Protools 8 New look, old look! Discussion

[rdolmat]

Originally Posted by Rail Jon Rogut

Add me to the list who would prefer a "Vintage Pro Tools Edit Window Color Scheme". I find it very difficult to see selected regions.

Tell me at a glance which of the regions in this screen capture are selected?

http://www.railjonrogut.com/images/PT8_Edit.jpg

Rail

That's frickin impossible.

[bashville]

Originally Posted by Mark Dann

But I am doing precision surgery. The artist is doing the creating. I need to really see what I am doing.

Hear, hear, Mark! How does it help you be more musical if you're making selection mistakes because you can't see? Nothing kills a vibe faster than realizing you made a mistake too late and having to go back. Not to mention an artist freaking because you accidently erased the "golden moment".

I haven't upgraded yet, but some of these screen shots remind me of the things I don't like about the Logic 8 upgrade. Low contrast, too subtle--in some cases having more eye-strain trying to find elements through the haze.

The solution of course is more customization, with some method of letting users share their design presets. So that the lab-jacket guys can get the fast at-a-glance info they need, and the candlelight bong-smoker guys can get all inspired gazing at their GUI-navels.

[25ghosts]

I am using PT 8 in pretty dense production.

I too color my regions. And I do see where you're all coming from with the "color of the selected" region.

However, I have not had any problems, this far, recognizing my regions. None at all. They get darker when selected and had it not been for the mentioning on this forum I dont think I would have ever
had a "problem" with it. Not that I have one know.

I agree that it should be very clear what or which regions are indeed selected. And that one should not have to be looking too much around for it.

That being said, one can always manage to disguise his regions if he really wants to.

However, I dont think it should be too much of coding to actually tell PT to simply "invert" the colors of the selected regions or simply out a highlight around them.

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by rdolmat

That's frickin impossible.

As a strong voter for a high contrast sceme (unlike the old look) I still vote for a dark time-line with coloured clips.

Of course making the selection colour almost the same as the background is again a low-contrast situation wich of course is not good as rail pointed out.

I haven´t moved to PT8 yet but AFAIK the only issue is the low-cotrast selection (black on dark grey) correct?

Before it was black on white wich is easy to see but the clips in the timeline were again low contrast (light colours on white=low contrast)

I think Digi needs to give it another try and tweak some of the colours and it will be fine.

Like I´ve said a few months ago: There is a reason why all the screens in an airplane cockpit are coloured characters on black background. It definitely is easier on the eyes and less "blinding" than a 90% white screen in a rather dark studio.

On EVERY mixing stage I´ve been to people turn the TFTs brightnesw all the way down because PTs white timeline is just too bright and still hard to read with a lot of regions o screen.

I vote for HIGH-CONTRAST but dark timeline. The timeline is the least interesting part of PT. It´s the clips I want to see.

my 2 cents.

frank.

[25ghosts]

Well Said, Frank.

[groovebrother]

i definatly vote for the possibility to get rid of the color surrounding the waveform -

... one more time : old color interface please

(at least the possibility to get it back for those who want)

[froyo]

Hello. I have also noticed out in the field speaking to people that it seems to be evenly split also. There is no run away winner to the people I have spoken to. Just from informally talking to about 5 or 6 other DAW users about half liked and preferred Pro Tools old look, myself included, and the other half definitely preferred the new look.

Not everyone has the same bodies, opinions and preferences and the obvious way to try to satisfy a bigger majority would be to give options for users to use the color scheme they prefer.

A way where the user could choose from many different skins, even custom skins would be ideal. But even if it was just a preference to return to the old scheme, and it was either on or off, this would please most everybody I would assume.

[Bentley Ferrari]

A couple of observations:

1. Digi says it's looking at this thread seriously. That's great. But I'm surprised Digi didn't anticipate (or maybe they discounted) the reaction here.

2. I think we'll get some kind of basic GUI appearance tweaking ability that addresses the concerns expressed in this thread; probably sometime in the next couple of 8.x upgrades.

3. Or maybe Digi can start shipping PT8 with a complementary pair of Blu-Ray sunglasses? You know, the yellow-lensed wonders they sell on TV to enhance your day and nighttime vision? Then we can legitimately wear shades in the studio, too! Hmmm...look for Blu-Ray, Inc. to appear in the list of companies that make up the AVID family. (Time to buy some shares?)

[Ang1970]

Originally Posted by Rail Jon Rogut

Who's looking closely at waveforms in that screen shot.. I'm simply selecting all regions on a zoomed out track for export as regions.. but it's practically impossible to see which regions are selected... nothing odd or unusual about this.. and has nothing to do with left or right brain... it has to do with optics.
Rail

Rail,
If you removed the spaces between some of those regions it would be completely impossible to see the slightly darker grey on the highlighted tracks. As a temporary workaround, I recommend using the track selection follows edit selection option.

I do like how the new GUI is softer on the eyes. Very often I'll dim the studio lights in order to help the artist's vibe and bringing down the apple monitor as low as it can go without turning it off, the light from it is still screaming. Once the studio makes the jump to v8 I might not even have to bring the monitor down at all. I'm looking forward to it.

Of the suggestions I've seen here, I like froyo's mention of skins the best. I'm sure it would be a major undertaking, but possibly less work and headaches than the slippery slope of adding more and more user customization with each 8.x release, until we reach the inevitable skin based GUI anyway. (sorry for the run-on sentence)

As for edit selections, how does everybody feel about the Adobe photoshop edit selection style of marching ants? Though sometimes visually jarring, it leaves no doubt as to what is and is not selected. I'm not sold that it would be the best way to go, but I'd like to get the ball rolling on some viable alternatives for digi to get humping on.

[Kenny Gioia]

While I like the idea of skins, it might be quicker to just give us an old vs. new Interface option.

Thanks.