Automation: Latch Punch-Out while playing back

Is the only way to punch-out during latch deselecting write or stopping playback?

In Pro Tools there’s a button that can be pressed that punches-out of latch-write and returns to previous written value according to return time.

I find it VERY useful to be able to roll a take and know I can simply redo a section using latch and then just have the system join previous automation while continuing playback so that I can later do other changes. I suppose the workaround would be to either toggle the track’s write state or write another macro that toggles it.

I presume you’re talking about Auto Match? There are a couple of ways you can get out of write mode and should take into account your return time setting as you can see this is written ahead of the write position.

  • Toggle write for the track or globally (make a macro to toggle write off/on)
  • Suspend automation for the track or globally (make a macro to toggle suspend off/on)
  • Auto punch (punch out when hitting the right locator which could be used with a key command to set right locator)
  • Enable cycle mode with the preference “Continue Writing” disabled (section will loop around and auto punch out for the next cycle)

Perhaps there is another method but one of those should be able to give you the functionality you want.

I’m not talking about “auto match”, I’m talking about triggering the punch-out. It auto-matches at punch-out of course, but the issue is triggering the punch out.

As for your suggestions like we both said it seems toggling either “write” or “suspend”, preferably on a per-track basis, is the way to go.

Anything involving cycle mode or right locators won’t do because the basic idea here is being able to latch-write enable tracks, hit play and just record as I go. I don’t want to enable a cycle marker because if I’m looping back the solution is simply to just hit stop instead. And setting the right marker would require foresight. In a lot of cases I won’t know ahead of time when I want automation to cease and go back to what was written.

I think it would be a good addition to be able to trigger punch-out either on a per-track basis and/or globally, without having to toggle suspend or write.

As mentioned, with auto-punch enabled you can trigger the key command to set right locator which will in effect drop out of write mode and continue playing (no foresight required).

It would help to know the exact scenario as there are often many ways to the same destination in Nuendo.

Ah, I see what you mean now. Yes, that does what I wanted it to do with a side effect: I have to have auto-punch enabled, meaning I have to keep track of whether or not it is. All it’d take is to roll back, start automating a different track for a different reason, roll past the right locator and it’d drop out. So it’s still not a convenient solution.

I can’t make it any clearer I think. What do you think is unclear?

That should indeed be a standard feature and not a workaround.
Even if the solutions provided here are pretty clever, they all lack the simplicity of the native function that should have been there from the very beginning in my opinion…
Latch prime in stop as well…
For now, macro for write on/off sounds the way to go., or did someone found a brilliant other way ?

Creating a macro that toggles twice solved my problem. Thanks for the recommendation.

Has anyone found anything similar to this in Cubase or Nuendo at this point? I use this all the time and praise this workflow in Pro Tools 7.2 HD/Ultimate and up.