How To Deliver Dolby Atmos Mix In Pro Tools
Once your mix is ready now we’re going to deliver the mix so how we’re going to bounce the file and I’m going to show you two major ways to do this.
So the first thing is very simple. Just like how we bounce any other wave file in pro tools, we just go ahead and go to the bounce menu. And underneath you can see now we have the Dolby Atmos ADM file. So the ADM file is actually what we wanted for delivering the Atmos mix. Go ahead we will go to that selection and now you can see it shows you how many beds and objects you’ve used in this session and I can add an FFOA to it, which means where the session starts based on the time code. So I can tell the time code where my session starts. Now everything is synced up no matter where you play and the standard starts at 1:00:00:00. Before I do that, I have to actually put my session at the right time code position so I’m gonna get out of this, and then what I can do is to go to the setup session menu and then I wanted to change this session start at 1:00:00:00. So I hit enter and okay I’ll change that and now I can see the top of my session the top of my stems is at 1:00:00:00, but I really wanted to give it a little pre-roll for the time code to catch up so I wanted to give a little two seconds per roll before the start of the song. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna change it again. I’m gonna change this to 00, hit right arrow key, 59, 58, so at 59 minutes and 58 seconds before 1:00:00:00, hit okay again. I want to maintain timecode. So now the start of the session is at 00:59:58:00 while the start of my song is at 1:00:00:00. That’s perfect so now I wanted to go ahead and bounce this and change this to 1:00:00:00. That’s perfect so I’m going to bounce it.
The good thing about ADM is that ADM is actually a really powerful file format where you can just re-import this file into a brand new pro tool session, and then everything including the pan message where you assign your objects or beds they are all there, including your audio. The only thing that’s missing
is the naming of the track but it’s very easy to figure out what track is it.
So what we’re going to do with the bounce file? When we play it,opps, there’s nothing there. It’s because it can only be played by the renderer so I’m going to go ahead and go back to the renderer. Then I want to open it from the renderer so I’m going to open it. The renderer sees it as a master file so I’m going to actually, open it from here. Once I get out of sync mode, I can play it. I’ll play from 1:00:00:00. It’s playing the right thing and the level is good. So what I’m gonna do next is export a mp4 file for my clients to hear it. Because they’re not going to go in and download the renderer so what I can do
is actually go in the menu here, under “file” – “Export Audio” – “Export it as an mp4″ for my client to listen to on any kind of device. I’m gonna go ahead and then I can just bounce it back in there. We’ll use “music” option here and then for the entire master which is you can see the time code for the in and
out point, which is perfect. Because mp4 is a video format essentially and if you don’t have any video content to it, a music video orany sort of funny video that you want to add on to it. You can just put black video or no video. Just go ahead explore and now your client can hear it on any devices.
Okay, there’s also the second way of boucing the mix. Given that we have already done the time code settings for pro tools which is what we have right now and if you didn’t follow along from the first part of the video, you can go back to where I set up the time code for the session. Once you have this set up we’ll go back to renderer and we want to create a new session or a new master file for the renderer. So I’m gonna go ahead and go to the “File” menu and then create a new master file so I’m gonna call this “Dolby Atmos Mix”. I do want it to start at 1:00:00:00. so now I can create. we can see everything is ready and I just have to hit the “Link” button where I sync up my pro tools session with the renderer and then I’m gonna hit record enable. And if I play you can see it starts recording at 1:00:00:00 time mark. Once you’re done recording you have the whole song recorded in this renderer and embed it in the master file. We’re going to go ahead and look at what the master file has. So you’ll actually get a whole folder with three files: session file for the renderer; the audio content; and then the metadata. As long as you have this master file you can always open it back up in the renderer. Something you have to keep in mind is that you have to look at the playback mode is on the source or on the master. When it’s on master it means that it plays back whatever the recording you had open.
Once you finish rendering a track, playing all the way through, it will automatically switch to master so now what you hear is actually what it’s being recorded on tape. And if you wanted to switch it back to whatever pro tools was playing you have to put it in “Inputs” mode. When it comes to delivering your master to a streaming service, like apple music, all you have to do is to submit the ADM file. And you have to keep in mind that the standard for integrated loudness for it is -18lufs. So be mindful of that, when you mix in Dolby Atmos.