Live recording with PT LE

I have successfully been recording with PT LE since the release. My current machine is pretty stable (PIII@933,CUSL2-C,45gb IBM Deskstar dedicated to audio). The most tracks I've needed to record at once has been 11. My machine did this no problem. I've recently had a band approach me about coming out and recording one of their shows live and I'd like to do it, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experience with this. Perhaps even somebody from Digi could give some answers to the questions I have. Should my current PC configuration be able to record the full 18 tracks at once without errors? What happens if the wave files exceed the 2gb FAT32 limit? Will I get an error? If I record a full set (45-60 minutes), what would be the best way to split up the songs afterwards instead of having one huge song? Is there a way to drop markers during the recording (like in sound forge)? This might be in the manual, but I've never needed to do it until now. How much disk space will I need per minute for 18 tracks (24bit/44.1khz)? If there are any other tips I would appreciate it. I'm trying to avoid any unexpected problems that could occur. THANKS!

i will detail more later (cause i am on lunch break), but i used an athlon 800 sdr 256, and a new 45 gig hard drive to record 14 tracks for over 2 hours. i used about 27 gigs worth of data, and i think that fat 16 is the one that had the 2 gig max file size, and you should be using fat 32 without problems. Just make sure you are recording on a partion big enough to hold all of the files. A small recommendation if you have multiple drives, you may want to record half of the tracks on one drive and the other half on the other drive. But at 14 tracks i had no problems. Christian

We recorded a live show a while back, and it turned out pretty cool. You can hear a couple tracks from it on our site. Your files won't get near 2 gigs. We recorded it all as one session with no stops, and cut them apart after we bounced. I say go for it, if you can record 11 at a time with no problems, you can most likely handle 18.

Thanks for the replies. Keep 'em coming.

Umm... I don't think the 2 gb limit is ever going to be a problem because protools will automatically start new files way before you get a wav file that big...at least that's how I -thought- it worked to get around said limitations of the filesystem. Nothing you need to do at all, pro tools takes care of it for you

Just a thought do you really need to record at 24bit? A live concert is going to have large spill on most mics and the dynamic range of 16 bits is unlikely to be an issue, you'll save disc space. You can of course mix at 24 bit later to keep quality. Peter

Too drop marker during recording, you just need to hit enter at the right time, there it is.