Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1397791
45 F A L L Q 3 I S S U E T E C H Sound designer/composer Christian Scheuer initially created SoundFlow for himself, as a way to reduce the amount of time wasted on mousing and clicking around in Pro Tools. But realizing its potential to improve the lives of all Pro Tools users, he released it into the sound community. "It was the first product that had Pro Tools in mind, right out of the box," said MPSE Award-winning sound designer/ re-recording mixer Jamey Scott, who works in sound for films, series, and games. "Before SoundFlow, I was using Keyboard Maestro, which has a lot of functions but doesn't go as deep into Pro Tools, specifically. Before that, I was using QuicKeys since the '90s. Helper apps have always been a part of my work- flow, to speed things up. And the better SoundFlow gets, the more dependent on it I become for my work." Scott was an early adopter of Sound- Flow, noting that "in the beginning, it was basically a Javascript-only program. You couldn't make shortcuts unless you knew how to program Javascript, which I didn't." Once SoundFlow introduced the visual drag-and-drop macro "Editor" in 2019, which doesn't require any scripting knowledge, Scott could create custom buttons to trigger macros and scripts. Now, he does it all the time. "Usually when I'm working and I see something that is routine, I'll stop and figure out a way to create a shortcut for it," he said. "For instance, if I find I'm bouncing out a sequence of files, I will create a script that does all the steps for me automatically so I don't have to go through the same steps over and over. I press one button and it's done. That saves me a minute here and a minute there, but over the course of every day for a year, it's a significant savings of time." While mastering dialogue for video games, Scott wrote a custom script in SoundFlow that would "drag a whole section of regions into the timeline, sepa- rate them with a certain amount of length in between, apply specified processing from AudioSuite plugins, rename the audio files, and then export them out. I would press one button and it would do all of that in one shot. Again, a huge time saver," he said. If you're intimidated by creating scripts and macros, or just want to take immediate advantage of SoundFlow's a w e s o m e n e s s, i t c o m e s p re - l o a d e d with over 500 commands for Pro Tools s o t h e re's n o n e e d to w r i te l i n e s o f Javascript code. Inside the application, there's also a Store with free pre-made d o w n l o a d a b l e p a c k a ge s c re a te d b y other SoundFlow users and developers that just might eliminate your workflow speed bumps. Looking to try something simple, like reversing a sound in Pro Tools? Typically, that involves selecting the clip in the timeline, mousing up to the AudioSuite menu, scrolling down through the menu to find the Reverse plugin, selecting the SoundFlow comes pre-loaded with more than 500 commands for Pro Tools. Jonathan Wales. P H O T O : S O U N D F L O W