# Some exciting things coming to Pro Tools



## studioj (Apr 6, 2014)

Freeze Tracks...about time! . Cloud collaboration features could be very cool.

http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home-pa ... eview.html


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## Guy Rowland (Apr 6, 2014)

Sounds mostly like marketing BS to me. Collaboration and archiving stuff might be useful. though, depending on implementation.

Personally I'd be far more excited about Avid making the video engine in PT11 work.


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## jaeroe (Apr 6, 2014)

yes, guy! new video engine causing crazy CPU spikes on my end. turned it off video engine and the problem goes away. nuts.


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## Guy Rowland (Apr 7, 2014)

jaeroe @ Mon Apr 07 said:


> yes, guy! new video engine causing crazy CPU spikes on my end. turned it off video engine and the problem goes away. nuts.



What makes it unfrogivably nuts is that a) it's Avid, who are arguably the biggest video specialists in the world, and b) it's been going on for over a year. I'm still on PT10, and that's because of first hand reports of how debilitating video in PT11 it is. Most folks who have PT11 say in practice they still use PT10 almost always if they are working with video. Insane. I'd buy PT11 today if they introduced a new preferences checkbox that said "use PT10 video engine" - if fixing the new one is beyond the Avid specialists after a year's work on the job, isn't that morning's work worth a shot as a stopgap?

So when I read about new cloud based blah blah monetising blah blah, I get pretty cynical. I think the single biggest complaint of DAW users generally is the tendency to produce new versions with new features without fixing existing problems. This is as bad an example as I've ever encountered of this.


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## Nachivnik (Apr 7, 2014)

Is now a bad time to jump into Pro Tools?


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## Guy Rowland (Apr 7, 2014)

Nachivnik @ Mon Apr 07 said:


> Is now a bad time to jump into Pro Tools?



If you want to work with video, avoid PT11.

In general I'd say there are generally better options than Pro Tools for VI-based composers. I use it pretty much exclusively for my dubbing work, where it's pretty much the only game in town.


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## studioj (Apr 7, 2014)

Yes the video engine is not quite up to the PT10 stability yet... they've changed the way PT communicates with it and are hitting some bumps as a result. That being said I work full time in PT 11 with video and don't see enough problems to avoid it. maybe a couple times a week I need to force quit the video engine from activity monitor... but thats it. Otherwise it has been working very well. Just finished a feature using PT11 (and offline bounce which was a godsend!). I collaborate with others often so having the ability to quickly render my project and post or better yet having a session that updates on both sides of the collaboration as changes are pushed either way as I work sounds like a pretty awesome feature to me and not marketing BS. There are of course many other things I'd like to see added to this program but I'll be looking forward to this for sure.


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## rpaillot (Apr 7, 2014)

Funnily, same thing is happening here with Cubase 7.5
Video engine service hanging, it happens very rarely though so it's not annoying...


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## The Darris (Apr 7, 2014)

There is a reason I converted to Cubase from Pro Tools. Some still use it for VI composing but it just doesn't have the functionality I need in a DAW. I still have PT and I use it every now and then for audio processing and stuff, still amazing at that.


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## snattack (Apr 7, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ Mon Apr 07 said:


> jaeroe @ Mon Apr 07 said:
> 
> 
> > yes, guy! new video engine causing crazy CPU spikes on my end. turned it off video engine and the problem goes away. nuts.
> ...



This is exactly the same behaviour as with Sibelius. 1,5 YEARS since last update, and the only thing they came up with was a crappy new playback algorithm, a timeline which sure might be useful, but not compared to other things that needs priority, and an "instantly share your score"-button. As one professional would EVER want to give away the score for free.

Still lacking: proper bug-free playback when using several 3d-party libraries, magnetic lines, useless control of rehearsal marks, and most of all: APPALING performance on OSX with large scores. I had to bootcamp windows into my Macbook because the orchestrations I've written the past months drived me crazy due to lag. All these problems causes me around 2 hours longer work process/3 minute orchestration.

Avid has long since given up on any terms of quality relevant for professionals, it's all about new flashy half-useless features.


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## Greg (Apr 7, 2014)

More stuff everyone else has had for years and pro tools users have to overpay for to unlock? woot


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## Daryl (Apr 7, 2014)

I always groan when I read about a company trying to standardise the industry. Not because that would necessarily be a bad thing, but because what they really mean is try to force everyone else into their own way of doing things. The trouble with that is that were Avid is concerned, that is not necessarily going to be the right, or even best way of doing things, judging by their history.

D


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## Daryl (Apr 7, 2014)

snattack @ Mon Apr 07 said:


> This is exactly the same behaviour as with Sibelius.


Sibelius is a dead program. No point in thinking about what the future is there, IMO.

D


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## Dynamoe (Apr 7, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ Sun Apr 06 said:


> Sounds mostly like marketing BS to me. Collaboration and archiving stuff might be useful. though, depending on implementation.
> 
> Personally I'd be far more excited about Avid making the video engine in PT11 work.



+1


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## jaeroe (Apr 7, 2014)

sibelius and protools are in different boats. sibelius v6 is awesome, but the writing is on the wall - they will let this die at v8, and v7 wasn't a help. as soon as the original sibelius team get their new program out, probably everyone will gravitate there.

with protools, it is industry standard (at least for audio - not for midi). PT11 has a ton of great things - really is a different animal. they did fix a lot of older problems (dread mystery CPU spike with VIs) and add plenty of well overdue features. problem is, they bungled some of the real basics that used to work at least passably - namely video. (it also requires a preposterous amount of RAM to enable their video engine now.... and then causes the damned mystery CPU spikes to return....).

looks like avid are trying to offer some of the same remote workflow features of cubase, etc. i get wanting to be competitive. but, as has been pointed out - the problem is they haven't properly taken care of business with the original release of PT11 yet.

i do use it daily, but this is a workaround.


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## jaeroe (Apr 7, 2014)

i was just told by a person in know - avid have big video engine fixes coming soon.


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## jleckie (Apr 7, 2014)

I was just told by another person in the know - he needed the big video engine fix a long time ago.


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## jaeroe (Apr 7, 2014)

we all did - as the old saying goes 'you can wish in one hand and [email protected] in the other and see which gets filled first'. and 'where ever you go, there you are.'

at least avid are aware and are doing something about it. we will just have to see what that something is and how much it takes care of it.


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## mr (Apr 8, 2014)

Short Avid Everywhere video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pz_6ZIy2To#t=12[url]


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## studioj (Apr 10, 2014)

This is not really looking like marketing BS to me...I predict a small renaissance in musicians using pro tools to compose and produce...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSUjBblj0ac

the bug fixes will come.


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## Guy Rowland (Apr 10, 2014)

studioj @ Thu Apr 10 said:


> the bug fixes will come.



Oh good. No rush - PT11's only a year old after all. Shouldn't really expect video to work til, what, 2 or 3 years down the line?


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## studioj (Apr 10, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ Thu Apr 10 said:


> studioj @ Thu Apr 10 said:
> 
> 
> > the bug fixes will come.
> ...



ha! yes your sarcasm is def warranted. I think they put it out too early... in my experience so far it is not any more buggy than Logic X however... both are usable in a pro manner. But the bugs are frustrating certainly.


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## jaeroe (Apr 10, 2014)

considering it's Avid and Pro Tools.... at least this time we still had PT10 working and pretty easy to open sessions in for workarounds.

maybe in 10 years we won't need workarounds for PT releases..... if only...

but, i can't say PT11 is unusable. just has some annoying things to deal with here and there.


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## Guy Rowland (Apr 11, 2014)

jaeroe @ Fri Apr 11 said:


> i can't say PT11 is unusable. just has some annoying things to deal with here and there.



It seems to vary what you use it for and some specific variables as to how usable PT11 is. Really the most pertinent question is - which works better, PT10 or PT11? For many, it's PT10. A close colleague of mine bought PT11 some months ago, struggled for quite some time and has pretty much given up with it for now. A combination of the video bug driving him to insanity and a couple of critical plugins lacking 64 bit support has made it redundant in its current version.

The more I think about the video shambles, the more inexplicable it is. A YEAR? A YEAR?!!!! From Avid, the people who had a virtual monopoly in video production for so long?

Anyway.

Once those bugs are finally sorted and the last plugin holdouts converted, PT11 will be worth the upgrade, if only to address some of the remaining shortcomings related to other DAWs (offline bounce, track freeze.... whoooo....) Some of the other new teased features could be good, but the devil is always in the detail for these things. For example, we're promised "session streaming for approval playback to those without Pro Tools installed". No question that sounds good, but how easy / rugged is it compared to just sending an mp3 (especially in the world of offline bounce?) And it's audio only not video, so no revolution there sadly (and it truly would be great if they ever got that working).

Meanwhile much of the rest of Avid Everywhere does smack of marketing. Some of it useful - being able to rent a plugin for a specific job - but much of it sounds like that kind of rather redundant "mix straight to soundcloud" nonsense that other DAW makers seem to have embraced, or exciting new ways to purchase more Avid content. As for collaboration - devil very much in the details there, but I'll concede its definitely an area worth exploring.


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## jaeroe (Apr 11, 2014)

yes - i've been skipping even numbered releases. so, the upgrade gave me 10 and 11. from 10 to 11 would have been a different story (although... clip gain would have been nice had i gotten 10 when it came out). in hindsight the gains in CPU usage were worth it for me anyway and i've been able to work around the video(my biggest issue at present). if i had paid $900-1000 for a 10 to 11 upgrade that doesn't allow me to work in the program really (as is clearly the case for some), then i'd be livid. Waves and the reverbs i use were available in 64 bit aax quickly, and the other plugins i use are really VIs (and thus useable via VEP) it was less of a difficulty for me.

i find the video caused CPU spikes only happen when you have a big VI template. i run DP and Protools, so i'm able to use video in another program while running VI's. offline bounce is nice. re 3rd party plugins - AAX has been around for quite sometime now. what is most frustrating about that is, apparently Avid moved up the release date of PT11 on people. which meant a) developers were sprung with less time to get AAX64 working than originally thought and b) they clearly could have spent more time testing things like the video problem. audio for picture is a huge part of their user base.

things like that and the sibelius debacle really don't endear Avid to anyone. just plain mishandling of things. and especially then there's the cost of their upgrade paths. they can only get away with all of that because their position in the industry is so solid - industry stand for lots of audio stuff.


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## Guy Rowland (Apr 13, 2014)

Urgh this could get very bad. Just caught up with the "exicitng" new pricing models for Media Composer - http://www.studiodaily.com/2014/04/avid ... -composer/ . Briefly - your options are buy outright or get an annual subscription for updates. If you let that subscription lapse, your only alternative is to either rent the whole updated product or pay the full price. There appears to be no modern WUP style option to just drop in and out of the update plan as needed.

Seems suicidal to me, just when Media Composer 7's pricing was so good.

So with the all-new integrated Avid Everywhere, it's not a great stretch to imagine they're looking at doing something similar for Pro Tools. That would be fairly catastrophic I'd have thought.... just imagine the wrath...


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## jaeroe (Apr 13, 2014)

Oh man..... i know Adobe has gone this route, and it really sux. i hate updating my web site, but was ok using Dreamweaver.... that is, until Adobe went and made you have to pay this crazy annual fee to run the software past OSX 10.6.8. they package all this software together - stuff that i don't want or need at all.

if Avid went this route with PT there would be a huge backlash from the industry. and it could get really ugly if the major studios and the related post houses raise a big stink. that's the sort of thing that has people give up and just stick with a version of something that works and not upgrade for eons.

i think waves has handled WUP well. the best part is getting credit for WUP towards new purchases - and you can use that during sales. i've bought more stuff because of that - and i don't hate them. Avid i have no love for. i've tolerated them because of PT and Sibelius.


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