Documentation

Preparing your session

  • Make sure "Follow Main Time Scale" is enabled for the Pro Tools Nudge settings menu:

  • Group any tracks that you want to be aligned together.

    E.g. For Track A1 of a conform, group A1.1, A1.2 etc together

  • Arrange the Key Track directly above the track(s) to be aligned.

  • Suspend edit groups.

  • Place cursor IN FRONT of the first clip (empty selection).

  • Make sure the grid/nudge settings in ProTools are visible.

  • Make sure Auto-Align is in SMALL mode.

  • Make sure the whole Auto-Align window is visible on sceen.

  • Make sure Auto-Align is in STATIC mode and in POLARITY mode.

  • Make sure the Auto-Align plug-in is set to CLIP (not selection).

  • Make sure the Auto-Align plug-in has the correct Key Track set.

  • Make sure the Auto-Align plug-in has handles of 2 seconds or more.

  • Make sure Auto-Align is actually displaying sample calculations.

Works with either...

  • AAF tracks matching conformed groups
  • Main guide track (DX only is best)

The tracks to be aligned should be grouped by each EDL track e.g. these tracks should all be in one edit group...

  • A1.1
  • A1.2
  • A1.3

While these tracks should all be in another edit group...

  • A2.1
  • A2.2
  • A2.3

TrackAligner will stop aligning when there are no clips left on the track, regardless of how high the "clip count" is set

Drag and drop a Pro Tools Session Text File onto the main window to import session data using the following settings.

This allows you to choose which is your key track and which is your track to be aligned.

  • The Key Track here is used by TrackAligner when it starts an alignment process. It will automatically switch Auto-Align's Key Track to the track specified in the Session Track Interface window.
  • The track to be aligned is only used as a reference for the total "clip count" internally and displaying ETAs until finished.

Once you've loaded a session you can also change and clear the track settings in the main window.

Additional Features

If you highlight any area of time in ProTools (with or without audio), it will copy this time to your Pro Tools nudge offset value.

Useful for recutting.

  • Default Hotkey: Option (⌥) + Command (⌘) + F4

This uses the Auto-Align behaviour of the tool to copy the sample offset of the selected audio to the pro tools nudge setting (also switches ProTools Time Scale to samples).

This requires you set up auto-align with a key track for the audio to compare against.

  • Default Hotkey: Option (⌥) + Command (⌘) + F8

This has two modes, prepend to existing track names or prepend with new track names.

The prompts are to specify both the text to insert and how many tracks to rename.

You must double click the first track in pro tools to open the ProTools rename dialogue before you hit either of the buttons.

If you specify text "Dial_" and count of 8 then use "Prefix with new names", it will rename 8 tracks "Dial_1", "Dial_2" etc up to "Dial_8".

If you use "Prepend existing names" it will just add the "Dial_" to the front of the existing track names

This requires you set up auto-align with a key track for the audio to compare against.

This attempts to open Auto-Align Post and automatically get it ready for you. The manual steps it performs are:

  • Open Auto-Align Post
  • Set the desired Key Track as chosen with the session interface
  • Switch to "clip" mode
  • Set handles to 2 seconds
  • Switch Auto-Align to "small" mode
  • Switch Auto-Align to "static" mode
  • Switch Auto-Align to "polarity" mode
  • Does a "little dance" to fix Auto-Align when it's not showing sample calculations.

Known issues

This is a known bug in Auto-Align that should be fixed in a later version.

As a workaround you need to "wake up" your Auto-align plugin.

Change a few settings, click preview, change them back. Move the mouse around and eventually calculations should appear.

You'll then be fine for the rest of the time the window is open.