Best Method for Windows to Mac Session Move?
 

So I'm tired of all the problems I get on my pc with PT. I'm moving to my mac with everything. But I am in the middle of a project. What is the best method for transfering a PT session/project from Windows to Mac? I'm hoping not to have to do much reorganizing on the Mac end when I open up the project.

How would you go about this move?

Re: Best Method for Windows to Mac Session Move?
 

On your PC do a Save Session In to somewhere on an NTFS formatted drive. That just makes sure all the session content is consolidated in the session folder.

You can then just copy that session folder to the Mac. Do that however you want:

Copying over a local network using file sharing or sftp, or whatever you want/can set up.

Or physically get a USB memory stick, format it exFAT. Drag the session from your PC to that stick, then on the Mac drag it to your working drive. Do not run the session off the stick. My favorite USB stick: https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-SDCZ8.../dp/B01MU8TZRV

Or you can drop the whole session onto cloud storage (say Google Drive or Dropbox) and use that to move between systems. Copy the session to the local drive do not run it on the cloud drive. Creating a tar or zip compressed version and dropping that into the cloud helps avoid people doing that (and saves transfer time and space).

All this assumes you are not running *radically* different versions of Pro Tools on both platforms.

Make sure you have all the plugins available and installed on the Mac.

It usually is that easy. In very rare cases you might run into file or path naming issues, ask if you have problems. Be paranoid, keep stuff on your PC, keep any PC backups. Make sure you are making session backups on the Mac and they work OK.

Re: Best Method for Windows to Mac Session Move?
 

If you have lots of data to transfer over, an external drive formatted exFAT would work.

Re: Best Method for Windows to Mac Session Move?
 

Do not use exFAT with Macs. I have hundreds of Pro Tools sessions corrupted by that. The cross-compatibility of exFAT is overstated because the Mac implementation is not really good.

(the best solution for cross compatibility is install MacDrive on the PC and format the attached drive to HFS+ on the Mac before plugging it into the PC. Both will then be able to read/write and the overhead is low enough you can actually run the sessions on the PC directly)

Re: Best Method for Windows to Mac Session Move?
 

Right, I was very specific about only using this as a transfer volume, and suspect EGS means that as well, and I said clearly not to run on it. For the reason BScout mentioned and more. On a Mac you really should run sessions on HFS+ or even better APFS (especially on SSD). Busy studios that move stuff around all the time and have clients coming in with external drives then sure run on a Paragon or other third party filesystem, but there should be no need for that for just moving sessions between systems. (you can use an NTFS formatted USB stick as well, but that won't let a Mac write back updates to it/use it for other stuff).

Re: Best Method for Windows to Mac Session Move?
 

yep

Re: Best Method for Windows to Mac Session Move?
 

***YES YES YES....NEVER make changes during a project:D Good choice!!!

I move sessions between platforms a fair amount and its gotten really ALMOST foolproof, as long as your sessions are on any recent version of PT(older versions like 8 and back had the OPTION to enforce Mac/PC Compatibility but now its always on):D

I run Windows and did use MacDrive for quite a while. When I made the move to Windows 10, they were slow in updating so I moved to Paragon HFS for Windows, which works well enough(and is $19.95 vs $59.95). AFAIK, a Mac can read an NTFS drive(and certainly there is a utility available if it doesn't work right out of the box). I agree on keeping everything intact with your PC and copying your sessions to a Mac-formatted drive(trust me, you can NEVER have too many copies of your sessions:eek:).

I am curious though, is there something about your PC that could be addressed. Moving to Mac is fine, but they have their own set of potential problems too:o