Issue with the "lining up" line in Pro Tools

[Aleks_O]

Hi everyone, hope all is well?

Another noob question here regarding Pro Tools.

The white line that runs down the screen - I'm having trouble manually moving it around so I can line samples up against it. As it stands it seems there is no clearly visible line to do this to, so I can't act quickly and accurately when trying to line up samples to visuals.

Does anyone know what I'm on about and I presume there is probably an easy way to fix this?

Thanks,

Aleks

[Luke W]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the white line? If you're talking about the playhead, then you can snap a clip to it by holding Control and clicking (or Start + click on Windows) on the clip with the grabber tool.

If you want a grid to line things up with, then you just need to make sure grid is turned on (there's a button on the top toolbar in the edit window, just to the right of where the counter is) and then select "Grid" edit mode (top left of the edit window). Absolute grid will snap the clip to the lines, and Relative Grid will move them by the grid division amount, but maintain their current distance from the grid lines.

[Aleks_O]

Hi, thanks for the response!

Yeah I guess that's the play head tool then? There seems to be no way just to move that manually. I tried doing the ctrl and click on an audio and that didn't snap to the current playhead either.

I wish could post a screenshot to show what I mean, but I don't think I can

[Drew Stephenson]

Make a quick video using quick time and host it as a private link on youtube then link back here?

[Aleks_O]

ah yes, great idea thanks!

Ok, so it's a bit of a headache for me to to callibrate all the sound with OBS, so this is silent, but it's probably quite self explanatory with the playback head / white line going down the screen and my mouse spinning around frantically trying to move it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cG09-lDZyA

I actually managed to sync up the gun shots with the visuals ok-ishly in this example, but there's 2 mins more of sound design and I'm just so used to Logic Pro x where you can use the line / playback head as a way to line up samples with the video..

I hope the vid makes things clearer? let me know!

[Aleks_O]

Hey guys, so is moving the play head manually something which is impossible to do?

I just thought with Pro Tools being held in such high esteem a function like this would be extremely basic?

Thanks,

Aleks

[Phil O]

I think that a marker would be better suited for this purpose. That's what I use. You can certainly move them around.

[Aleks_O]

Hi Phil,

Cheers for the suggestion, it kind of works actually especially in conjunction with "nudging" frame by frame. I guess I might be ok then for the time being - thanks!

Aleks

[DC-Choppah]

Hey guys, so is moving the play head manually something which is impossible to do?

I just thought with Pro Tools being held in such high esteem a function like this would be extremely basic?

Thanks,

Aleks

Switch your cursor to the scrubber tool. The scrubber tool is the manual control of the playhead in Protools.

[Aleks_O]

Just looked into this, yeah this seems like a solution too, if not THE solution - thanks alot, much appreciated!