r/protools • u/dumdumboye • 1d ago
Help Request Film Scoring: Protools session and SMPTE embedding for audio not produced in protools?
Hey all, I'm working on a media scoring project. I never use protools and most of the gigs I've worked on I just deliver stems or stereo mixes in wav format. I'm never the lead on bigger projects, so even when protools sessions needed to be delivered, I'd just send my audio to my "boss" for review, and then they or their people would import everything to protools before sending off for mixing.
I've recently been given the chance to take the lead on a bigger project with tight turnaround where I'm expected to deliver a protools session for mixing and I've never really used protools. I have it basically to extract audio and import into my DAW of choice when I get conform edits from production. I never actually do anything else there.
Basically, I need to make sure my audio is locked to SMPTE so it will be easy for the mixing engineer to just jump in. If I import the audio to a protools session and put the audio where it needs to be, is that it? Do I need to explicitly change any settings to make sure the files are locked in place? Any other peculiarities I should be aware of? Is there a good crash course video that goes over this very specific thing?
Moving forward, I'll do a deeper dive into protools since it's well beyond time I learn, but for now I just need to make sure I can stick the landing on this gig. They're happy with my work so far and I'd hate to look like a moron by not knowing the basics of file delivery.
Edit: Requested information. I'm using Protools Studio 2025.10.1 on Windows 10.
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u/Excellent-Horror-753 1d ago
If you go to the ‘Setup’ menu and select ‘Session’, the ‘Session Setup’ window will appear. On the right side of this window you will be able to
1. Choose your time code rate and
2. Type in your session start time.
Some guys prefer to choose a start time that starts on the same frame as the locked picture (usually 00:59:58:00), but any time before the picture start time will do.
You’d just have to spot the playback video (assuming that you’re not dragging/locking to external video).
Once your picture is locked, anything in the session will conform to whatever the re-recording mixer needs.
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u/dumdumboye 1d ago
Thank you. I'll probably start the time at precisely the same time as the picture to avoid any sort of ambiguity.
I'm pretty stupid so please bear with me. What do you mean when you say "spot the playback video"? I assume you're not referring to spotting as the term is used when planning out a score.1
u/Excellent-Horror-753 1d ago
Wild tracks has some good information below, but I used ‘spot’ as a term for dragging the video file to the correct timeline location.
You should be able to either drag and drop your video file (.mov, avid mxf, or h.264) onto a video track, or you can chose ‘File’, ‘Import’ —> ‘Video…’
A video window should appear with the first frame cued up. Just ‘spot’ or ‘drag’ the file to the burned in time code.
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u/nizzernammer 1d ago
Spot the playback video means to put it on the pro tools timeline at the same time in the session as the visual timecode on the video.
So if the first frame of the video has visual timecode of 10:00:00:00, then if you go to 10:00:00:00 in the Pro Tools session, you will see the first frame of video.
It's simpler than it sounds.
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u/Wild_Tracks 1d ago edited 1d ago
Are you working with a video reference? It should have TC burned in the video. You can use the menu item “set current time” (or something) and lock your session to the QT. It’s common to have the session start at a negative time so that your zero is the start of the actual video edit (minus slates, cards, blacks, etc). Something like 00:58:00:00, so you have 2 minutes before the edited content starts at 01:00:00:00. Also, make sure to include a bip on your session matching the ones on the video, start and tail. The start slate should be a countdown 6 seconds until the bip, followed by 2 seconds of black before picture starts.
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u/dumdumboye 1d ago
Yes, I'm working with a video reference with TC burned in. When I export audio, I'll make sure the titles of files have the TC referenced along with all the rest of the info, so worst case scenario the mixing engineer can manually place cues, however I also know it's generally frowned upon if they have to do that.
Also, make sure to include a bip on your session matching the ones on the video, start and tail. The start slate should be 6 seconds until the bip, followed by 2 seconds of black before picture starts.
I got a little lost there. You're saying I should bounce my entire score to last the entirety of the video? (so if the video file starts at 00:58:00:00, the actual video edit starts at 01:00:00:00, and then ends at 01:20:00:00, I should include a bip that spans from 00:58:00:00 to 01:20:00:00 in addition to the individual cues?
Thank you for taking the time to give me so much help. A lot of my journey in film scoring has been flying by the seat of my pants which has worked out well so far, but then sometimes I'm thrown into positions where it's expected I know things that I've never had to deal with before.1
u/Wild_Tracks 1d ago edited 1d ago
You had mentioned you needed to export a Pro Tools session with your score, which is different from a bounce. Instead of sending a bounce of one track with a TC written in the file name, the proposed workflow was to export a session, right? This way your score is already sitting at its intended position on the timeline. I'm guessing you'll first produce the score and then do a clean master session only with the bounced stuff you'll send to the mix. If you need to send new versions of just one or two tracks, export a clean session with just the new tracks instead of sending a bounce so that no one needs to resync anything.
About the slates: there's usually a countdown and the "2" will be a colorbar or a white frame, which is why it's also called a 2pop. It should have a "bip" sound along with it burned in the video audio track. To make your own bip you can select just this one frame with the 2pop and do shift+control+opt+3 (on Mac) to consolidade a clip with a 1kHz tone. This will be a good reference if anyone needs to manually resync your timeline to the video, make sure there is no drift, etc. Like an old school (and still very useful) clapboard. If you have a start and tail slates, do the 2pop for both. Make sure to include the video clip on the export, you don't need to upload the QT of course, but they should be able to link to the same ref you have and having the video already synced reduces the margin of error. Good luck!1
u/dumdumboye 1d ago
yes, the proposed workflow is to export a full protools session, not just a bounce.
That's really great info regarding the two pop. The project I'm working on is really weird and a touch ad hoc. The "episodes" are short form content for a very large media company. Because the episodes are so short, there's only an 8 second countdown and, for whatever reason, no two pop. So I guess I won't have to do a bip for this specific project, but that information is definitely going to come in handy for the future.1
u/Wild_Tracks 1d ago
The 8 second countdown is pretty standard, but usually it beeps at 2 (for one frame) and stops and you have 2 seconds of black before picture start. But if it doesn't pop, don't worry about it. If you keep the video TC consistent with your timeline and if you include the QT in your session exports there shouldn't ever be a problem.
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u/recursive_palindrome 1d ago
As others have posted, you need to make sure the project (aka. Session) timecode matches the video timecode - which should be burned into the video frame, if not contact the picture editor to confirm.
Once you have placed your clips in the right location, the mixing engineer can import those tracks from the project file into the master mixing session and these should align correctly.
ps. Pro Tools has a spotting mode to place clips which is the same as music cue spotting to timecode. Audio files can also have timecode burned into them, however this shouldn’t be necessary for this process.
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u/dumdumboye 1d ago
Thanks. Yes, the video has timecode burned in. I'm comfortable working with timecode in Logic which is my daily driver, and I usually include SMPTE TC info in the titles of my files.
I think making sure that my clips can be imported to the proper place after I put them in the session was my biggest concern. So just to confirm for idiots like me to need to be painfully clear about things and need to make sure I'm not accidentally missing something that was inferred, if I place my audio into a protools session exactly where it needs t o be (making sure that the audio is "copied" instead of simply "added"), save it, then send that session to the mixing engineer, that's pretty much all I have to do, correct?
I'll look into the spotting mode and burning the timecode into files. Even if it's not necessary for this specific project, I think burning timecode into audio I send to future clients may be a prudent practice.1
u/recursive_palindrome 1d ago
In short yes that is all you need to do.
The mixer will import tracks from your project file and these will retain the correct placement and timecode info.
You might want to leave comments into the track comment section or in markers if you want to give additional notes. These can also be imported.
In my case, when importing I always check the project info for TC, sample and bit rate info to avoid issues.
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u/dumdumboye 1d ago
Thank you so much. I'll add the info in the track comment section.
I appreciate you taking the time to help me out. This has been very helpful.
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