Specifications

Pro Tools Reference Guide424
Half-Speed Playback Mode
Use Half-Speed Playback mode to learn or tran-
scribe difficult passages in recorded tracks.
To play at half-speed:
1 Do one of the following:
• Shift-click the Play button in the Transport.
• Right-click the Play button in the Transport and
select
Half-Speed. Then click Play to start Half-
Speed Playback.
2 Click Stop in the Transport to stop playback.
Prime for Playback Mode
When playing back a large number of tracks,
Pro Tools may take a little longer to actually start
playback. To avoid this delay, put Pro Tools in
Prime for Playback mode before starting playback.
To enable Prime for Playback mode and start
playback:
1 Do one of the following:
• Option-click (Mac) or Alt-click (Windows) Play
in the Transport to put Pro Tools in Prime for
Playback mode.
• Right-click the Play button and select
Prime for
Playback
.
The Stop button lights and the Play button flashes.
2 To begin playback instantaneously, click Play.
3 Click Stop to stop playback.
Loop Playback Mode
When Loop Playback mode is enabled, the se-
lected track range repeats on playback. If there is
no selection, playback occurs normally from the
current Cursor location.
Looping playback is a useful way to check the
rhythmic continuity of a selection when working
with musical material. If you’re working with one-
bar selections, you can loop playback to see if the
material loops cleanly. If it seems to skip, you
should then adjust the length of the selection until
it works “musically” within the context of the
playlist and the other tracks.
To loop playback of a selection:
1 Select Options > Link Timeline and Edit
Selection
.
2 With the Selector tool, select the track range
you want to loop.
3 Enable Loop Playback by doing one of the
following:
• Select
Options > Loop Playback.
• Right-click the Play button in the Transport win-
dow and select
Loop from the pop-up menu.
• Control-click (Mac) or Start-click
(Windows) the Play button in the Transport win-
dow.
• Press Command+Shift+L (Mac) or
Control+Shift+L (Windows).
• With the Numeric Keypad mode set to Trans-
port, press 4 on the numeric keypad.
You can also play at half-speed by pressing
Shift+Spacebar.
When synchronizing to timecode, use Prime
for Playback mode to play back large num-
bers of tracks. This decreases the time it takes
to lock to timecode.
A selection must be at least 500 ms in length
for it to loop on playback.