Want to develop graphical rep of all the track/bus interconnects

[dennizens]

Does Pro Tools have an SDK and an open platform where you can develop an application to access all the track information ? I have sessions with 150 tracks all interconnected with sends, busing, folders, etc etc. It is very difficult to traverse the interconnects between alll the tracks and I would like to develop an application that would graphically represent this configuration ? Let me know if we have this capability wit PT ?

[Darryl Ramm]

Welcome to DUC.

"open platform" and Avid, uh that must be a typo.

The Pro Tools session file format is proprietary/not publicly documented. The closest you get to "open" with Avid is probably OMF and AAF interchange formats.

I expect Avid (for maybe good reasons not just anti-being open) would not want you to try to do this say trying to reverse engine .ptx files, and also suspect you would not want to avoid that as well after thinking though all the complexity issues.

You have stuff like export session info as text (but I think that leaves off basic stuff like sends and bussing), maybe forcing Pro Tools to print out I/O notes when IO routing has changed, saving IO as a pio file, that you could reverse engineer. But you get narrow slice of information from all those. You could get some stuff via OMF or AAF but again it's going to be limited info. I can't recall say if Pro Tools even provides plugin info when exporting these. And you could also potentially work out some of what is happening via EUCON. And likely you would have to do several of these different routes to get all the info you need. And once you have all that info the complexity or representing it in was that are simpler than Pro Tools does already is going to be a challenge. If you are like me you might decide by then heck it's better to just try to reverse engineer the session file format. And about that time I'd suggest checking your sanity.

Any of this is going to be a lot of work. I mean an awful lot of work, and unless you are a developer already working in this space I suspect it's just too daunting. I'd maybe focus on layout templates, track /group/folder/bus etc. naming to try to simplify/standardizes what is going on. Maybe talk to folks in a similar space about how they have helped manage this.

[nednednerb]

If you are a developer and know how to graphically represent something using JavaScript, take a look at SoundFlow (now officially partnered with Avid since a few versions ago).

100% I can guarantee that SoundFlow could assemble and organize the information about track ins, outs, and sends using its JavaScript based user automation tools.

As far as your ability to use the engine to graphically represent something, perhaps using the SF abilities to script the info from Pro Tools and with a possibility to then automate another app to visualize things for you... You might get something workable for your situation....

I do not know more than this.

[dennizens]

the AVID subscription download for Soundflow is MAC only, i will go through all their videos to see what can be done.My son has a MAC but he is stingy with it. I appreciate the recommendation though

[dennizens]

Darryl, Many thanks for the tips, more than likely the avid files and DB are encrypted so reverse eng more than likely out of the question, i will look at the other recommendations you made, yeh the export session does not have the details i want. TY.

[nednednerb]

Ah yes, MacOS only right now. They have suggested there are Windows users asking for it, and it's a working idea/plan for future, but nothing declared outright, yet.

I know it can do things like go through a session, make a list of tracks, detect their inputs and outputs and inserts, etc, then organize them into "javascript objects."

The part I'm less sure about (this would be your own need) is displaying those objects somehow visually. I know there are potential means to visualize data but connecting that part to SF and PT would be the really interesting part. What Darryl speaks about "reverse engineering" is the part SF would be kind of doing. The visualization part would still be needed.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by dennizens

Darryl, Many thanks for the tips, more than likely the avid files and DB are encrypted so reverse eng more than likely out of the question, i will look at the other recommendations you made, yeh the export session does not have the details i want. TY.

They are not encrypted and some stuff is trivial to reverse engineer. But the long tail of complexity and problems you are likely to run into is not worth it. And regardless of possible common legal rights to reverse engineer stuff for your compatibility reasons I would really advise against that, and I suspect Avid would as well.

If export session is enough for you you are golden, a text front-end parser... if me I'd probably massage the text to json and consume that elsewhere.

[Ed Douglas]

Originally Posted by dennizens

Does Pro Tools have an SDK and an open platform where you can develop an application to access all the track information ? I have sessions with 150 tracks all interconnected with sends, busing, folders, etc etc. It is very difficult to traverse the interconnects between alll the tracks and I would like to develop an application that would graphically represent this configuration ? Let me know if we have this capability wit PT ?

I always thought it would be useful for ProTools to have a ‘flowchart’ window that represents signal flow in a session. Hope someone can make that happen.

[bradch00]

Originally Posted by dennizens

Does Pro Tools have an SDK and an open platform where you can develop an application to access all the track information ? I have sessions with 150 tracks all interconnected with sends, busing, folders, etc etc. It is very difficult to traverse the interconnects between alll the tracks and I would like to develop an application that would graphically represent this configuration ? Let me know if we have this capability wit PT ?

Here’s a link to where you can start determining whether your goal is feasible.
https://developer.avid.com