Re: VoiceOver and Pro Tools compatibility priorities for Avid

2010-11-04 Thread Scott Chesworth
One more for today:

Undo and Redo:
The current behaviour is for VO to read the updated status of a menu
icon when triggered from a keystroke. In the cases of undo and redo
functions, this means that VO will always read the next possible undo
upon Cmd+Z, or the next possible redo upon Cmd+Shift+Z, rather than
the one which has just been performed.

Not inaccessibility as such, but if it could be tweaked it would be a
big improvement.

Cheers
Scott

On 11/4/10, Scott Chesworth scottcheswo...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi Slau,

 Just had time to investigate the workspace window in more detail:
 It is possible to conduct a search for content using VO. The total
 number of search results are readable, but the search results
 themselves aren't.
 The table that shows stats for each installed drive is also not being
 exposed to VO.
 As things stand, I can't come up with a task that can be fully
 performed by a VO user.

 Hope that saves you a few minutes...
 Scott

 On 11/3/10, Chuck Reichel soundpicturerecord...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi Slau,
 Here is a memory locations fix..

 Memory locations entered in pt 8.04 do not display the comments that
 you have entered for the location/marker..
 Even though you check the check box for the Show comments in the  Menu
 pop up I searched the entire locater list view table but could not
 see the comment entered for that Marker/locater..



 Talk soon
 Chuck




RE: VoiceOver with Pro Tools

2010-09-11 Thread Bryan Smart
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

2010-09-11 Thread Scott Chesworth
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 AM

Re: VoiceOver with Pro Tools

2010-09-11 Thread Kevin Reeves
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

2010-09-11 Thread Kevin Reeves
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

2010-09-11 Thread Kevin Reeves
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.


Re: VoiceOver with Pro Tools

2010-09-10 Thread Kevin Reeves
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

2010-09-08 Thread Scott Chesworth
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 other than using some kind of earbud.

 HTH,

 Slau








Re: VoiceOver and Pro Tools ; sound preferences for assigning VoiceOver output.

2010-07-22 Thread Chuck Reichel

Hi HF,

When  I  booted up for the first time on my  mac pro the sound  
preferences were  set to Internal speakers built in  output this is  
the first choice in the output table found in sound preferences.


 I chose Line out which is choice #2 Built in LINE OUTPUT this  
routed VoiceOver out the sound card.
The third choice is digital output this was fun because at the time  
there was no digital outputs hooked up so VoiceOver got Laryngitis  !  
LOL
after installing my Digi HD3 cards it put a fourth choice in the sound  
prefs table which was  digidesignHW Hd  pcie card
What is probably going on at your school is they have the built in  
line output routed to a mixer chann that is Potted down!
Make sure you have cursor tracking off when exploring  the sound  
output devices table!
If you navigate to a output device with cursor tracking on that output  
choice becomes active and if you don't have any outputs hooked up for  
that choice  no out puts  VoiceOver shuts up!!!

Talk soon

Chuck Reichel
954-742-0019
www.SoundPictureRecording.com


Call me at the studio if you need further clarification.
On Jul 21, 2010, at 11:45 PM, HF wrote:

I've only thus far used Pro Tools on laptops. So VoiceOver just  
comes out of the regular little speakers, which is fine. What  
happens on the Mac Pro's? Do we hear Voice over through the onboard  
sound-card?


I've noticed at my school that any time I've tried to turn on Voice  
Over on any of the PT HD systems, Voice Over either doesn't turn on  
or no speech. Could it be that the onboard sound cards get somehow  
disconnected or turned off?


HF


Chuck Reichel
954-742-0019
www.SoundPictureRecording.com