Bounce Factory Important Concepts

How will my session be set up when using Bounce Factory to bounce a mix pass?

I thought that it would be good to put all of the information about how Snapshots and Mix passes work when it comes to the way your session will be set up when you bounce.

The starting point for any mix pass is the session itself, in the state you last saved it. Bounce Factory takes a picture of the session when you take a snapshot, but you can absolutely continue working on the session after taking the snapshot and all of those changes will be preserved unless you explicitly tell Bounce Factory to override them with settings saved in the Snapshot.

Here's the order of events:

1. When you bounce any mix pass, the first thing Bounce Factory does is to open the session if it isn't open already.

2. If you have any of the Main Track Data categories enabled in the App Settings they are then loaded from the snapshot and will override the corresponding setting that were saved in the session. This is an acrosss-the-board action that will replace that particular type of session data for all tracks in the session (with the odd exception of and tracks that were frozen when you took the Snapshot, they will not have their settings imported due to the way Pro Tools deals with frozen tracks).

3. Solo, Mute, and Playlist selection settings are then set for any tracks specified in any of the extra mix passes added to the snapshot (see below). The Main Mix Pass in the Snapshot will always leave those settings as they are after steps 1 and 2.

To summarize:

1. The saved session knows about every possible setting in your session including the audio on the timeline.
2. The Snapshot knows about every setting in your session at the time you take the snapshot except for the audio on the timeline (though it does know what playlist was currently active on each track). The Snapshot Recall Data Filter settings determines what of this data (if any) will be recalled from the snapshot when you bounce any mix pass from that Snapshot.
3. Any mix pass other than the Main Mix Pass has additional information that further overrides the session after step 2 in the following ways:

Selected Track Solo Pass: Will solo all of the tracks that were selected when the pass was added to the Snapshot.

Selected Track Mute Pass: Will mute all of the tracks that were selected when the pass was added to the Snapshot.

Selected Track Playlist Pass: Will restore the playlist selection for all of the tracks that were selected when the pass was added to the Snapshot.

Mini Snap: Will restore mute, solo, playlist settings and automation modes for all of the tracks that were selected when the pass was added to the Snapshot.

Please note: This is the only type of playlist pass that knows about automation mode settings, so if you need to do a pass with a track muted that has mute automation, you need to use a Mini Snap, not a Selected Tracks Mute Pass.

Stems: Will solo each of the tracks that were selected when the pass was added to the Snapshot for its own mix pass.

Hope this helps!

Easter Eggs

Hidden extra functionality to make your life easier:

1. You can click the B on the right side of the snapshot list to select all of the mix passes that have been bounced.

2. On a related note, if you command-click the Delete button you can delete all bounced Snapshots without having to select them first.

3. You can command-double-click any entry in the snapshot list when in grouped mode to go up a level (same as clicking the Up 1 Level button.

4. You can option-click the Take Snapshot button to force Bounce Factory to refresh the session snapshot data (bounce and export dialog settings, valid bounce sources etc). Normally this would only happen when you either rename the session or open another session.

What to do if Bounce Factory doesn't put your session back the way you had it:

If Bounce Factory encounters an error, it will try to reset the session to however you had it looking before you started, including what tracks are showing, floating windows, etc. There are times though when something happens making BF unable to do this. If this happens it is a very easy two step process to set the session back yourself.

1. In the Memory Locations window there will be a Memory Location called "BF - Track Visibility". Recall this and your track view will be restored. If there is more than one recall them from the bottom up and you will find the one that reflects how you had the session. Feel free to delete them once you have the session back the way you want it.

2. In the Window Configurations Window is a window config called "BF - User Window Setup". This will recall all of the window settings as you had them. Feel free to delete these as well.

(Note: In Bounce Factory versions prior to 1.2.11 these did not have the "BF - " Prefix and are just called "Track Visibility" and "User Window Setup")

Main Snapshots

New feature (as of 1.2.19)

You now have the ability to designate a Snapshot as being the Main snapshot for a particular Session. Whichever Snapshot is marked as Main will be bounced last when you bounce the session, and therefore the session will be left set up however that Snapshot was set up. This ONLY affects the order that mix passes are bounced in, it has no effect on the bounced mixes themselves.

Here's an example: let's say you have two Snapshots for a session: "Mix Passes" which has all of your standard mix passes and stems, and "Vocal Up Passes" which has (surprise surprise) all of your vocal up passes. If you mark the "Mix Passes" Snapshot as the Main, it will be bounced second, so the session will be saved with your standard vocal levels, not the Vocal Up levels.

Ok, so how does it work?

1. The first Snapshot you take for a session will automatically be marked as Main. If you only take one Snapshot for a session then it doesn't really affect anything.

2. If you have more than one Snapshot for a session and want to change which is the Main do the following.
   a) Change the Snapshot list in the app to Grouped view.
   b) Double click the session you want to change the Master designation on
   c) In the list of Snapshots for the selected session you will see a third column on the right with an M at the top. You should also see one of the Snapshots in the list marked with an M, this is the current Main. If you are working with older Snapshots there may not be a designated Main (see #3 below).
   d) Select the Snapshot you would like to make the Main, and click the M at the top of the column.

3. If you have Snapshots in the app (or import them from saved files) that were made before this feature was introduced, none of those Snapshots will be designated as Main, but once they are loaded into the app you can mark whichever one you want.

Just to sum up, here is the way Bounce Factory figures out what order to bounce Mix Passes in when you click Bounce All.

1. Sort by sample rate keep the sample rate switching to a minimum.
2. Sort by session, each session only gets opened once
3. Sort the Snapshots for each session so the Main Snapshot is bounced last
4. Within each Snapshot make sure the Standard Mix Pass is bounced last to undo and Solos, Mutes or Playlists that were switch for individual passes.