Pre-Roll in Pro Tools 10

The pre-roll function in Pro Tools is useful when performing punch recording. It allows you to specify how far ahead of the Play Cursor or Play Start Marker location to start playback. This helps the musician to get into the groove before the playback reaches the punch-in point.

Enable Pre-Roll Using Toolbar

Click on the Pre-roll button in the Expanded Transport section of the toolbar. When Pre-Roll is enabled the Pre-roll button background becomes a brighter green.

Pre-Roll Enabled

Pre-Roll Disabled

Set Pre-Roll Amount Using Toolbar

Click on the numbers that are located next to the Pre-roll button and set the amount of pre-roll that you would like.

Pre-Roll Amount On Toolbar

Set Pre-Roll Amount Using Main Timebase Ruler

Drag the Pre-Roll flag on the Main Timebase Ruler to the desired location.  In the following image the pre-roll flag is located at bar 2 which is one bar before the current playback position, thus setting a pre-roll of 1|0|000.

Pre-Roll Flag (small orange flag at bar 2)

How To Get Wide Track Level Meters In Pro Tools

There is a hidden feature in Pro Tools that allows you to make the track level meters wider, here is how you do it on a Mac:

1. Hold down the control, option, and command keys down simultaneously 
2. Click on any of the track level meters in the Edit or Mix window

As you can see the meters are now about twice as wide as before.  To get back to the skinny meters repeat the above steps.

Regular Meter	Fat Meter

Hello World!

I created this blog as a place to document all of the valuable nuggets of information that I learn regarding digital audio workstations, plug-ins, recording, mixing, and songwriting.  Hopefully you will find it useful as well.