I am at the point where I want to transfer some projects to pro tools. I’m looking for some tips in doing this.
What I want to do is is take completed, in progress and new projects there and what I would like to do is be able to recreate the routines and plugin chains as easily as possible, really migrate as much work done on the projects as possible. I do realize this is going to be a task, no doubt.
What I was thinking of doing is exporting the completed mixes, track by track with the plugins and automation intact and another time with it all bypassed for printing any edits I missed before mix down.
Is there a way to export the routing schemes, plugin chains, and automation data?
Nuendo 5.1 projects load in cubase 5, correct? I think that’s right.
Any input would be really appreciated, especially from those that have already made a large transition. I don’t think I am leaving Steinberg but I am at the point where I no longer want all eggs in steinberg’s basket and am considering offing nuendo and a cubase license for the pro tools expansion thingie. This isn’t meant at a rant at all and I am sure everyone here knows how I feel and share some of the same feelings. It’s a new year and it’s time to make some positive changes.
This is one of many free video tutorials that can be found on the web. I can also highly recommend the video tutorials on www.groove3.com, these are not free but you will be about 90% up to speed when you’re done with them. After that it’s just muscle memory.
There is no one size fits all solution for what you want to do. You can not bring vst user presets with you to the rtas version of plugs. go track by track and pick and choose what you want to bounce with, once set up, batch export these tracks out and create a new PT session with them. You may also want to create wet/dry versions of the tracks. This can be done with 2 batch exports.
If you want to maintain your edits, AAF to PT10 does include clip gain data up to +12db and down to inf. Anything above 12db gets ignored. Fades also come through but the fade shapes do not. Crossfades do come through correctly. Volume automation comes through correctly. Experiment with it, it’ll take some tinkering.
pretty much all aspects of pt work video tutorials can be found online. I found that I was as comfortable and fast on PT as I am with Nuendo in about 1-2 weeks of daily use. PT9 and below will feel slow and clunky to you, PT10 is almost a crossgrade in most functionality. good luck
Been feeling the same thing. There are “supportive” vibes coming from Avid which feels professional and solid.
For me, the killer feature I would miss in Nuendo is the Time Warp tool. The ability to shift bar-lines in time really really quickly. No other software seems to do this (despite explanations to the contrary).
I am literally, one feature away from shifting too. I totally get what some of you guys are saying about the HDX investment. I just threw about £10k at a more powerful Mac and some RME MADI hardware. The same amount would have taken me to a pretty decent HDX PT setup I think.
Another allure of PT is near zero latency. I wonder if anyone has really experienced this in real world work, as plug-ins accumulate in a project. Does PT maintain that nz latency despite adding plugins? Talking about HDX here of course.
Jesse, Bredo, Thanks for the links to the tutorials and what you have come across working on both platforms. I really appreciate it.
I don’t want this to turn into a I hate Steinberg kinda thread and do apoligize it that is how I came across in my initial posts. I do like the softare when it is not acting up with the issues the users here have reported that have gone unchanged for moths to years. I do frequiently feel at the end of my rope though sometimes with these issues most times when I am waiting for a save or zoom and gui slug. I was PT at ver 4 or 5 and then to Emagic then to Steinberg. I chose Steinberg for a reason way back then.
It is interesting… I supose I am at some kind of turning point. Yesterday during the day, I was pricing up my PT 10 upgrade, looking at my plugins to see if rtas was available and the cost and such… it isn’t going to be cheap to move, but I knew that. Then last night I had a gig and a band partner introduced me to a film maker that wants me for the sound side in his budget film. Interesting that this comes up whan I am about to pull the trigger to deepen my stake in avid. Kinda makes you go “Hmmmmmm”
I have some things to sort out. The big thing is my mackie controllers that have never worked well with Pro Tools at all which I think has to do with my midi interface but I am not sure… they work great in Nuendo and Cubase. If I have to switch, this will be quite an investment because I cant see mixing with any less than 24 faders since I do a lot of music production. Perhaps I am spoiled.
One thing I came across doiing searching about differences for sound design and post was some love for Nuendo that made me feel a little better. It can be read in this post string. In particular, here is one user’s main differeneces the rest of the string is there to read too if you like:
I enjoyed reading that entire thread. The people there seemed really laid back, mature and professional. I still purchased the PT10 upgrade. One step at a time I will take. Now to sort out my mix surface issue with PT.
I have not started a new job in Nuendo since really. Nuendo still has it’s uses thought and i’m keeping it for now. Anything repeditive or times when I need to create tons of versions etc… those things are way faster in Nuendo.
Bredo, good point - I stepped over this as well, when I read through feature list of other DAWs or when watching “how to” tutorials on youtube regarding doing “something” in reaper or PT
Well, when choosing a DAW it is important as well that it is compatible to other studios - I would not go the Reaper or StudioOne route - even when I am able to lay hands on a brilliant DAW with quite low costs, but I do not know one single person who is using that (professional). Ok, in those homerecording forums Reaper is a well known solution, but what gives - those dudes will never spend big cash for a professional mix in my studio, usually just mastering.
The transitioning thing will be an impossible task, in my case I would / will of course keep Cubase/Nuendo, generally I prefer way over PT and I am more then just used to the workflow… When I go the PT route I will just install native on my Win7 DAW, most of the plugins are rtas - so I can check it out with smaller projects first, starting in PT… Nuendo projects I would keep in Nuendo… Too much things are usually already set up which will be lost.
And because 80% of the “self recorded” projects I get for mixing are Cubase 5 or 6, keeping C/N would be necessary, C updates are usually cheap (compared to the Nuendo + NEK thing) so I could keep up with latest Cubase all the time. If PT is that great for me I might end up in starting my own projects in PT and staying there.
To offer both, PT and Cubendo might be a cool thing as well.
It all depends (like so much other things) on “what are you doing” with your DAW.
As I read here a lot of users are composers/sounddesigners and/or doing movie. When I read “currently no new project” it seems to me that in such a case you usually have less but bigger projects. In my case, as a music only studio, I usually have between 3 and 6 projects at the same time, not counting mastering jobs/smaller things - but album recording/mixing is usually stretched over a couple of months, 2 weeks of recording, mixing later because another session is scheduled - mixing an EP here and a not finished album-mix there or two (currently 3 full albums in final stage and 3 bigger album recordings waiting for mix). Here it is always difficult to upgrade/change something, there will never be a point with “zero” projects. And that is one reason why I really need some info from Steinberg regarding which fixes/changes they have scheduled… I need to know if I will be stuck.
For general audio work pro tools is fine but if you use lots of V.I.'s then R.T.A.S is pants compared to VST, I’d hate to try and use BFD2/Omnisphere/Kontakt and EW play fully loaded in pro tools…well you couldn’t as its still 32 bit.
I have pro tools 9 HD and never use it for this reason, i was going to mix my projects in pro tools but apart from VCA’s there’s nothing I can’t do in Cubendo just as easily, and as I use Nebula x64 for all my analogue tapes/consoles/eq’s then I’d be taking a performance hit.
I keep pro tools around now for transferring projects to mix
To be honest Reaper is the only thing I’ve used over the last few years that’s pulled me away from Cubendo. If you get over the initial set up period it’s a very stable/fast/flexible working tool.I did a large Orchestral/Peter Gabriel type album last year all at 24/96 and it never dropped a beat with EW Play/Kontakt/Halion/Garritan/Specrasonics all 64 bit.
thanks for your comments. I agree that in the past years many innovations have been taken over by the competition. I also agree that we have to concentrate on “solving” problems with regards to some more
basic functionality. We have been driven by so many requests from different areas (music, post, broadcast, live)
especially when it comes to program behaviour - that it has been difficult to make the application appropriate for all users.
Therefore, another goal was to make it more configurable, so that you can adopt the program to the way you work. PT on the other side is a lot less flexible, but somehow people like being “forced” to work the way the program dictates. So there’s always a pro and a con. This is no excuse for the lack of fixing bugs you consider very important. I’m confident that the April updates bring along many fixes you have described.
We have started working on Nuendo 6 already, which will get a rewrite in large parts. Track management (yes, hide unused tracks will finally be in there) and other parts of the program will be completely new, more logical and easier to manage.
I have been thinking recently how the audio/music/film industry would benefit most if DAW developers would focus more on making more effective and efficient tools, and try to minimize the feature-race. I think we have reached a bit of a plateau of innovation, and it is time to put those past ideas to better use in a more effective, ergonomic package. If this weren’t pertinent to the industry at large, I wouldn’t bother posting as what you do with Nuendo is your business, but as customers, I think we are getting saturated with unfocused applications from many companies now.
So if I may offer a couple of suggestions here as a longtime DAW user for many years (I’ve used pretty much all of them at one time or another and have extensive experience with ProTools, as well as Nuendo):
1 - Figure out what Nuendo should do well and do it. And if it isn’t much different from Cubase, just merge the two and create tiers or addons for the more niche-market features, such as 9-pin, etc. Don’t try to appeal to everyone. It can’t be done effectively. And if at all possible don’t try to maintain a two-product persona. That just pits Cubase against Nuendo. Customers don’t think the way you approach these two products. Appeal to customers as a company with a solid product and multiple options for expansion, improvement, etc.
There were/are quite a few Nuendo composers, producers and musicians. Post never caught on, at least here in the US. Nuendo does a lot of things well, but doesn’t address any specific market with excellence. It’s a better all-around DAW for one-man studios than most, but unfortunately, that’s where it’s advantage ends at the moment. And many people I know are starting to reconsider the two-DAW approach - pick each for what it does well, but stop trying to find the end-all, be-all DAW. It doesn’t exist.
Nuendo (or Cubase) could be a killer composing system, or a killer music production big brother to Cubase in some form (expanded automation? Cubase Pro?), or even perhaps a great ADR rig. But full-blown post, and music production, and film scoring, and broadcast isn’t going to happen.
I know it is almost impossible for a DAW to survive in a niche market, but at least narrow the feature focus and make it absolutely great at something, and very good at the rest. Just be sure you can really go after that “great” market, and not end up trying to convince the ProTools world to change gears just to give Nuendo a shot. That won’t work either.
2 - Configurability is both a blessing and curse. While an individual thinks it’s great, put them into a professional environment, and they will be lost (and looking for work). The reason PT’s locked shortcut system works is that it was well thought out for editors to begin with - it flows very well, makes sense once you take a few minutes to memorize what you need most; and it makes working with multiple editors, multiple facilities very simple.
Loading up custom key commands only works when you are the only one using an edit/mix station for that day, and only if it works reliably. It also doesn’t account for various controller/studio rig setups, etc. That’s why a universal system, as limited as it may seem, is actually more flexible.
The point of configuration is to get a job done most efficiently, not play around with making the program appeal to one’s sense of interior decorating, or match shortcuts for surfing in Firefox (leave that for the lower end hobbiests, and make the pro-level apps work in a pro-level mindset - we don’t have time to configure everything for days - we have to get to work very quickly, and update very cautiously). People have preferences, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s preferences are as well thought out as the workflows of many engineers over many years. Obviously it isn’t perfect, but more often than not, it makes more sense than other approaches
3 - Stability and reliability. I can not stress this enough. All the features in the world don’t matter if there are problems with any basic function (video, import/export, editing, track and buss functions simply have to work, all the time, every time). We can bypass a problematic secondary feature, but not when it re-occurs many times during the day, or even a week or month.
Show/hide will be a great addition to Nuendo 6 (and I presume in Cubase as well since that is the main application used by most composers). But beyond that, it just has to work.
Even if I, or others on this thread, decide to use another DAW for some or all of our work, I believe this kind of feedback, and this approach will only make for a better market for customers to be able to choose the right tool for our work and preferences. I hope that helps.
