Specifications

Pro Tools Reference Guide334
Creating DigiGrooves (Pro Tools 6.x Only) Beat
Detective can extract groove templates, called
DigiGrooves, from an audio selection. Digi-
Grooves can be used to apply the groove, or feel
of the captured passage to other audio selections
(using Groove Conform) or MIDI data (using
Groove Quantize).
Conforming Audio Regions Beat Detective can
conform (“quantize”) audio with a different
tempo, or with varying tempos, to the session’s
current tempo map, or to a groove template
(Pro Tools 6.x only).
“Tighten Up” Performances Beat Detective can
be used to improve the timing of some audio
material by calculating and extracting its aver-
age tempo, and then conforming its rhythmic
components—regions separated with Beat De-
tective—to the session’s tempo map.
Loop Matching Since Beat Detective can extract
tempo and beat information from audio, and
conform audio to an existing tempo map or
groove template, this makes it very useful for
aligning loops with different tempos or grooves.
If a loop is at a different tempo than the current
session, Beat Detective lets you quickly separate
each beat in the loop and conform them to the
tempo map (as an alternative to time compress-
ing or expanding the loop, which can alter the
pitch and tone of the audio).
Remixes Beat Detective can be used for remixes
or creating new rhythms. It can extract tempo
from the original drum tracks, or in some in-
stances the original stereo mix. New audio or
MIDI tracks can then be conformed to the orig-
inal material, or the original material can be
conformed to new drum tracks, achieving an
entirely new feel.
Smoothing Post Production Edits Beat Detec-
tive’s Edit Smoothing can be used to automati-
cally clean up foley tracks that contain many re-
gions requiring trimming and crossfading,
effectively removing the gaps of silence between
the regions (thus retaining the room tone
throughout the track).
Beat Detective Requirements
Beat Detective is only available on Pro Tools
TDM systems.
RAM Requirements for Beat Detective
Beat Detective operations can require a large
amount of RAM, especially when working with
multiple tracks and lengthy selections.
To avoid low memory situations with Beat De-
tective, do the following:
• If you begin to experience slower Beat Detec-
tive response, add more RAM to your com-
puter.
• If your computer does not have the extra
RAM, work with shorter selections, or individ-
ual tracks.
• Set the Editing Preference for Levels of Undo
to a smaller value (see “Levels of Undo and
Memory” on page 220). Memory-intensive
editing operations, such as Edit Smoothing
with Beat Detective, can use up a large
amount of memory when in the Undo queue.