Protools needs an open beta

[Southsidemusic]

How does backing up to insanity get better bugless PT Releases? Dont get it! Avid need to realize something is substatially broken between programmers and beta testers which is very evident lately. We have a lot of bugs that makes PT feel like its dying a slow painful death. We basically cant use PT as we did 7-10 years ago and have gone to a second DAW 90% of the time for features worthy of the cost we pay and less breakdowns of essential functions and this is nothing mods or Avid should try explain away on a forum .Sorry but that makes zero sense and only riles up the userbase by defending a broken practice.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

How does backing up to insanity get better bugless PT Releases? Dont get it! Avid need to realize something is substatially broken between programmers and beta testers which is very evident lately. We have a lot of bugs that makes PT feel like its dying a slow painful death. We basically cant use PT as we did 7-10 years ago and have gone to a second DAW 90% of the time for features worthy of the cost we pay and less breakdowns of essential functions and this is nothing mods or Avid should try explain away on a forum .Sorry but that makes zero sense and only riles up the userbase by defending a broken practice.

Backing up as described gives you an easy way to recover/restore if anything goes sour. Updates can go sour(that's what this thread is all about). I'm not defending anything. I'm suggesting not trusting your sanity to any update or software change that has the potential to ruin a working system. Some updates of PT have been known to cause issues(like the recent track count reduction that happened to the initial 2020.9 release. Its not only PT that can cause issues, it can be some new plugin, or an OS update, or maybe someone updates PT without looking to see if its compatible with their current OS(happens a lot with Mac OS as Apple pays no attention to backward compatibility). If you don't want to do backups, that's your choice. But its a bit like jumping out of a plane with no backup chute

[JFreak]

Backups are just common sense, but it will not fix anything. You both have your points, very valid I might say...

[Basstian]

Sorry, but I am not getting the point completely. Avid is having a public beta since PT 11 or at least 12. They call it release. And the bug report feature is called support. But beside that we are all in an open beta since years now.

[Ru_C]

Originally Posted by Basstian

Sorry, but I am not getting the point completely. Avid is having a public beta since PT 11 or at least 12. They call it release. And the bug report feature is called support. But beside that we are all in an open beta since years now.

haha ! Exactly this..

[JFreak]

If you want to take this joke to its fullest, why not say the last stable version was 8.1.1 that was DigiDesign branded

[Farhoof]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

How does backing up to insanity get better bugless PT Releases? Dont get it! Avid need to realize something is substatially broken between programmers and beta testers which is very evident lately. We have a lot of bugs that makes PT feel like its dying a slow painful death. We basically cant use PT as we did 7-10 years ago and have gone to a second DAW 90% of the time for features worthy of the cost we pay and less breakdowns of essential functions and this is nothing mods or Avid should try explain away on a forum .Sorry but that makes zero sense and only riles up the userbase by defending a broken practice.

Exactly this!

To clarify, I am the one testing new releases on an isolated rig.
We have plenty of backups and are holding off updates. Hence we are currently running 2018.12 on our mix stages, 2019.6 on our edit suites and using 2019.12 to import AAF's from recent Mediacomposer exports, even though it is a risk to open 2019.12 sessions in earlier versions of Protools because of, you know, bugs.

I would love to try these advanced new features like folders , but Protools versions 2020.3, 2020.5 and now 2020.9 are all flagged red within a single day of testing. Looking back all the way to PT11 on average only 1 in 5 or 1 in 6 releases are flagged 'save to roll out for our workflow' here. Only very few had something to do with third party compatibility (like Decklink), by far most issues are simple Protools bugs found withing the first week of testing. There are plenty of bugs we can live with or work around, I don't expect it to be bug free at all, I just want the obvious ones to be fixed before release or very soon after, not wait 4 months to swap the old bugs for new ones and hope it's an improvement.

We are paying yearly support plans for every single rig just to report bugs and most of them aren't being fixed. Anyone remember one of the most popular requests on the Ideascale site? It was 'fix bugs before introducing new features'.

I know very well the chances for an open beta are pretty much non-existent, but one needs to speak up to be heard. The current system is not working for us. Maybe there are not enough beta testers. Maybe their priorities are not the same as ours. Or maybe outsourcing programming to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries wasn't the best idea after all. I do not know, but something has to change because I can't think of any other software I have used in my career (OS excluded) where only 1 in 5 releases was deemed 'safe for use in teams'.

[Basstian]

Originally Posted by JFreak

If you want to take this joke to its fullest, why not say the last stable version was 8.1.1 that was DigiDesign branded

Because it would not be true. And this is not a joke. We rely on PT. And I have been using it professionally since 1999. I will continue to use it, because it fits the job best and I don't want to start learning a new DAW after 21 years. But the truth is. AVID does not do the job on their end. Period. We pay for a working product. And we would gladly pay the annual fee even without new features. But I expect a (as much as possible) bug free version that is up to date and can work with recent OSes and machines.

And this has not been the case for a long time now.

[JFreak]

There has always been good and bad releases, but still some versions are better than others.

I can fondly remember combinations of OSX 10.3.4 & PT 6.4.1 and OSX 10.6.8 & 8.1.1 but the good versions since 64bit PT is a lot harder to pinpoint. Mainly because Apple has been changing frameworks very heavily lately.

PT 2019.5 however is a big improvement.

[Basstian]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Mainly because Apple has been changing frameworks very heavily lately.

PT 2019.5 however is a big improvement.

2019.5 was released a year ago. There does not need to be said more. That is far from current and does not support any current os or machine.

And Apple changing things should not stop AVID from doing their part.

We pay them for exactly that.