How to build a template for post sound in Pro-Tools Part 1

Hey, this is Tom Effinger of Audio Post Pro. Today I'm going to be showing you how to build a basic template in Pro Tools. Hey guys, we're giving away a pair of reference quality headphones, the same ones we often use in the studio. All you have to do to enter is sign up using the link in the description. If you're just getting started working in audio post-production, chances are you're wasting valuable time and energy if you're not using a pre-built template to set up your work in the best possible way. This is part one of a two-part series. In part one, I'll show you how to build the tracks and auxes and use bussing to send the audio to the appropriate places. Then look for part two coming up, where I'll show you how to put plugins into the template to help to shape the audio. So when we're working in audio post-production, we generally like to separate the audio into three main groups, dialogue, effects, and music. So this template will have dialogue, effects, and music tracks that'll feed subgroup masters and then a final record track. I suggest you make a folder on your desktop called something like My Templates. You can keep this template in there, and as you build other templates over time, you can keep them all in one central templates folder. Okay, let's move to the computer and I'll show you how to set this up. All right, to get started, what we want to do is we want to say File, Create New, and we can call this Basic Template and Create. It's going to ask where you want to put it. For now, I'm just going to put it on my desktop. And you'll see I actually have a templates folder right here, but I'll just save this one to the desktop. Okay, the next thing we're going to do is we're going to create three types of audio tracks. So let's go up here and say Track, New, One Mono Audio Track, Create. That one, I'll make medium. We'll call DIA, DIA for dialogue. Okay, so next, Track, New, Create Another Mono Audio Track, Create. This one we'll call Effects. So this is a Mono Effects track. What we want to do next is say Track, New, and create one Stereo Audio Track, Create. We'll call this one ST for Stereo Effects. Okay, so next, we want to create one more Audio Track, Stereo Audio Track, Create. This one, I'll double-click and call MUS for music. Okay, so there are our basic audio tracks for the template. What we can do if we want is change the color. I'm going to make the effects tracks orange, and I'm going to make the music track green. So the next thing we want to do is create three auxes, which will be our subgroup masters for dialogue effects in music. So again, we go to Track, New, and these will be stereo. So you want to create three stereo aux inputs, Create. All right, so the first one we'll call Dialogue Aux. The next one we'll call Effects Aux, and the last one, Music Aux. All right, so we have our primary audio tracks, and then we have the subgroup masters, dialogue effects, and music. So now, we need to use bussing to send these tracks to the appropriate aux subgroup masters. So first, I'll go to the Dialogue Aux, and I'm going to use Buss 1 and 2. For the Effects Aux, we're going to click on that and use Buss 3 and 4. And for the input on the Music Aux, we're going to use Buss 5 and 6. So now, we want to send these tracks, dialogue effects, stereo effects, music, to the appropriate subgroup masters. So the way we do that is to take the dialogue track, and on the out, choose Buss 1 and 2. And on effects, Buss 3 and 4. Now, stereo effects is also going to the same effects subgroup master, so that will be Buss 3 and 4 as well. And then music, we will send out Buss 5 and 6. So now, anything I put on dialogue will send to the Dialogue Aux, effects to the Effects Aux, and music to the Music Aux. Okay, the next thing I want to do is create a final Mix Out Aux. So now, we can go to Track, New. We're going to create one more Stereo Aux Input, Create. And let's color this one a little differently. We'll make this one purple. And this will label Mix Out Aux. Okay, so now the output of the three main subgroup masters should actually feed our mix, our Mix Out Aux. So now, we're going to use Busses to do that as well. So let's take on the Mix Out Aux. So, so far we've used Buss 1 and 2, Buss 3 and 4, and Buss 5 and 6. So let's just go to the next one. So on Input of the Mix Out Aux, let's choose Buss 7 and 8 as the input. And then, all three of these Auxes. And by the way, if you highlight each of the three names by holding the Shift key and use Option Shift together, you can go to Buss 7 and 8. And now all three have changed to Buss 7 and 8. So again, that was Option Shift, and the three highlighted tracks could all be changed at the same time. So now our Auxes are feeding our Mix Out Aux. So our Mix Out Aux needs to feed the main output, which in this case is my stereo front left-right speakers. Since I have a 5-1-out, I have to choose 5-1-output.stereo. And then we'll make one more track, which is just where we're going to put and finally listen to and check the waveform of the stereo mix. So we'll go up and say Track, New, 1, Stereo, Audio Track, Create. And I usually make this one red. So we've created this final audio mix track, which I like to call Mix Stem. So since we generally bounce out our mixes, we usually won't be recording directly to this track in real time. But let's set it up that way just so you can see how that would work. So the first thing is I need to set a new Buss. So we'll go to the next one in the list, which is Buss 9 and 10. And then the output of this track can be the same main 5-1-output stereo. But we don't want the mix to be feeding the same track, which is also feeding the speakers. So we want to mute this track and we'll unmute it only later when we want to be able to play audio and check the final mix. So I'm going to mute that track to keep from creating a loop of the audio coming both from here and here at the same time. Then we need to double buss this track by holding the Control key and saying Buss 9 and 10. So what you'll notice is that the name has a little plus in front of it. So if I hover over it, it'll say it's going to main 5-1-output stereo and Buss 9-10. So we could actually record on this track, mix them in real time if we wanted to, or potentially even punch on that track at a later time. But mostly how I use this track is once I've bounced the audio mix out, I import it back in and then I can check it and play it back from here. That's basically how you set up the template. So just to review, we've got our tracks, dialogue, effects, stereo effects, music. And what we would do is we would duplicate as many in each of these categories as we need to cover the sounds that are coming in for the project. So there might be 8 or 10 or 16 audio tracks for dialogue. There might also be 8, 10, 12, 16 mono effects. There might be 10, 12 stereo effects. And there might be several music tracks as well. It really depends on the project and the audio that we're receiving from the edit. So again, those tracks go through subgroup masters, and then they go to our mix aux out where we'll monitor the mix and also send it to a record track. And then here's that record track where we could potentially record, but more likely we'll take the bounced audio and check it and play it back from this track after we're done. So that pretty much ends part one of this series, how to build a basic template using audio tracks, auxes, and bussing. Now look for part two of the series where I'll show you how to put plugins into the template that'll really start to shape the audio.