Nine Inch Nails and other bands of the likes of have been recording to Pro Tools live all the time.

In fact it was done on a G3 Blue and White!

This is with a Pro Tools Mix system though and not LE as LE only allows you a certain amount of tracks...24 at a time.

Depending on your system and whether it is optimized and what type of drives you are recording to will truly depend on it not crashing.

Best thing to do is do some test runs with it.

Minimize as much of the extension set as possible. Record to a fresh drive with nothing else there. Also raise the buffers so that you have the extra headroom. As you are not using it for a recording studio type environment you will not need to deal with latency.

Best thing to do is record it at 24/44.1

Highly doubt that recording at anything higher will truly gain you anything in the long run.

Opus :D

I agree with Opus, the best thing to do is test your rig as much as possible and work out the flaws. There is a function you need to watch out for in PT. It comes turned off but if you look in preferences you can set the maximum amount of recording time. I have recorded plenty of live shows with no problems on a MixPlus rig. Its a good thing to stop the computer whenever you can, save the session and start recording again. If you can talk to the band before hand, you might be able to get them to pause for a sec in the middle of their set so you can stop and save. I was using a Roland VS1680 one time because thats all that was available and I recorded the whole show and right after the band finished, one of the guys flipped off the surge protector that I was plugged into. I lost everything and since then I plan for the worst.

Hey medf,

[QUOTE]Originally posted by mfedderman:
A) What if the computer crashes and there is some error that occurs mid-performance?
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If your system is pretty stable and you are running a FAST (800mhz or faster) machine with the extensions stipped to the bones (except for OSX) then you should have no problems. Just make sure the machine is clean and well ventilated.
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or B) If the show is a two hour show and you are recording 16 tracks of audio, won't the Pro-Tools and audio files be enourmous? I mean, two hours of a kick drum @ 24bit 48k (more if using an HD system), would be a HUGE file.

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Hell yeah they are gonna be large. Get yourself 4-6 120gig drives in portable firewire cases and let it roll baby.
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Is there some way of setting up Pro-Tools to avoid working with such massive files?
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See first answer and in the "Setup" menu in the preferences there is a limit record time. Set it to 0.00.000. This will give you infinite (to the limit of your drives) record time. And definately tell the group no more than three songs in a row depending on the size/length of song.

Make yourself a "Session template" for the show and then you can save/close and re-open a new session in a matter of seconds after you save and close the previous. Press option key and click on the record enable button and all will go into record mode.

To make a session template... create a session with all the audio channels you are going to record. Label them ahead of time if you know your input list. Save and close the session. Find the session in your hadrive's folders and "Get info" on the session file then click/check the "Save as stationary" button. You template is now created.

To save time just record the audio into the "Session Template" then use the "save as" option and name it "set 1" or whatever. All your audio files should wind up in the same folder. Keep an eye on the drive space and when the time is necessary change the disk allocation for the next set etc. Or you could try the "Round Robin" disk allocation method. I believe it will automatically send the files to a drive with available space.

Then when you get back to the studio, open the sessions and use the "Save as a copy" and include the audio files to a new location with the coresponding "Session file"

Hope this helps.

Best wishes,

JD( o}===;;;

Use SCSI Drives, they are faster and more stable.

Uncle Bob

:p: