Pete Gates is probably best known for his excellent PT Prefs app that enables us to save, delete the and load Pro Tools Preferences files. He also created a lesser known app PT Session, which is a utility he originally wrote to simplify making music lists. He has now extended it to handle simple ADR needs. It can open a Pro Tools session text export file and you can then select which tracks to re-export - as tabbed text files / PDF files / Excel spreadsheet.

It then does this in a simplified format - no channel number (with a multi-channel track it just takes the left channel), no event number, removes fade in/fade out/crossfade and can optionally ignore muted clips.

On export, it can also optionally merge all the tracks that have been selected, into one merge track which is useful if you need to just have a list of clips that occur across multiple tracks.

For example, a track with a name of the form: KLAUS[KLA]{Actor Name} are recognised as...

• Character: KLAUS

• Character code: KLA

• Actor: Actor Name

Character/Character code/Actor aren't limited to any particular length, though Pete suggests that really long ones may get messy on the printout.

Clips of the form: "Text for ADR"{note text}[R1][P2][TBW] are recognised - with anything after the initial text being optional. 

• "the ADR text itself"

• {any director/editor/actor note} - these can be suppressed on output

• [R1] Reason 1 - (can be 1-9) - this can be suppressed on output

• [P2] Priority 2 - (can be 1-9) - this can be suppressed on output

• [TBW] To Be Written flag - this can be suppressed on output

You can export tracks individually or select multiple ones and do a bulk export - you choose a filename and the Character Name is appended to the respective files. You can also export tracks that aren't ADR cue tracks as such.

Although PT Session will never replace applications like EdiCue from Sounds In Sync, Pete himself says...

There are no MIDI or Pro Tools control features yet on PT Session and probably some other useful things are missing (if you need those features you probably need one of the commercial offerings)!

But in cases where you are working on a computer without an EdiCue license and you need to print cue sheets, this free application could be a valuable live saver.

Pete has been busy adding improvements to PT Session including...

• UTF-8 support for languages other than English

• Include the character name for each line in the Excel sheet so as to be able to export a whole script sorted by time, not by character.

• Support for TBW list PDFs (these are output in track and T/C order)

• The ability to specify what TC range will be exported to handle multiple versions of the show in the same Pro Tools session.

• The ability to import markers as a 'virtual track'. You can use the markers for simple cueing tasks.

• In version 1.5.4 there are now 3 different cue numbering options:

  • Simple cue numbering CUE_001, CUE_002 etc

  • Episode + cue number EP1_CUE_001, EP1_CUE_002 etc and

  • Episode + cut number + cue number EP1_CUT2_CUE_001, EP1_CUT3_CUE_002 etc 

  • You can now name a track [PRODINFO] and that is scanned as a special metadata track (and ignored for normal export use) for session wide metadata.  Pete recommends that it is probably best to create the required (they're all optional) region groups in the [PRODINFO] track then lock and hide it so it isn't accidentally edited. So far the recognised region groups in that track are....

    • Title=Title Name - If set this will override the use of the filename as the Title.

    • Director=Director Name - This will set the director name in the export options dialogue automatically

    • Supervisor=Supervisor Name - This will set the supervisor name in the export options dialogue automatically

    • Episode=Episode Name or Number or Reel=Reel Name or Number - This will set the episode / reel name or number in the export options dialogue automatically

    • Cut=Cut Name or Number or Version=Version Name or Number - This will set the cut/version name or number in the export options dialogue automatically

    • Notes=Note text - This will set the notes in the export options dialogue automatically. This isn't actually outputted anywhere yet but will be soon.

• The ability to print the Out TC.

• Notes / Flags / Reasons / Scenes / Priorities added into the Excel document.

• The export engine is now very multithreaded, exports complete a lot quicker on multicore machines.

So if any of this appeals then do check out PT Session which is available for Mac and Windows and don't forget to look at his other free apps PT Prefs and PT WAV Checker.

When it comes to software Pete's philosophy is simple.....

I write software utilities to fulfil my professional needs - I use Avid Pro Tools exclusively so this software is orientated around that. The software may be clunky but is hopefully useful!

There’s no support, no forum, no blog, no Twitter feed, no Facebook page… The upside is Everything that appears on this site is and will remain free (and no third party is permitted resell it in any form).

More About Pete Gates

Pete is a very busy Double BAFTA winning dubbing mixer, dialog editor and re-recording mixer with his own facility in the west end of London, Free Range Audio built around a 32 fader D-Control HDX2 rig.