Hi. This time I want to share some of my personal applescripts I made for Pro Tools for my use. I hope they are useful to you too. I haven’t tested some of these in lower versions of Mac OSX as I feel there were changes that were made in the way GUI scripting works in Mac. They were tested in El Capitan with Pro Tools 12.4.

Note: There is no audio in the videos below.

Timestamp Import to Pro Tools

I wanted to have a way for Pro Tools to Batch spot a bunch of clips in a folder to their original timestamp rather than having to do it one by one. I made a service that runs on the mac. In this Zip file there is a .wflow and there is a .command file. Run the command file. What that does is enable support for assistive devices and also assign a shortcut (Command+Alt+Control+I) for the import macro. When you run the command file, it will come to a point and open the .wflow file. Just click Install on that and you are done. Sometimes you may have to restart for the service to access the shortcut. 

Couple of things to keep in mind:

  1. The audio has to be the same format as the session. The script fails if it is not. 
  2. Once the import is done, there is also a compile feature added. This can compile all the imported clips into one track. For this, you will need to click the first track where the clip is imported. The script will wait 5 seconds for you to do so. Once you do it, the script will then compile everything into that track. 
  3. It doesn¹t work with dynamic transport enabled. So, if that is on, the script will warn you and then disable it. 
  4. You will have to remain in the Pro Tools Window because if you tab to another app, the shortcuts will be redirected there.
  5. Too many clips can break it as the number of tracks will be too many.

Download Here.

 

Track Renamer

If you are anything like me, you would be a lazy guy. Trust me, I am one! But not lazy as to not do things. I just don’t like repetitive jobs. So, one day as I was prepping a session for a Local Renderer workflow, I found it too tiresome to rename 118 tracks as Object_Send_1 all the way to 118. That was just too much work for no creativity. Hence I made this script called Track Renamer. I have attached a video of how it works. The good thing is you can use this for not just objects. If you have 5 tracks of Guitars or 40 tracks of Effects and 80 tracks of Ambience, this comes to be very helpful. There is a video too on how it works and how to use it. Make sure the track name window is open and has no text on it before you run this.

Download Here.

 

Object I/O Renamer

This was another script born out of necessity. When creating the IO settings for Atmos, it was again a big task to rename all the outputs to what I wanted. This Applescript does all of that for me in a very short time. This was different from the Track Renamer because it is specific for Atmos.

The workflow is simple. These are the things to keep in mind:

  1. Make the tracks you need for objects as Stereo with the option of Auto-Create Sub-paths clicked. This is important. The logic behind this is it doesnt matter if your object is going to be stereo or mono. But, if you have created a stereo Output called Object_Send_1_2 and the sub paths are called Object send 1 and Object send 2, then it is still valid wether you use the stereo or the mono one in your mix.
  2. Make sure you display all the paths after you created them. The quick way to do that is to hold Alt and Click on the Triangle beside the first path you just created.
  3. Double-Click, the first Bus and then Select and Delete the name. This will clear the name and put in the track names you need.
  4. Run the app.
  5. One thing to remember is you need to create exactly HALF the number of stereo tracks as objects. So, if you need 30 objects, create 15 stereo tracks as the sub paths will make a total of 30.

A tip here is if you have say, the first 40 as FX and the next 20 as Ambience, select the first Bus as above, and when you run the app, change the prefix to FX_Object_ or whatever. Number it as 1,40. After that, select the next one once it is done and in the number choose what every you want to put. So you can name it as Ambience_Object_41 all the way to 60. In this case, when you run the app, put the prefix as Ambience_Object_ and in the numbers, put 41,60. Remember the “,”. This is the delimiter that the script uses.

Download Here.

 

Here are some others that I posted earlier:

Pro Tools Panner to Atmos

Spanner to Atmos

Hope they are useful! Until next time!

-FM