Specifications

Pro Tools Reference Guide310
Consolidate Selection
Command
During the course of normal edit operations, a
track may eventually contain many regions.
However, once a track or track range (such as a
verse or chorus) reaches a satisfactory state, you
may want to consolidate its regions into a single
region—thus making the material much more
easy to work with.
When consolidating an audio track, a new audio
file is written that encompasses the selection
range, including any blank space.
To consolidate regions within a track:
1 Using the Grabber or Selector, select the re-
gions you want to consolidate.
– or –
To select all regions in a track, triple-click in its
playlist with the Selector.
2 Choose Edit > Consolidate Selection.
A new, single region is created that replaces the
previously selected regions, including any blank
space. If working with an audio track, a new au-
dio file is written (with the Audio Suite Dupli-
cate plug-in).
When consolidating audio regions with the
Consolidate Selection command, if the selec-
tion contains muted regions, the muted regions
are treated as silence. Whether or not a track is
muted, or contains Mute automation, does not
affect the Consolidate Selection command.
Compacting an Audio File
The Compact Selected command deletes unused
portions of audio files to conserve disk space,
and to prepare for cleaner hard drive back-ups.
The Compact Selected command deletes audio
if there are no regions referencing the data. For
this reason you should delete any unused re-
gions before compacting.
Because it permanently deletes audio data, the
Compact Selected command should be used
only after you have completely finished your
editing and are sure that you have no further use
for the unused audio data.
The Compact Selected command can pad the re-
gions of the compacted file by a user-selectable
amount. You may want to do this because
Pro Tools requires extra audio data before and
after audio regions to create crossfades. So, if
your regions have crossfades, or if you want to
pad the regions for the sake of any future trim-
ming, you should enter an appropriate amount
of padding (in milliseconds) to allow for this.
Consolidating an audio track does not con-
solidate underlying automation data. To
create a single file with automation data
applied to the audio, use Bounce to Disk
(see “Bounce to Disk” on page 482).
The Compact Selected command is destruc-
tive and cannot be undone. It permanently
alters the original audio files. There is no
way to recover data deleted with this com-
mand.