Long time audio professional here delivering work ( music , dialogue , sfx ) in broadcast and video games for 20 years.
I’m evaluating whether or not I can achieve tight integration between VST Live and Pro Tools in a multi machine setup. Pro Tools running on the Macintosh OS with VST live running on a second Windows 11 workstation. Both workstations are current with current audio I/O.
I’ll try and give and example and would love to hear feedback from the group about weather this is possible.
Pro Tools operates as the master DAW , focused on mixing, editing and video playback. The session timeline would mirror a VST live setlist with a region in for each song.
VST Live songs would be used as a container for any of the features I need for the matching region in my Pro Tools timeline.
As I play down the timeline from Pro Tools I expect to be able to have VST Live timeline chase and automatically switch the song
Any thoughts on this would be great. I love the features I see in VST Live and I’d like to use it as a secondary workspace to do all the things Pro Tools is not designed for
Great idea and not impossible at all, but you need to de a few tricks to acchieve your goal. Also there is a bug in VL, “we” need to report again:
And you need to fire MIDI CC’s to remote VST Live dial songs (dial by number, or navigate by “next song”)
Or if you don’t want to wait the fix, you can generate MTC to VSTLive from 00:00:00 for all of your songs, but that might be more complicated. VL should calculate the defined MTC offset in long term.
VL would be used as a secondary creative workspace for 2 major elements
Audio I/O from PT as aux sends , using audio only plugins for creative DSP , then send back to PT from VL. I would record the returns in PT for archival and further editing.
MIDI I/O from VL to PT. I hope to host all my VI in VL as I prefer to have a clean slate for every sound cue. I’m primarily a sound effects editor and my use of VI is not traditional score or music. I usually make horrible noises with them lol !! Again here with the VI I would like to have my NI Kontrol S49 connected to VL so I can use it to perform -BUT- hopefully record that performance back into Pro Tools for further editing. Once a sound cue is ‘ready’ I would re-record the audio from VL into PT
This workflow is akin to the old Digital Performer ‘Chunks’ or Reaper ‘Sub Projects’. Where the child containers have the structure and content for each ‘song’ or ‘sound cue’ assembled into a master timeline in PT. Many of my PT session have hundreds of sound cues and are several hours long for example.
