Multiple Pro Tools installations. How do I know which is which?

[MCCKeene]

I work on a college campus and, some years ago, our film department requested that Pro Tools be installed on 20 Macs around our campus. Just this year, they decided that they needed Pro Tools HD on one of these Macs. It is now time for me to look into renewing our upgrade and support for the other installations, but we obviously don't want to pay for the one instance where Pro Tools was replaced with Pro Tools HD.

The issue would be that, again years ago, when Pro Tools was installed, we didn't write down what system IDs went with which installations and they were all pretty much set-up in the same day. So, now when logging into my Avid account and looking at the 20 licenses that are about to expire, I cannot tell which 19 I want to renew and which one I don't need to worry about. I was shocked when contacting Avid to be told that there is no way to determine the system ID of an installation from the Mac where Pro Tools is installed with the iLok connected.

Does anyone know of any means of being able to match the System IDs in my Avid account with that actual installations?

[albee1952]

These days(ever since PT9) the software installation is exactly the same. Its the iLok that tells the software whether to open as HD or open as non-HD. So its the iLok itself that holds the "key" to this question. Assuming all iLoks are registered to the same account, simply connect to iLok.com with each iLok to find the one with the HD license

[MCCKeene]

Well, all the iLoks are linked to the same account, but when Pro Tools HD was installed, it came with a new iLok and that was used. So, I've got the iLok in my office that has the license for the copy of Pro Tools that I don't care to renew. However, I don't see anything on the iLoks that helps me to match them up with what I see when I log into my Avid account and my Avid account is where I need to enter the renewal codes, right? Am I missing some way of renewing them directly from the places where it's installed? That would probably solve the issue if that were possible.

[panamajack]

Originally Posted by MCCKeene

. . . we didn't write down what system IDs went with which installations and they were all pretty much set-up in the same day. So, now when logging into my Avid account and looking at the 20 licenses that are about to expire, I cannot tell which 19 I want to renew. . .

Originally Posted by albee1952

. . . Its the iLok that tells the software whether to open as HD or open as non-HD. . . simply connect to iLok.com with each iLok to find the one with the HD license

Originally Posted by MCCKeene

. . . So, I've got the iLok in my office that has the license for the copy of Pro Tools [HD] that I don't care to renew. However, I don't see anything on the iLoks that helps me to match them up. . .

If you have the user name and password for both your Ilok account and your Avid account, it should be straightforward. Time consuming, but not rocket science.

In your Avid account, it should segregate your one HD license from the others.

In your Ilok account, the other nineteen Iloks will not have HD activated.

You did not mention which version of Pro Tools, but the PT10 and PT11 licenses were sometimes bundled.

There must be someone who uses the 20 Macs you have access to that can help you wrinkle out this issue.

The way you explained it, once you upgrade your licenses, the Ilok site should know which license is installed on each of the Iloks. Unless someone mischievously moved the licenses around without your knowledge. Arrrgggh...

[MCCKeene]

The iLoks don't seem to indicate to me anywhere what system ID is being used on them, so I still can't match the system IDs in my Avid account to the iMacs and iLoks that are still active.

Anyway, as an update, I ended up contacting Avid and got things figured out. I actually still had the boxes with the serial number\activation codes from installing Pro Tools the first time on these iMacs a couple years ago and, thankfully, had written down on the boxes which iMac I installed them on. I had to send all of those codes to Avid and they were able to tell me which System IDs they matched up with then I was able to put that all together and figure things out.

Still, it seems ridiculous to me that there is no way an end user can look at a local installation and not find any information to match it up with what is their account online as that is where you need to renew things. Obviously, this isn't an issue if you just have one or two installations, but I've got about 40 total iMacs around our campus with Pro Tools installed.

[panamajack]

Originally Posted by MCCKeene

. . . Still, it seems ridiculous to me that there is no way an end user can look at a local installation and not find any information to match it up with what is their account online as that is where you need to renew things. Obviously, this isn't an issue if you just have one or two installations, but I've got about 40 total iMacs around our campus with Pro Tools installed.

Glad you got it sorted out, with Avid's help at that!

Sounds to me as though, with close to 20 licenses, you should just pick "Auto-renew." The Iloks I have work on whatever system I am running at the time, so I still don't get the issue you were having with identifying the "System ID."

I have about nine Iloks, some with user licenses and others as back-ups or duplicates. The only one of my Avid account HD licenses that shows a "System ID" is one that I never activated.

But with no small amount of trepidation, I did just activate a vanilla 12.7 PT subscription license and, contrary to all the confusion over the subscription system, it was, surprisingly, relatively painless. Not looking forward to downloading all the latest revisions, but it is a necessary evil.

I have been thinking about the longevity of Pro Tools. I jumped in about twenty years ago at 5.x with an Audiomedia III card. It was befuddling as my entry was from previous use of a Teac 80-8 1/2" tape deck with an 8-channel DBX noise reduction box and a 12 channel hardware mixer. My motivation was attending an in-store demo of an early version a Pro Tools digital setup, called Session Eight. Even though the sales rep had his system crash on start-up, (he remarked, That's never happened before...), the promise of doing things digitally was fascinating. Have been doing upgrades to perpetual licenses until this current subscription mode. But I still have four Eproms written by Digidrums for my two E-mu Drumulators a decade before the AMIII, and that was twenty years after my first studio sessions.

If Avid ever locks the license to an individual CPU I will join The Departed. And it does seem like the HDX cards and HD Native stuff is going that way.