DigiDesign Digidesign Pro Tools 8.0, Reference Manual

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Pro Tools Reference Guide 550
Conforming Audio Regions
Beat Detective can
conform (“quantize”) audio with a different
tempo, or with varying tempos, to the session’s
current tempo map, or to a groove template.
“Tighten Up” Performances
Beat Detective can
be used to improve the timing of some audio
material by calculating and extracting its aver-
age tempo, and then conforming its rhythmic
components—regions separated with Beat De-
tective—to the session’s tempo map.
Loop Matching
Since Beat Detective can extract
tempo and beat information from audio and
MIDI, and conform audio to an existing tempo
map or groove template, this makes it very use-
ful for aligning loops with different tempos or
grooves. If a loop is at a different tempo than the
current session, Beat Detective lets you quickly
separate each beat in the loop and conform
them to the tempo map (as an alternative to
time compressing or expanding the loop, which
can alter the pitch and tone of the audio).
Remixes
Beat Detective can be used for remixes
or creating new rhythms. It can extract tempo
from the original drum tracks, or in some in-
stances the original stereo mix. New audio or
MIDI tracks can then be conformed to the orig-
inal material, or the original material can be
conformed to new drum tracks, achieving an en-
tirely new feel.
Smoothing Post Production Edits (Audio
Only)
Beat Detective’s Edit Smoothing can be
used to automatically clean up foley tracks that
contain many regions requiring trimming and
crossfading, effectively removing the gaps of si-
lence between the regions (thus retaining the
room tone throughout the track).
Beat Detective Requirements
Beat Detective is available with all Pro Tools sys-
tems.
RAM Requirements for Beat Detective
Beat Detective operations can require a large
amount of RAM, especially when working with
multiple tracks and lengthy selections. To avoid
low memory situations with Beat Detective, do
the following:
• If you begin to experience slower Beat Detec-
tive response, add more RAM to your com-
puter.
• If your computer does not have extra RAM,
work with shorter selections, or individual
tracks.
• Set the Editing preference for Levels of Undo
to a smaller value (see “Levels of Undo and
Memory” on page 439). Memory-intensive
editing operations, such as Edit Smoothing
(audio only) with Beat Detective, can use up a
large amount of memory when in the Undo
queue.
When working with tick-based audio, use
Beat Detective’s Region Separation
command to quickly separate audio regions
into individual “hits” (or slices). You can
also create a region group of the separated
regions to facilitate editing and arranging.
Beat Detective LE cannot be used across
multiple tracks without the Music
Production Toolkit 2 option or the Complete
Production Toolkit option. When Beat
Detective LE (without the Music Production
Toolkit 2 or Complete Production Toolkit
option) is applied to multiple tracks, only
the top track is edited.