Importing A Tempo Map & Markers From Pro Tools Into Your Studio One 4 Song
Picking up from where we left off in last week's video, I thought it would be good to do a "Part 2" with respect to AAF work-flow that talks about how to go about getting any additional information carried over from a Pro Tools Session into your Studio One Version 4 song.
If you did happen to catch the first video, you'll recall me saying that having the audio come over via AAF is great, as it allows us to essentially pick up from where we left off in Pro Tools. The benefit here of course being that we still have access to our original edit boundaries. So no need to consolidate files and find out down the line that you (or someone else) missed a bad edit.
But as you may or may not have noticed - one BIG thing that did not get translated during the process is your Markers, Tempo-Map, and any time signature changes!
Tempo Maps, Time-Signature Changes & Markers
Now first off, let me just state the obvious. If you have a basic song, in 4-4 - at 120 BPM, this isn't really a huge issue. Just recreate your markers manually, and it's not a big deal. BUT - if you have spent a great deal of time adding various Markers with specific names, and detailed tempo changes, it would be a shame to have to re-do them. The good news is you don't have to.
Using MIDI Files To 'Carry' The Information
As someone who has spent a great deal of time collaborating with various other engineer's and studio's, one thing I got into the habit of doing long ago is using MIDI files to carry over information that I wanted to translate to another DAW. Regardless of whether I was handing off my work to another studio, or simply working on my own productions, in most cases the material I work on can get pretty complex with respect to tempo changes and time-signature changes, so I really don't want to have to repeat that work, or hand someone else a session where they have no clue what's what.
So essentially this is pretty much the last step I take when exporting content, and this is something I do regardless of whether I'm printing consolidated stems, or using AAF work-flows.
MIDI Files & Markers
One thing that you may find is with specific DAW's, (not going to name any name's here - they all have a different approach) not all the information you would expect to translate over - comes across. A really good example of this would be with respect to Marker's.
In my experience, there is usually (again it depends) some little quirk, where for example creating a NEW SONG from that MIDI file will bring over the markers, where as Importing the MIDI file into an existing song will not. And like I mentioned, this isn't always the case, but I've encountered this with at least 2 major DAW's that I've worked with. (Studio One being one of them)
The Magic Of Import Song Data
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Import Song Data is BY FAR at the top of the list for my favorite new features. The reason being because it essentially eliminates the whole concept of "not being able to bring something into an existing song". Again the keyword here being "existng".
Having said all that - In this video, I'll show you how to go about importing your Markers, Tempo Map, and any Time Signature changes from Pro Tools into your newly created Studio One 4 Song. Presumably created using an AAF from Pro Tools - but the work-flow works regardless of how it was created.
And as always, if you enjoy this content, please - Share, Subscribe, and hit that like button. :)
Cheers, Marcus
