, they let the room sound in, but they don't over-hipe the bass like closed headphones do. They leak sound, but you don't need to worry about that unless you're tracking in the same room. You can get some great ones for $30 at Best Buy. lol. Good cheap solution. Bryan -Original Message- From: ptaccess@googlegroups.com [mailto:ptacc...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Scott Chesworth Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 2:09 PM To: ptaccess@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: VoiceOver with Pro Tools Hey Herman, I tend to think of the screen reader as being one more thing on the list of noises to keep under control to avoid the volume levels of the session ramping up and up. Depending on your role during the configuration stages, screen reader output can be even more important than the audio itself, so I'd definitely third what Slau and Chuck said about always having the option of going straight into your ear available for those situations. For me, the decision about when to beam Mr screen reader directly into Mr brain is a 50-50 balance between what's practical and what's eligant, practical being you needing to hear fine detail in a noisy control room, eligant being that although your clients are relaxed about the way the blind dude works, they'll be less blown away by having to shout over that robot who talks way too damn much all of a sudden. On a side note which is probably more to do with VO being too chatty rather than session conduct though, I had a revelation that I'm not sure if you already know about. With VO, you can shut the speech up by hitting the Ctrl key. Standard stuff for pretty much every screen reader I hear you say, and you'd be right. But, the differences with VO are two-fold: 1. VO actually shuts up on key release, not key down. Important to know if you want it to be silenced ASAP. 2. Hitting control again will pause the stream of speech from where it left off. It resumes on key release too BTW. I figured this out a couple of months ago when I found myself getting really frustrated with VO seemingly not doing as it's told, I'd be thrashing away at the control button or just hitting it once and holding it down for the next keystroke etc, and it'd still be jabbering away over whatever I was trying to do. Figured I'd mention it here because once you understand how the behaviour works, it's a neat way of having just that little bit more control. It's not documented anywhere I've been able to find either, silly silly Apple! Hth Scott On 9/8/10, Chuck Reichel soundpicturerecord...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Herman, I use to go to great lengths keeping The screen reader in my headsets but most people don't seem to mind the strange voice chattering! LOL I always have it available to flip a switch and Outspoken or VoiceOver runs silent to the client. This is sometimes a session saver especially when you have a over caffeinated musician in the control room LOL Always have that option to run it into the headsets along with the PT session audio Talk soon Chuck Reichel 954-742-0019 www.SoundPictureRecording.com In GOD I trust! All others pay cash! On Sep 8, 2010, at 11:01 AM, Slau Halatyn wrote: Hey Herman, Most often, my clients are fascinated by the screen reader. It's never been a problem. If anything, the control room sometimes gets a bit noisy for me when clients are discussing parts, arrangements, etc. In those cases, I sometimes find it a bit hard to hear the screen reader. I have a pair of earbuds right next to me at all times which I can easily plug right into the video monitor which is hosting
Re: VoiceOver with Pro Tools
Yep. I use that portable rig when wanting to do work outside of my apartment, or in my recliner. Lol. It actually works good that way. Currently, due to my stripped down living situation, I don't have a huge mixer, so when doing projects with the project mix IO, I just use headphones. I'll be grabbing some cheaper monitors and a small mixer soon to get things back up to where I was last year, because I had to sell a bunch of stuff for a move. I've also got a fasttrack, so in total, I've got 3 interfaces that will work with Pro Tools. I'm thinking of grabbing an alpha track as a 1 fader control surface for small mixing and editing tasks when I'm not in front of the project mix. I'm not committed to it yet, but was definitely thinking about it.
