Avid, the makers of Pro Tools, will soon be releasing Pro Tools 12.5, the version of Pro Tools that introduces the long-awaited cloud collaboration features and Pro Tools Expert were invited to take a sneak peak early presentation of it in action.
We have to say that despite our earlier misgivings about the need for such a workflow the Pro Tools Expert team were impressed by the way collaboration has been implemented in Pro Tools 12.5. We are working closely with our friends at Avid to bring the Pro Tools community in-depth information in the next few weeks.
In the meantime we thought we would give those interested in taking advantage in the forthcoming cloud collaboration features some tips for how to get ready.
You Need To Have Pro Tools 12
Cloud Collaboration will only be available to those who own a current version of Pro Tools 12, either a perpetual licence with a current upgrade/support plan or a current Avid Pro Tools subscription plan. If you have a PT 12 perpetual license and allowed your Annual Upgrade plan to expire, then you could reactivate your expired upgrade plan with an Avid Upgrade Plan Reinstatement to get current and receive another 12-months of upgrades including Pro Tools 12.5 with collaboration.
If you own an earlier version of Pro Tools such as 11,10, 9 or below then you will not be able to take advantage of the collaboration features... but don't worry the backward compatibility of the Pro Tools session format remains.
You Need To Have A Reasonable Internet Connection
Avid have worked hard to make sure that data moves fast between those collaborating on Pro Tools, we saw a reasonably large session transfer between two collaborators in around 1 minute on a 20mb upstream line. We'll go into more details in the coming weeks about how that works, but once the Pro Tools session is shared it's only updating the items necessary to keep the session up to date.
Keep Your Pro Tools Sessions Tidy
We recently wrote about the need to make sure that Pro Tools session data is labelled correctly so that tracks, clips and other elements of the session are easily identifiable. Again Avid have done some work to make tracking assets in Pro Tools 12.5 easier than ever, but that's no excuse for sloppy data management and no one is going to thank you if your session is filled with tracks and clips called 'Audio' or 'Inst.'
Summary
If you are keen to explore the new cloud collaboration features in Pro Tools 12.5 then standby for some exclusive content that Pro Tools Expert are creating with Avid. The aim is to make sure you have all the information you need and that your questions are answered about Pro Tools 12.5, and then you can make an informed choice about it.