DigiDesign Pro Tools, Reference Manual

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Chapter 21: Fades and Crossfades 465
Chapter 21: Fades and Crossfades
Using Fades
You can quickly and easily fade-ins or fade-outs
on a region, or crossfades between adjacent au-
dio regions. Crossfading is the process of fading
between two regions of audio to prevent pops,
clicks, or sudden changes in sound. Crossfades
have many applications, from smoothing tran-
sitions between regions to creating special audio
effects. The crossfade duration, position, and
shape are all user-definable.
Fades are computed and written to disk. Cross-
fades that are written to disk are stored in a
folder named “Fade Files” within the session
folder. When you play back your track,
Pro Tools reads and plays back the fade file from
disk.
Pro Tools does not let you replace fade-ins and
fade-outs with crossfades. To add a crossfade be-
tween regions, any existing fade-ins and fade-
outs between the regions must first be deleted.
About Crossfades and Curves
To create a crossfade between two regions, use
the Selector tool to select across the end point of
the first region and the start point of the second.
The length of the selection determines the
length of the crossfade. Though fades may ap-
pear to be discrete regions, they cannot actually
be separated from the regions in which they
were created. You can, however, create fade-ins
and fade-outs for individual regions (see “Creat-
ing Fades at the Beginnings and Ends of Re-
gions” on page 472).
Use the Fades dialog to select, view, and manip-
ulate the curves used to perform fades and cross-
fades. Different volume curves can be assigned
to the fade-out and fade-in portions of cross-
fades. The Fades dialog can also render a preview
of the fade.
The following examples illustrate common
types of crossfades, and explain how the type of
selection you make determines the character of
the crossfade.
Pro Tools HD includes an AutoFade feature
that provides real-time fades without pro-
cessing them to disk (see “Using AutoFades”
on page 475).
Since crossfades are created by fading be-
tween overlapping audio material, a cross-
fade cannot be performed on regions that do
not contain audio material beyond their re-
gion boundaries.