hi I'm Ben Lyndell and today I'm going
to be showing you how to export tracks
from logic and import them into Pro
Tools now you know whether you're a
musician who's taking their song to a
studio that only runs Pro Tools or your
producer that's sending your tracks off
to get mixed you're going to need to
know how to do this I know there's a lot
of options along the way they often get
people tripped up so I'm going to show
you how to get past those alright let's
get started so here we are in Logic 9 as
you can see we have a rock-and-roll
session pulled up with a whole bunch of
audio tracks and a couple of instrument
tracks as well now first things first
logic uses the track name as the file
name when exporting so you can make it
easier on yourself and others by naming
these before you export and that way
when we import into Pro Tools those
names are going to carry over and we'll
know what's what also another thing to
know is that in logic even when a track
is muted it's still going to export now
this can be a big problem if you have
lots of scratch tags or just ideas
floating around inside of your session
so there's two ways to fix this one is
to select the regions on those tracks
press m to mute them or the other is to
do a save as for safety purposes and
then take all those tracks and delete
them one last thing to take note of is
that logic only exports audio and
instrument tracks so that means any aux
tracks that you may have won't get
exported such as effects returns or
subgroups alright so I think we're all
set let's actually export this song so
let's go to file export as you can see
there's a ton of options here but for
right now we're just going to be using
all tracks as audio files
all right brings up a save dialog box
and it opened up to the desktop that's
fine I'm just going to create a new
folder and give it a song name and also
a great habit to get into and importing
and exporting from logic to Pro Tools is
to include the BPM of the song in the
folder so that way when you open up in
Pro Tools later you're not going to have
to guess what the tempo is all right
create so there's a bunch of options
that we need to double check before
exporting our tracks the first one is
bit depth as you can see logic
defaulted the 32-bit float but to bring
this into Pro Tools without having to
convert it again I'm going to select
24-bit now right above there you see
save format logic default to the AIFF
which is fine but to make this more
compatible between Macs and PCs I'm
going to use the WAV format now the rest
of these options are brand new to logic
9 but they're incredibly useful
the first one is bypass effect plugins
now what this does is it turns off all
the inserts on your tracks and exports
just the raw recorded audio which can be
great if you're giving it to somebody
else to mix as it gives them complete
freedom to apply their own plugins now
if you like how you track sound already
and you want to export them with these
effects on them leave this unchecked and
when you open it up in Pro Tools it'll
sound identical next option is include
volume pan automation by checking this
logic will print your volume and pan
automation on to your exported tracks it
will even take your mono tracks that
have panned information and turn them
into stereo tracks this will be great so
when you import your tracks into Pro
Tools everything will be in the same
spot in the stereo field once again if
you're sending your track off to be
mixed by somebody else it may be a good
idea to uncheck this as it'll give them
complete freedom over the volume and
panning of your tracks the last option
in logic 9 when exporting your tracks is
to normalize there's three options here
off overload protection only and on when
you set normalize to off logical
absolutely not touch the gain of any of
your tracks even if they're peaking and
distorting it'll export in that way so
it's kind of risky now overload
protection only will take those tracks
that we're peeking and distorting and
it'll turn them down so the peak at 0 DB
so it's kind of the safe way to do it
now when normalize is set to on logic is
going to normalize every single track
that you export the soft ones going to
be brought up to 0 the loud ones going
to be brought down and your whole
balance that you've been listening to is
gone so it's kind of the unnecessary way
so I'm going to play it safe and select
overload protection only and now we're
ready to export
answer here's my folder you wait too
long 89.5 BPM so let's double check that
all our files are in the right place and
it looks like everything's there so
let's open up Pro Tools and import these
now we need to import all the tracks
that we just exported from logic so to
do that I'm going to go to file import
audio navigate to my desktop open up the
folder I export all my tracks into here
we go so select the first one now it's
very important that when doing this you
do not select add or add all as this
will not copy the file into your session
folder you're very likely to lose the
files in the future instead select all
and come down and press either convert
all or copy all and then press done
choose your destination folder we're
going to choose audio files the default
and let Pro Tools sit here and think
okay now Pro Tools is import all my
audio now just a few last options first
one is destination now I can either
choose to put all the files on a new
track or have them put it into the
region list so I'm going to leave on new
track I can also choose the location to
place all these files so I can either
choose the session start selection or in
a spot so I'm going to choose session
start and click OK alright so here's all
my tracks I export from logic in Pro
Tools now as you can see they're just an
alphabetical order at the moment so I'm
going to need to rearrange these to kind
of make a little bit more sense but
overall that's about it today we export
all of our tracks out of logic and
import them into Pro Tools now I've
shown you one way how to do this but as
you may remember there are a couple
other options such as OMF and AAF files
now these have their own advantages and
disadvantages
big advantage is that when you open them
up in Pro Tools you can edit all of your
regions volume and pan automation but a
big disadvantage especially if you're a
music producer so all your software
instruments don't get printed as audio
files and
you open it up in ProTools they just
disappear so it's up to you to pick
which method is going to work best for
your project but I find that most of the
time the method I shown you today
usually will work the best so until next
time