When composing you can sometimes end up with a lot of tracks. To help you keep track of them, remember that the Pro Tools mixer is not static like a traditional console! Move the tracks around. Keep the ones you’re working on close to each other, move them away when you’re done working on them.
Another thing I like to do is change the height to different settings depending on what ‘stage’ the track is at. For instance, tracks I’m done with for the moment (new things can always come to mind!) is usually kept minimized so that they’re not in the way and take up too much space in the edit window. Similarly, the tracks I know I have to do more work on I’ll keep at a larger scale to remind myself that I will need to get back to them at some point in time.
Doing that for years: also I color code: green for new tracks that need work. Red for; I’m not happy with this one at all but don’t feel like deleting it. Blue for OK. Usually the red tracks also have bo output selected. Free’s up tracks…
You may also want to group tracks and create custom windows config’s just showing them and one for everything, then navigate with the key commands
Funny – I use colors so I can tell which tracks are which at a glance, vs. those abbreviated track names. Purple is my purple jazzmasterstein, orange for my sunburst strat, yellow for my gibson. My bass is black AND THERE’S NO BLACK… I use red for reverb (since I usually at least start with RedLine’s verb). Green for vox (since a Joe Meek preamp looks me in the face all day, rarely use it). I just wish they had a tobacco sunburst color for my old acoustics… I’m completely visually oriented, text rarely works for me when an icon is available.
I wish ProTools had a function like Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash’s layer groups. Group tracks into folder which you can open & close, but the folders are just for visibility, not for assigning master faders, etc. I’d love to have guitars, drums, keys, effects all visually groupable (uhh, can PT do that and I just don’t know it?) Seems like an absolute standard in the image & animation software I use daily.
Great idea mc.
Folders in the Edit window would be GREAT.
I too use Photoshop every day for my real job. I’d be LOST without Folders!!!
:p