An editing demo in Logic

[anton]

Thanks for posting this Doug, Ill give it a watch in a few.

I think alot of other DAW's have this feature now too, such as Digital Performer, Cubase, the one from Presonus, whose name I forget.

I have not messed with the others that much, but one I thing I like about how Logic implemented it is that you can turn off Quick Swipe Comping and have your standard editing tools all available as you navigate amongst takes. I find that can be handy when you are recording takes that might not be all synced to a click, such as solo guitar.

[anton]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi Doug...

I see Logic in my near future...

It is a nice piece of software, and for $200 from the app store a good deal compared to many other DAW's. Plus I think now alot of the extra content such as the bundled loops are additional downloadable content. So if you dont want that stuff taking up space on your HD you dont need to download it.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by anton

, but one I thing I like about how Logic implemented it is that you can turn off Quick Swipe Comping and have your standard editing tools all available as you navigate amongst takes. I find that can be handy when you are recording takes that might not be all synced to a click, such as solo guitar.

I didn't emphasize that on the video, (I wasn't trying for a sales pitch on Logic - just a demo of workflow), but indeed, I have a key bound to toggle quick swipe on and off. I can't recall if that's standard or I had to configure it - you can bind all kinds of extra functions to keystokes. Then I can flip back and forth between quick swipe and other editing modes just by pressing a key

[Ivan Lee]

Great video ! I only know very little about Logic though I have it on my to do list each year :-). The good news is there are 1000 ways to do things... the bad news is that there are 1000 ways to do things :-)

I do all the same stuff in ProTools but it is all just a little different! I find it very interesting the little differences. Like

- In PT you have to either "Solo" an alternate take or "promote" it into the comp track to hear the result - Logic auto "promotes"
- In PT you can just tap the cursor next to the selected region for a new start time, Logic you have to go back to the top of the edit window...
- In PT region boundaries are always visible and uncovering or moving things on the comp track to find where a spot is (for asynchronous takes) in the original seems like less moves than you were doing...
- PT has a cursor that trims/moves/fades/selects all by where you have it relative in the region - Logic has a smart tool too though I think as well though you were not using it (I believe)..

And all those little things we get used to using one tool vs the other... Thanks for putting this up! Gives a good demonstration how to do this kind of work in Logic. I now have a much better idea of the workflow!

[Doug Young]

Hi Ivan, it'd bee cool to see some of this demo'd in Pro Tools. One thing I find with all these tools is that, as you say, there's so many ways to do things, and every time I see someone else's approach, light bulbs go off, and I discover things I had no idea existed. Especially when you watch someone who edits all day for a living, it can look like magic. I usually consider myself lucky if I remember the basics between editing sessions since I don't do it all the time.

Originally Posted by Ivan Lee

- In PT region boundaries are always visible and uncovering or moving things on the comp track to find where a spot is (for asynchronous takes) in the original seems like less moves than you were doing...

Not sure I'm following this. The moving clips when tracks don't line up was the key for me to make this work with non-sync'd tracks, but it's tedious. There may be better ways to do it in Logic. Can you clarify what PT does?

- PT has a cursor that trims/moves/fades/selects all by where you have it relative in the region - Logic has a smart tool too though I think as well though you were not using it (I believe)..

I'll have to look into this, there are all kinds of different ways to trigger these operations. I just usually change the secondary operation that is triggered by holding down the command key to go trigger between things like cut and fade. The primary cursor operation is select/move, etc, tho in quick swipe mode you have to toggle between swiping and the normal cursor, which I also have bound to a toggle key. Swiping is sort of a entirely different mode that overrides anything else going on. There very well may be some smart mechanism that makes this easier.

[Ivan Lee]

I took a bit of time this morning to se how to make the video look good on youtube from QT (mine were always blurry before). I think I have it now and will try to do a mini version of what you did in PT just to see the difference. Clearly no better or worse here and key commands with the non-mouse hand makes a huge difference... Will see if I can get this done in a bit :-)...

[muscmp]

doug: this is the tutorial of quick swiping i learned from. perhaps this can be an adjunct to yours. i use the quick swipe quite often as i am not a one-take-wonder. ha!

when i record acoustic instruments, since i can't stand click tracks, i find an apple loop or other drum track that will keep me in time. that way i have the transients of the drum track to quick swipe to with my other takes. when i'm finished, i mute the drum track and i'm done. just another way to do it and make it easier to line things up.

http://www.musictech.net/2013/10/logic-pu-2/

and here are other logic tutorials.

http://www.musictech.net/tag/logic/

i especially love the closer-to-human drummer they have added.

note that i am referring to logic X.

play music!

[Ivan Lee]

Doug - first off the excellent quality of your demos and instructional videos is no small feat !!!!

I did put together a little guitar compositing demo using Pro Tools 11 (PT10 would be the same). As i said before - both programs are great tools (logic - PT and I am sure Cubase - Studio One - Reaper etc...) - but each have their little quirks with how to work. Of course there are many other (possibly easier ways) to do what I did with PT in the video. The points I made about how the "smart tool" works and how areas of regions uncover or are covered should be well shown. The audio (my rambling and the Guitar) are all just picked up by the onboard mic of my imac. It should be nice and clear if you select 1080p in the "youtube settings".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxUd...e_gdata_player

[Doug Young]

That was great, Ivan, very interesting. Seems like there's pluses and minuses to both tools. PT seems to be just sort of the typical cut and paste clips with crossfade, but with that ability to line up and promote the clips to make it easier. Subtly different than leaving them in place the way Logic does - tho once you have to start cutting and moving clips around, a lot of the benefit in Logic gets lost. You can also just line up tracks and cut and paste in sections in Logic, I was doing that for a while before I figured out the take stuff, you can just select a region, cut it, and then drag it up to the main track - no "promote" feature to do it for you tho.

It's nice that you don't have the mode switch between swipe mode, and I wish Logic had that ability to just change the overall volume of an individual section that easily - if it does, I haven't found it. That would be really nice to do at the point that you're making the edit rather than later on, so you can decide if it's going to work. I need to go read up on some of the shortcuts and so on now, to see if I can duplicate some of the speedier operations there!

Glad you find my demos useful, they usually end up being harder than I expect. I tried to create another one on a different topic over the weekend, and gave up - I was just being too tongue-tied and incoherent!

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Ivan Lee

Doug - first off the excellent quality of your demos and instructional videos is no small feat !!!!

I did put together a little guitar compositing demo using Pro Tools 11 (PT10 would be the same). As i said before - both programs are great tools (logic - PT and I am sure Cubase - Studio One - Reaper etc...) - but each have their little quirks with how to work. Of course there are many other (possibly easier ways) to do what I did with PT in the video. The points I made about how the "smart tool" works and how areas of regions uncover or are covered should be well shown. The audio (my rambling and the Guitar) are all just picked up by the onboard mic of my imac. It should be nice and clear if you select 1080p in the "youtube settings".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxUd...e_gdata_player

Ivan hey great vid. Quick question I am assuming you did that as a " New Screen Recording" in Quick Time ? The reason I ask is I thought I might do a quick additional supplemental vid just to expand a bit on some of the editing and general work flow features in Pro Tools . Editing being one of the very strong aspects of Pro Tools. It is interesting to see demos of different DAWS in action, as has been mentioned the major DAWS all seem to similar over all workflows but have various strengths and features.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

tho.
I wish Logic had that ability to just change the overall volume of an individual section that easily - if it does, I haven't found it. That would be really nice to do at the point that you're making the edit rather than later on, so you can decide if it's going to work.

Yes that is the feature I was referring to as "Clip gain" in an earlier post. Obviously a visual demo is a better means of clear communication.
Also as a note of clarification Avid switched it's nomenclature for Pro Tools to better match it's Video editing programs like Media Composer so what was called "region" "or individual section was renamed "clip" in PT 10 I believe. So when someone says either "region" or clip it is the same thing ....thus "Clip gain" which can be shown as mini fader in lower left of the clip with a + or - db reference, as per Ivans Video, or can be shown with the addition of a horizontal line reference per clip, like it is in volume automation.
I will show this and some other additional features, in a supplemental Vid I will try to get posted this week.

[Ivan Lee]

Thanks Doug!

Yes, Clip Gain is one of my favorite features. So easy to pre-level out a vocal take (cutting into sections) making a follow on compressor setting much gentler. I also tend to clip gain tracks so my starting faders are all at 0dB. No sonic difference but somehow it eases my OCD...

Kev-
Yep - QuickTime screen recording. For non-blurry output I find it is best to
set your screen to native resolution first -
Start QT and use HighQuality and record Mouse click options -
then when done recording - Export as 1080p.
Reopen the 1080p file and send to YouTube.

Any other way I did this yielded blurry results.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Ivan Lee

Thanks Doug!

Yes, Clip Gain is one of my favorite features. So easy to pre-level out a vocal take (cutting into sections) making a follow on compressor setting much gentler. I also tend to clip gain tracks so my starting faders are all at 0dB. No sonic difference but somehow it eases my OCD...

Kev-
Yep - QuickTime screen recording. For non-blurry output I find it is best to
set your screen to native resolution first -
Start QT and use HighQuality and record Mouse click options -
then when done recording - Export as 1080p.
Reopen the 1080p file and send to YouTube.

Any other way I did this yielded blurry results.

Hey thanks I'll give it shot in the next few days

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by Ivan Lee

Yes, Clip Gain is one of my favorite features.

I discovered that in Logic, I can select a region, turn on automation, and then change the gain of the selected region, similar to what you did, with a single click/drag. Close, but not quite the same. Adobe Audition does more what you did in PT. A quick search shows people complaining that Logic doesn't do this as easily.

Yep - QuickTime screen recording. .

I've not tried that. I have a screen recorder program called screenflow that I got some time back, it lets me record from a mic and also the computer audio, which is nice for these kinds of things. I imagine it's using qucktime under the hood, but it also has some basic and very easy editing support as well for this kind of thing.

[mc1]

thank you, doug. you are a competent and helpful bloke.

of course, it's a little bit painful for us windows users to watch just how slick and easy it is in logic. however, maybe something similar can be done in reaper. i'll have to check out the manual and the internet and play around a bit to see. i haven't been recording much for a while but this is rather inspiring for me.