In part 10 of our Getting To Grips With Pro Tools series, we are going to take a look at how to use Clip Groups. formerly known as Region Groups, in Pro Tools.

Clip Groups In Pro Tools

Make this feature a good friend. For established Pro Tools users Avid changed the name from regions to clips with the launch of Pro Tools 11. A clip group is a collection of any combination of audio and MIDI clips that look and act like a single clip. Clip groups can be created on single or multiple adjacent audio, MIDI, and instrument tracks and can be considered like ‘containers’ and as such can be manipulated just like any other ‘normal’ clip. Some edits will affect all the clip in a group whereas others only apply to the boundaries of a clip group like Trim.

Clip groups are very useful for ‘temporarily consolidating’ a bunch of clips that might have been created by the use of Beat Detective or grouping parts or sections together like a brass section and copying it from one chorus to the next. Although you could use Consolidate Selection, the benefits of Clip Grouping are that you can ungroup them and get back to the individual clips and it works across multiple tracks, neither of which you can do with Consolidate Selection. Watch this video that Russ made on Region Groups which is what Clip Groups used to be called.

There are other uses for clip groups. When recording voiceover sessions in Pro Tools it can be really frustrating that you cannot edit out the rubbish whilst continuing to record. In Podcast 202, our NAMM 2016 special, we read out a great tip from community member Nando Eweg where he shared his tip for helping to get around this. We liked it so much that I have made a video to show you how to use Nando's tip and added my own take on it too. If you want to know more you can read the article Marking Up A Voiceover Session Whilst Still Recording In Pro Tools.

Clip groups don't even have to contain any audio or MIDI clips. These next two tips both exploit the slightly counter-intuitive fact that a clip group can be created even when it doesn’t contain any clips. Just by making an edit selection and hitting cmd+opt+G/ctrl+alt+G a clip group can be created which can be treated like any clip on the timeline but because it contains nothing it doesn’t increase the size of the session.

Pro Tools Quick Tips - Clip Groups As Markers - Pro Tools only offers one marker ruler but by creating some additional tracks it can be easy to create clip group markers to de-clutter your marker ruler.

Using Clip Groups To Mark Up ADR in Pro Tools Without Specialist Software - Alan uses them for marking up ADR within a Pro Tools session, which can then reasonably automatically convert to PDF ADR sheets, suitable for printing or importing into video cueing streamers or systems with MIDI triggers.

Next time in Getting To Grips With Pro Tools we will look at creating Playlists, Vocal Comping & Labels in Pro Tools.