Pro Tools 11 - Any expected release date yet?

[Zarabozo]

Originally Posted by spenner

When more companies are out of the "will support AAX" category then I'll get antsy about PT 11.

At this point it looks like Avid has a lot more time to make sure it is stable.

Pro Tools 11 must have been created from scratch. One of the main reasons all previous versions of PT have had so many problems, is the fact that it is dragging a lot of old code that is really hard to change.

That happens in all old software projects, and it always comes the point where the company has to revamp the whole thing, using all of the knowledege they got from all these years but focusing on making everything much more scalable and suitable for present and future plans.

This means they will need A LOT of testing, because being something completely new, anything can become buggy. Even so, all of us who buy PT 11 from the beginning will become actual beta-testers without wanting to and also having paid for it.

Francisco

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by sunburst79

In many respects I think the beta testers are doing a great job in that the products are shipping with less show stopping bugs. So hats off to those guys. What kills me is the product installers seem to be tested on some 2 year old system in the basement that hasn't been updated in since the OS was installed. It ships and then there's issues with the installed browser or whatever. The software is tested it seems but the installers less so. There may be room for some improvement there.

Originally Posted by Chief Technician

Which product installers are killing you?

I'm specificly referring to having remove or rollback the most popular browser on the the worlds most popular operating system because AIR or whoever rolled and qualified the PTLE 8.0 installer didn't check compatibility with IE8 before releasing it. IE8 was available as a public beta for something like 3-6 months before it dropped so its not like it was a surprise update on MS's part. Hey stuff happens and many months later Avid releases 8.0.3 which finally fixes the issue. Forgivable. Even if fixing the issue seemed to be a low priority. About a year or so later the Eleven Rack Expansion Pack is released. And once its actually out in the field we find out it its not compatible with IE9. And again the user is forced to rollback the browser to complete the installation. Luckily MS makes it fairly easy to do so. Still all of this hassle was completely avoidable. And after the first instance the second instance should have never have happened. Completely avoidable. Imagine the hue and cry if Mac users where required to roll Safari back a version. Twice

I'm a pretty strong supporter of the platform. I think the beta testers do a great job. It just seems that the section that integrates that software into the installer needs to test it on fully updated systems before it goes out the door. I'm not trying to be negative. Just point out that hopefully they have upped their game in this regard.

[Bob Olhsson]

More than dragging old code, it's been dragging very very old hardware compatibility.

[Shan]

Originally Posted by Zarabozo

Pro Tools 11 must have been created from scratch.

Very unlikely. That would be a 3 to 4 year development cycle before it even reached beta testing. For a final quarter 2013 release, that rewrite project at minimum, would've started 3 years ago. During this time all the major PT releases for the past 3-4 years would've been running in parallel. Avid would've had to have been extremely profitable and hiring to carry on such a massive task.

Even a release cycle is no small task. There are video interviews of S. Church(worth watching) stating that PT 8 took 2 years of development. That was the major UI overhaul and other big milestone changes. Who knows how long it was in alpha and beta for additionally.

Development is no small task and I definitely applaud the developers. A complete rewrite from scratch is unrealistic.

Shane

[YYR123]

I don't see why they don't contract a bunch of the leg work (code writing) out to companies in India and the like - talented pool of highly educated people (college grads) and cheap when compared to US workers of the same grade and or skill set

I'm sure it happens all the time and you get other work done while contracting (can anyone say 11rack upgrades expansion packs and stand alone editor)

Happy customers are generally good paying customers and repeat customers

[spenner]

Originally Posted by Zarabozo

One of the main reasons all previous versions of PT have had so many problems, is the fact that it is dragging a lot of old code that is really hard to change.

That's understood.

Regarding the title, and my last post, AAX development is steady but too slow to even entertain a PT release date any time soon.

Who wants PT 11 right now anyway? AE's? Probably not. What about composers doing this for a living with PT and VEP 5? Would be nice but I don't think many are waiting on the edge of their seats.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by YYR123

I don't see why they don't contract a bunch of the leg work (code writing) out to companies in India and the like - talented pool of highly educated people (college grads) and cheap when compared to US workers of the same grade and or skill set

I'm sure it happens all the time and you get other work done while contracting (can anyone say 11rack upgrades expansion packs and stand alone editor)

Happy customers are generally good paying customers and repeat customers

What makes you think they aren't doing that now?

[YYR123]

Originally Posted by sunburst79

What makes you think they aren't doing that now?

B/c We should've had it by now

Plus the standalone editor Plus the new expansion packs for different amp models

Those cats over there will work 15 hour days man

[YYR123]

Originally Posted by spenner

Who wants PT 11 right now anyway?

Even if ur work place doesn't upgrade - most users will on their personal ilok's just to play

Even if ur main studio doesn't have it I will be around - simply b/c people wanna try it out - heck I'm still runnin PT9 buuuut when 11x64 comes out I will have a brand new 11rack shipped to me.....and I know it might be buggy as hell and might not get any use till some updates and stability happens but I will have it fo-sho

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by TimNielsen

I'm curious, but with that much code being rewritten, I expect it'll be pretty buggy for a while on release.

I wouldn't expect that.

First and foremost, they need to go through *ALL* of the code to find out where there are 32-bit limitations. Removing those is trivial, finding those might take time.

Second, the big obstacle on the Mac side is that Carbon is not going to be 64-bit which means the app needs to be redone on Cocoa. This is what takes time and requires real changes to the code. But it's pretty well thought out by Apple and I wouldn't expect trouble here either.

The only trouble is that all this takes time, and while they're converting to 64-bit they also need to create something new because the Windows folks wouldn't be happy to get a "64-bit PT10" even if the upgrade was free. (Us Mac users would be pretty happy to just get a 64-bit Cocoa PT10 with a new splash screen)