Here’s a fact about Pro Tools which, depending on your regular working methods, you might not be aware of. Most of us, when setting up a session in Pro Tools use the very handy Alt+Drag technique to copy inserts and sends between tracks. If, like me, you rarely make changes like this once your mix is developed enough to include automation on sends or insert parameters you might not be aware that when you duplicate the send or the plug-in parameter you also bring automation with it. Whether or not this is a good thing depends very much on whether or not that automation is relevant to its new destination.

If this were an issue that affected me regularly I might have found out sooner that my assumption that this behavior would be defeated if you switch off Automation Follows Edit (button changes from blue to orange) isn’t true. When I tried this I found that my assumption was wrong, the automation comes over to the new track regardless.

What Is Automation Follows Edit?

The clue is definitely in the name here but if you see above the difference between the effect of copying a clip along the timeline with Automation Follows Edit off vs on, all underlying automation will be copied along with the clip when moving clips along the timeline on the same track. When moving inserts or sends from track to track the option to defeat this Automation Follows Edit behaviour doesn’t have an effect, presumably because moving an insert or a send isn’t really an “edit”.

I’ve always been of the opinion that the important thing isn’t how much or how long you have used a piece of software that determines how well you know it but how much of the software you use. I hadn’t had my erroneous assumption challenged because I’d never tried it, in spite of countless hours spent in front of the Pro Tools Mix window. It reminds me of quite a harsh joke about a teacher who claimed he had twenty years of experience until it was pointed out to him that he actually had one year’s experience twenty times!