Specifications
Pro Tools Reference Guide148
In general, the Use All Available Space prefer-
ence makes hard drives work harder. In addition
to record and punch lag times, many system see
better overall recording performance when the
Open Ended Record Allocation is limited.
To allocate a specific amount of time to recording:
1 Choose Setups > Preferences and click Opera-
tion.
2 Under the Open Ended Record Allocation op-
tion, select Limit To and enter the number of
minutes to be allocated.
The number of minutes specified is allocated for
each record-enabled track.
3 When you are finished, click Done.
Record Modes
For recording audio, Pro Tools has four record
modes:
• Nondestructive Record (Default)
• Destructive Record
• Loop Record
• QuickPunch
•TrackPunch (HD Only)
To enable Destructive Record, Loop Record,
QuickPunch or TrackPunch, select them from
the Operations menu. If none of these record
modes are selected, Pro Tools is in normal Non-
destructive Record mode.
The record mode can also be switched by Right-
clicking (Windows and Mac OS X) or Control-
clicking (Macintosh) the Transport Record But-
ton. This cycles through the modes with the
Record button changing to indicate the cur-
rently selected mode: blank for Nondestructive,
“D” for Destructive, a loop symbol for Loop
Record, “P” for QuickPunch and “T” for Track-
Punch.
Nondestructive Record Mode
In normal Nondestructive Record mode,
Pro Tools records audio nondestructively, which
means that if you record over a track’s existing
regions, the audio is not erased from your hard
drive. Both the new and old audio files remain
on your hard drive, available as regions from the
Audio Regions List.
Open Ended Record Allocation, Operation Preference
Choose Windows > Show Disk Space to
check the current available space on your
drives.
Destructive Record mode enabled
When recording, you can preserve disk
space by removing unwanted record takes
(see “Removing Unwanted Regions” on
page 313) and compacting audio files (see
“Use this “power delete mode” with cau-
tion, since deletion of these files cannot be
undone.” on page 313).