Back and play is an extremely useful feature when writing automation in real time in Pro Tools. It allows you to rewind the transport by a set amount without stopping playback. Invaluable if you are late with an automation move and need to try again. You can get by without it but it's so fast compared to other methods that once you've tried it you probably won't want to give it up.

Unfortunately Back and Play is only available in Pro Tools Ultimate. Most of the Ultimate-only features are linked to post-production specific workflows or use of HDX hardware but the lack of back and play is something of an outlier as it is extremely useful in the music workflows for which Pro Tools Studio is designed.

In a recent conversation with Production Expert’s team of contributors I mentioned how odd I found it that there was no keyboard shortcut set up for back and play by default. Of course these days it is easy to set up a custom keystroke but the omission used to bother me. It was during this conversation that Graham Kirkman mentioned his use of CMD+Opt+← (Ctrl+Alt+← on PC) to invoke Back and Play. I was very surprised that I didn’t know this shortcut. Subsequently Michael Costa shared a more detailed demonstration and after more experimentation I now understand how this shortcut works.

Actually it isn't back and play, if you search the keyboard shortcuts window you'll find that back and play doesn't have a keystroke assigned to it by default. This keystroke is actually “Play Through Edit Start”. It can be set up so as to give the same functionality as back and play but unlike back and play this use of Play Through Edit Start works in all versions of Pro Tools.

How Does It Work?

If you use this keystroke it will probably start playback from the insertion point in the same way as hitting spacebar would. The trick is to set up some pre-roll, something like five seconds would give the same behaviour as back and play, you also need to specify some post roll. For this to work well set the post roll to a high value. Preferably longer than your project.

The next step is to engage Insertion Follows Playback either using the button in the toolbar or by pressing N. Lastly make sure that pre and post roll are not engaged. This last step sounds counterintuitive. Why set up pre and post-roll and then switch it off? This is the trick about using this keystroke. When using Play Through Edit Start. Pre and post-roll values are used even when pre and post roll isn't engaged.

With all of these steps in place what happens when you hit CMD+Opt+← is that playback would restart from the location where the playback cursor had reached as opposed to the starting position when playback was initiated. This happens because Insertion Follows Playback is engaged.

Because a pre-roll value is specified playback starts from a little before the point the playback cursor had reached when you hit CMD+Opt+←

Finally, because a long post roll is also specified, playback continues past the point at which CMD+Opt+← was pressed.

The result of these settings is that the behaviour is equivalent to back in play and you don't need Pro Tools Ultimate to use it. It sounds more complicated than it is in use so watch a demonstration and explanation in the video below. Thanks to Michael Costa and Graham Kirkman for bringing this feature to my attention. I'm sure I'm not the only person who wasn't aware of it.