4

Working on a project where there are quite a few off screen footsteps (2 pairs of feet) going on which I've painstakingly cut into Pro Tools. The director would now like them paced a bit slower and was wondering if there was a simple/easier way of doing this then going in and individually shifting each region a little bit at a time :/ I tried cutting them up and shifting them using Beat Detective by messing with the overall tempo but didn't get the results I was after.

Basically looking for a way to highlight all the individual regions, then click the last one and drag it out whilst adding silence between each region that increases the more you drag! Not that I'm aware that's possible but would like a way of achieving the same result somehow in Pro Tools lol

Cheers in advance, Andy

Improve this question
1
  • Thanks for all the suggestions guys! I had a feeling that elastic audio/time stretching would be the way to go and it seemed to work without too many artefacts. I think Utopia's method would have had to come into play if it had needed more severe changes though. So thanks again for the help :)
    – Andy Lewis
    Jan 9, 2011 at 12:33

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
7

My first thought was to try Elastic Time. You'll need to do the following:

  • highlight all of the individual regions and duplicate them into one continuous region.
  • turn on Elastic Time, which is located under the channel name (the grayed-out bar underneath the automation status).
  • Elastic time has four modes. You'll want to select Rhythmic (since footsteps are mostly atonal and depend on rhythm more so than other types of sounds, like vocals or servos).
  • Select WARP under the track view menu (blocks, playlists, waveform, volume, etc).
  • Now that you're in Warp mode, you simple go to the end of the region and drag it out. This will retain the start time of the file, but time-stretch all of the events to make them fit to whatever length you drag. The more you drag it out, the more artifacts you'll introduce; however, I've found Elastic Time to be quite forgiving even with some radical stretching.

That's it. Once you're satisfied with the result, you can either leave Elastic Time enabled and not commit your changes, or turn it off and render a new file (which is important if you anticipate sending your session to another version of PT that may not support ET.)

If I were you I would keep ET active so you can preview the new tempo for your director and see if it's what he/she is looking for. If you want to speed it up or slow it down, it's easy to make the changes non-destructively.

Here's an Avid tutorial that may help.

Best of luck!

Improve this answer
1
  • Never tried Elastic audio as means to spread the heel/toe clicks. Usually I've just gotten down and dirty with the edits. I shall have to try this sometime. Thanks!
    – Stavrosound
    Aug 28, 2011 at 2:26
2

All of those are awesome suggestions. Can you re-record some footsteps with a slower pace? Obviously, time and/or resources might make this suggestion/question impossible.

Improve this answer
2

Ok, here's an easy way, which has worked for me a lot of times.

  1. copy the steps to another track and mute the original (if you want to use it later)

  2. continue to work in the new track

  3. mark up all the steps and make a duplicate audio file (ctrl-shift-3)

  4. switch the edit tool to stretch mode and stretch the audio file to the desired length

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.