A puzzler on achieving the right speed.

I have a three-hour open reel recorded at 1 7/8 ips. I need to get it to CD. My open reel will play down to 3 3/4 ips. If I record the 3 hours to ProTools at 3 3/4 ips, then I can do a half-speed playback and it will be the correct speed, BUT I have to bounce it out to disk in order to burn a CD. Is there any way to do a half-speed bounce to disk? Or could I do a half-speed playback while recordinig the result to another track? It too would have to be bounced out at regular speed which would be too fast. I guess I could output to another tape or date, but that's another 3 hours--a long time and too long for a tape. Any other ideas? Thanks, Steve

I'm not sure if you could record half speed playback to another track because I think the system is changing the sample rate on the fly to create half speed playback. Your recording would actually be at normal speed at the end of the day. I'd record the whole thing in at 3 3/4ips and then use the highest quality Audiosuite plugin you can get to varispeed it to half speed. Because you're not asking the plugin to maintain the pitch, the quality shouldn't be too bad. Waves Time Shifter, Pitch'n'Time, the new Digi X-Form or even the new free Digi plug should all do a good job.

This is very simple to do. Record the project at 88.2 with playback at 3-3/4. Export the resulting 1.5 hour take as a file. Hack the header of said file using Soundhack (a free utility available online) and change the sampling rate to 44.1. Import the hacked file into a new 44.1 session and you'll find that you have a three hour take at the right speed and pitch. No src or pitch shifting necessary. You might want to break the project into 3 pieces since you'll need 3 CDs to fit all 3 hours anyway. 30 minutes per piece would give an hour on each CD.

Jimmy, Thanks for the reply and the solution. Now, how do you do it? I don't see a way to set ProTools to 88.2. Also, what file format would I be saving--a wave? And if ProTools won't do this, what program were you visualizing that would do this? Thanks!

You select the Pro Tools clock rate in the create new session dialog. When you export the file, it should be in a format that Soundhack can hack. I know it can do aif, but I don't know if it can do wav.

Jimmy, It must just be my older version of Pro Tools but under "new session" I'm only given the choice of 16 or 24 bit and 44.1 or 48 khz. I can record in Aiff, Wave or SDII but the rate still doesn't give any more options than these two in any of the three formats. I'm running PT 6.4 on Mac OX 9.3. Is that the problem? Any other ideas for getting this done. Thanks for your patience and your help. Steve

In that case, record at 44.1, export the file, hack the header to 22.05 and re-import with sample rate conversion to 44.1. This method guarantees no frequencies above 11K, but that may not be much of a problem since this is coming from a 1-7/8 source anyway.

Jimmy, I know you didn't take me to raise and I appreciate your help very much. I don't have that software and maybe I'll need to get ti, but! I recorded the program 44.1 at 3 3/4 ips, so it's double speed. I did discover that the Shift-Apple-K does allow you to select rate so I chose 88.2 and out put it as a bwf wave file. Then I opened a new session at 44.1, went to "import audio" and chose the file I had earlier imported. File import showed it to be at 88.2 khz and said it wouild have to convert it on import so I thought Yeah! But when I put the resulting imported file on the timeline in the new session it was exactly as before and just played double speed like it always had. What did I miss here? Thanks, Steve

What happened is that you upsampled the file on export, and then you downsampled the file on import so it did nothing for you. Download Soundhack here: There are versions for OSX, OS9 and older. Hack the header of the 88.2 file that you exported and change it to 44.1. What this is doing is changing it from a 1.5 hour file at 88.2 to a 3 hour file at 44.1. You're halving the playback speed of the file which halves the speed of what's in the file. Now import the hacked file into a 44.1 session and crack a Haake-Beck while you ruminate on old TJs good nature.