CMU School of Drama


Friday, October 30, 2015

Shortcuts: Pro Tools vs. Hindenburg

Transom: The secret to developing speed and efficiency in digital audio editing is getting used to common, repetitive actions, so that they become automatic. Keyboard shortcuts can speed up your workflow significantly, especially when you can do them without stopping to think about them. But they can also trip you up if you start using another program, and be dizzying if you switch back and forth.

1 comment:

Scott MacDonald said...

Although I haven’t extensively used either of the programs mentioned, I can definitely relate to the issue this article is based on. Forgetting keyboard shortcuts is a universal problem across basically any type of software. Forgetting shortcuts can be especially annoying because their whole purpose is to increase workflow and speed, and nothing kills the flow worse than going “wait… what’s that shortcut??” Switching between programs with similar shortcuts is actually less of a problem for me – I can relate more in switching between PC and Mac keyboards! They’re very similar, but different enough that you can get very tripped-up. Even just switching between keyboards with slightly different key spacing can cause your muscle memory to be tripped up. (This may be more of an issue for me since I don’t touch-type the “proper” way, but I type without needing to look).
I think it’s great that this website created this guide not only to help themselves, but then made it available to help others. I’m not sure how we can solve the issue of mixing up keyboard shortcuts, but helpful guides such as this are a start.