Once you have completed your work, eventually your carefully crafted audio will have to leave Pro Tools and benefit the world by fulfilling its intended purpose.

Bouncing out of Pro Tools used to be a strictly real-time affair, frustratingly slow. The practice of printing to tracks is also largely abandoned. Still popular with some but the audible difference between bouncing and printing was an issue with the old DAE, which has since been rewritten, though I’m sure someone will disagree. The point of this article is to highlight the faster, more convenient alternative to bouncing which, depending on your needs might be all you need.

• Bounce to Disk - Creates a file of the audio at any available output of bus for the duration of the timeline selection. This will reflect the current mixer settings and all relevant plug-in processing and automation.

• Export Selected - Creates a file of the selected clip(s). This is “pre-mixer” and won’t include any plug-in processing.

If you are mixing then exporting is of limited use, after all, it won’t include any of your mix decisions. However, if you are using Pro Tools as an editor export is a very practical choice. An example of how this might work can be found in our weekly podcast. If you have nearly an hour of recorded audio which you need to get out of Pro Tools and over to the person editing the podcast, there’s no tangible benefit in bouncing. All that is needed is the raw audio.

How Do I Bounce To Disk?

• If you’ve ever used Pro Tools before you’ll know this but go to File - Bounce to - Disk or use the shortcut CMD+Opt+B (Ctrl+Alt+B on PC)

How Do I Export Selected?

• Select the clip(s) you want to export and either right-click on the clip in the clips list or use the shortcut CMD+Shift+K (Ctrl+Shift+K on PC).

If you export multiple clips you will create multiple files, If you want a single file you’ll have to Consolidate Clips first (Opt/Alt+Shift+3). Consolidating creates a new file but Exporting that file will give you control over the file format.