Import Module
How to customize labels
Track names and colors come from your categories. The Categories table in Settings > Import & Organize defines them: each category owns a name, a color, a vocabulary of instrument words, a default routing destination, and strip silence parameters. Changes save on their own and apply to all future imports.
The Categories table
Each row has four columns:
- Category: a color swatch on the Pro Tools palette plus the editable name.
- Elements: the count of instrument words the category claims; click it to open the vocabulary editor.
- Destination: the category's default route (or, in Track preset mode, its template track).
- Strip Silence: the per-category toggle and its tuning popover.
Add and remove categories with + and − (the table can't be emptied), or from the context menu, which also offers Move Up and Move Down. A new category arrives named "New category". The toolbar's Reset categories restores the factory table, which mirrors the built-in template: one category per routing folder, 31 in all (see Using your mix templates).
The order is not cosmetic: categories are matched from top to bottom, and the first category that claims an instrument wins. If two categories could claim the same kind of track, the one higher in the table gets it.
The Elements vocabulary
Clicking a category's Elements count opens the vocabulary editor, with two tabs and a search field:
- Claimed lists the words this category owns, grouped as BUILT-IN and CUSTOM, each removable. Type into Add your own word and press Add to claim a word of your own, such as a house naming convention.
- Library lists every word the recognizer reads from file names: around 107 words across 12 families (Drums, Percussion, Bass, Guitar, Keys, Synth, Vocals, Backing Vocals, Strings, Brass, Woodwinds, SFX), minus the ones already claimed here.
A word belongs to exactly one category. If a word in the Library is owned by another category, its row says so ("in Drums"), and claiming it is a move: the word leaves the other category and lands in this one.
A category that claims no elements catches nothing: no track lands in it and it prints nothing, and its Elements cell says so until you add some.
How a track finds its category
Once a track is recognized, four levels are tried in order:
- A category claims the specific instrument identified in the file name ("kick", "backing vocal").
- A category claims the track's instrument family.
- A category is named exactly like the family.
- The category with the strongest word overlap wins.
If nothing claims the track, that is a configuration gap, not an error: the track keeps its real name with a neutral gray color, gets no bus, no strip silence and no template track, and the import setup lists it under "No Import category for:".
AI-R identifies each track's instrument family from the audio itself, on device; instruments named in the file name are checked first, and an unconfident verdict becomes Unclassified (gray). Your categories then decide the name, color and routing. See how fMusic organizes tracks.
Save your categories, vocabularies, colors and routes as an fPreset to reuse them on another machine.