Hi all,
I would really appreciate if someone among all of you audio guru’s could give us some advice on this matter:
A friend of mine is running Pro Tools on a Mac. I’ll be running Sonar on a PC. Is it possible for us to exchange audiofiles?
The scenario is, that I will be sending him two-track mixdowns for him to add vocals on, he’d then be sending the vocalfiles back to me so I can implement it in the multitrack. In the two-track mixdowns I would surely need some kind of synchronization info as well.
What should I keep in mind in order for him to be able to read my PC file on his Mac and PT, and what should he keep in mind before he sends the vocalfiles back to me? Or is it even possible?
What kind of file should I send to him?
What kind of file should he be sending back to me?
Any ideas on how to keep it all in sync?
Comments
I'm in a similar situation, with a friend being on Mac. Instead
I'm in a similar situation, with a friend being on Mac. Instead of burning cds all the time though, I bring over a external hardrive and simply transfer them over. If you don't live driving distance, then this obviously wouldn't work.
Another suggestion, I've not tried this but it may work... Do you both have internet? You could try making a mp3 of your rough mix and have him download it to record his takes over, then send you his tracks uncompressed (meaning, NOT mp3, but wav files) it would save cds and might be quicker if your having to mail back and forth all the time....
Also, to expand on what recorderman said about starting to record each track at the very beginning, that's a great idea, but in special cases where you want to just record a vocal part at, say, the third verse, or any other part later in the song, it's silly to start recording from the beginning and waste space with a bunch of silence. So what I do is create markers at each key point in the song (verse, chorus, bride, ect.), and have any specific overdub start at it's related marker. Then just write down the times of all the markers and bring in the parts to lock into that time. I suppose this might be overkill for your purposes, you could also just write down the start times of each part and manually type in where it should go. Try this if you feel the need to save disk space.
send him WAV files. Print the files so they all have the same ex
send him WAV files. Print the files so they all have the same exact start time at the very beginning of your session. Then burn them on a data CDR. Mac's can read CDR's burnt on PC's, and Pro Tools can work with WAV files.
Have your friend do the exact same thing on return, except make cure he has software (like Toastor the newer Roxio...5.02...)that can burn the CDR as MAC & PC compatible.
P.S. the reason to burn all audio files from the session start is because then they will load into any sofyware, snap to the top of the session and be all in sync.
Also, send along notes with the key of the song, and even more importantly the tempo. That way they can set there session op in a grid based upon the correct tempo and that makes work faster.
[ September 30, 2003, 02:15 AM: Message edited by: RecorderMan ]