5 Session-Saving Tips for Studio One

12/07/2024

By Craig Anderton

I admit it: the following tips are based on personally embarrassing experiences. I like to work fast to keep the creative juices flowing, but that can lead to occasional mistakes. Fortunately, these tips can help prevent a session from accidentally going south.

Track Lock

To lock track Events to their timeline positions, right-click on the track's header and choose Time Lock (fig. 1). One application is locking tracks before mixing. Although the mixing console has full functionality, if you switch over to the Arrange window to set up loop points, confirm which tracks are in folders, and the like, a slip of the mouse won't cause accidental edits.

I also use this with my authentic ADT technique, which requires placing two tracks at precise timeline positions. Locking both tracks maintains those positions. (Note: Even when locked, some non-critical editing functionality, like renaming, remains available.)

Figure 1: Right-click on a track and then choose to lock or unlock it. When locked, a lock symbol appears in the track header's upper right.

Time Lock and Edit Lock

These are more granular locking options (fig. 2). Right-click on an Event or Events, and choose one or both:

Time Lock prevents the Event from moving on the timeline. You can still do edits like alter fades.

Edit Lock prevents making accidental edits.

Figure 2: Protect an individual Event or Events from being edited, having timeline positions changed, or both.

Pseudo-Retrospective Recording for Audio

Although not as sophisticated as Retrospective Recording for MIDI Events, Studio One 3 introduced a similar function for audio. When enabled, Studio One is always listening to your audio inputs, and capturing the audio in buffers. When you start recording, the file includes audio that occurred before you clicked on record. After recording, you don't see the captured audio. However, slip-editing the beginning of the audio to the left reveals the pre-record audio.

To set up Pre-Record audio, choose the Advanced Options, and select the Audio tab. Check Pre-Record Audio Input, and specify the number of seconds you want to capture (fig. 3). The maximum is one minute, but with lots of inputs this uses quite a bit of buffer memory. 10 or 15 seconds usually suffices.

Figure 3: Missed the first few seconds of a take? Relax-you had Pre-Record Audio Input checked.

Two other cool features include:

Pre-Record saves the audio for any track that's record-enabled. So, suppose a drum set has five miked tracks, and the drummer plays some amazing intro but you were late clicking on record. You can slip-edit all five recorded tracks to recover the audio.

Pre-Record can handle interruptions. Let's assume a guitarist plays some great riff and then stops, but you missed it. So, you click on record, and pre-record captures the sound you missed. But then the guitarist says hey, don't record me yet, I'm not ready. So, you click out of record, with the transport still going while you wait. Unexpectedly, the guitarist plays an even better version of the riff. So, you hit record again. Now the guitarist is settled in and plays for real. When you stop recording, the file will include both of the pre-record riffs, as long as the combined length didn't exceed the buffer time.

Prevent Ripple Edit Mishaps

Ripple Editing allows edits like removing a section of a track, and having the track close up to fill the hole created by deletion. Or, insert an Event, and have it push the track later to make space for the addition. That's cool, but if you leave Ripple Edit on accidentally, doing any subsequent cuts or pastes could mess up multiple Event positions in a song. Always disable Ripple Edit immediately after making your edit (fig. 4). Some people delete the keyboard shortcut, so that fat fingers can't enable ripple editing accidentally.

Figure 4: Be sure to toggle Ripple Editing off after you've made a ripple edit.

Lock Events to Video Hit Points

Time Lock locks Events to bars and beats. However, when working with video, you often want to lock a sound effect to an absolute time in hours and seconds. That way, even if the background music's tempo needs to change, the intergalactic cosmic explosion will still happen at the exact frame in the video where the planet blows up.

Studio One can t lock Events to the Seconds Timebase, but there's a workaround. You can lock Markers to specific times by toggling from bars/beats to seconds in the Marker track (fig. 5), and then relate Events to Markers.

Figure 5: Toggling the Timebase button (outlined in orange) to Seconds locks the markers to minutes and seconds.

Name the Markers after the Events that need to conform to a hit point. If the tempo changes, move the Events to line up with their associated Markers.

I hope that at least one of these tips can help you save a session!

LINK:	https://blog.presonus.com/2024/07/12/5-session-saving-tips-for-studio-...
	See more stories from presonus

North America Stories

17/07/2026

Foundry Unlocks Professional-Grade AI for VFX with Gripta...

Creative software developer Foundry today announced Griptape Enterprise, a new tier of the Griptape AI workflow orchestration platform, extended to meet the str...

17/07/2026

Foundry Releases SmartRoto for Nuke

Creative software developer Foundry today announced the availability of SmartRoto, a new AI-powered plugin upgrade for Nuke, NukeX, Nuke Studio, and Nuke Indie ...

17/07/2026

The Final Release of Blackmagic Fairlight Live is Now Available!

The Final Release of Blackmagic Fairlight Live is Now Available! Brie Clayton July 16, 2026 0 Comments Fairlight Live is a new audio mixer designed fo...

17/07/2026

Leveraging All of Entertainment's IP

Leveraging All of Entertainment's IP Andy Marken July 16, 2026 0 Comments Nobody ever wins the games. Period. There are survivors. There\s no win...

16/07/2026

SVG Students To Watch: Kaden Sherman, Albany State University

This recent graduate and Georgia native has turned an early fascination with live production into a growing passion for camera work In the live-sports-video in...

16/07/2026

TNDV Marks First Year of Aspiration 35 Cinematic Production Truck

TNDV is marking the first anniversary of Aspiration 35, a mobile production truck built around ARRI Alexa 35 Live camera systems. Over its first year, the truck...

16/07/2026

ATSC Releases First Major Revision to A/85 Audio Loudness Recommended Practice Since 2013

ATSC has completed a major revision to its A/85 Recommended Practice: Techniques...

16/07/2026

FloSports Named Exclusive Global Media Partner for 2026 CrossFit Games

FloSports has announced an exclusive global media partnership with CrossFit for the 2026 CrossFit Games, presented by Air National Guard, beginning July 21 in S...

16/07/2026

Sennheiser Releases Spectera Firmware 1.4 and Command Button

Sennheiser has released firmware version 1.4 for its Spectera wireless system and announced the Spectera Command Button (Cat. No. 701014). The update adds comma...

16/07/2026

ESPN and Southwestern Athletic Conference Announce Multi-Year Media Rights Agreement Through 2030-31

ESPN and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) have announced a multi-year...

16/07/2026

Audio-Technica Releases 20 Series Control Application for Elgato Stream Deck

Audio-Technica has announced the 20 Series Control Application, a Stream Deck plug-in for compatible Audio-Technica USB microphones. The application is compatib...

16/07/2026

SSL Live L550 Plus Consoles Power Audio Production for The Voice France Season 15

The fifteenth season of The Voice - La plus belle voix on TF1 used four Solid St...

16/07/2026

Gray Media and Atlanta Hawks Announce Georgia-Wide Broadcast Partnership for 2026-27 NBA Season

Gray Media and the Atlanta Hawks have announced a broadcast partnership that wil...

16/07/2026

SVG Sit-Down: Quarterback Showrunner Joe Zucco on Cinematography, Building Trust, Carrying On the NFL Films Legacy

Season 3 of Netflix's docuseries, which dropped this week, follows Jayden Da...

16/07/2026

Texas Rangers Switch Direct-to-Consumer Streaming Partner to BZZR

The Texas Rangers and Rangers Sports Network presented by Progressive (RSN) have announced BZZR as the new direct-to-consumer distributor for Rangers game broad...

16/07/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026: BBC Sport on Moving Across the Pond to Bring the Atmosphere of the Final Matches to Fans

With England's FIFA World Cup 2026 team getting ready to fly home after losi...

16/07/2026

With 36 Unilateral Cameras, NBC Sports Shapes 154th Open Championship Coverage for U.S. Viewers

In a return to Royal Birkdale, the team enjoys partnering with ETP and Gravity M...

16/07/2026

Altitude Sports & Entertainment's Tim De Lay on New SkyCam Digital Feed, Upgraded Studio Space

Along with a new studio at Ball Arena, the Colorado-based RSN is working with XR...

16/07/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026: Inside ORF's Austria-Based Production to Bring All the Emotions of the Tournament to Fans

Austria was back at the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, and the team d...

16/07/2026

Inside Gravity Media's Effort To Power the 154th Open Championship Production

With 42 RF cameras and high-power radio mics deployed, the spectrum environment ...

16/07/2026

The Gauge: Poland | June 2026

June brought stabilization to the television market. Poles spent an average of 3 hours and 36 minutes a day in front of their TV screens exactly the same as i...

16/07/2026

New studio monitoring leads Glensound's 60th year line-up...

Glensound returns to IBC with a major new addition to its intelligent loudspeaker range, the Greater Divine Supernal studio monitor, alongside recent developmen...

16/07/2026

Complete spectrum of innovation from British exhibitors a...

33 leading exhibitors are taking part in the GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland Pavilions and linked locations across IBC2026 (Amsterdam RAI, 11 14 September)...

16/07/2026

Hitomi Broadcast to showcase HDR colour verification and...

Hitomi Broadcast will introduce Spectra, a new HDR colour verification solution measured in picture, not using VPID, at IBC2026 (Hall 10, Stand A40). Expanding ...