Cant Import Audio from iCloud Desktop

[amathie]

I've got an MP3 file on my desktop but it doesn't show up in the Audio Import Dialog. Furthermore, I can't see and import my I/O settings file which is stored in documents/Protools/IO settings.

Is this anything to do with the fact that I have iCloud Desktop and Document switched on (ie that my desktop and documents folder is stored on iCloud)?

Thanks

[Darryl Ramm]

Where are your sessions stored? If they are on the iCloud silliness in your documents folder as well that is just a bad bad idea.

You will likely have to troubleshoot yourself your file import problem... people setting up a Mac for serious Pro Tools will not do what you have done so folks here are unlikely to have any experience or care about this.

[amathie]

I'm just trying some things out with a new MacBook Pro.

So far I've just kept Pro Tools sessions and media on the internal SSD but was interested in trying out storing them in the iCloud Documents folder. The iCloud Desktop and Documents folders are mirrored locally on the Mac in ~/library/mobile documents and so I was hoping that by doing this it would allow PT to access sessions and media from the local drive and, with a fast internet connection, simultaneous have automatic backup on Apple's iCloud servers; a bit like Drop Box or other similar systems.

Whilst it's easy for a user to access the user library which has now been hidden by Apple (Finder/Go ...hold down Alt Key...Library appears in drop down menu), there doesn't seem to be a way to access it via the PT open/import file dialogs. From what you are suggesting and from my experience above, I don' think it's likely to work!

I wasn't sure what you meant about iCloud. Was there something specific to Pro Tools or music production, or something else, eg that it's a poorly implemented concept etc?

[taylor4814]

On a PC I do a similar thing in Dropbox for my session template files, but I have found that I must remember to *pause syncing* in the Dropbox taskbar admin icon before doing any editing, and *resume syncing* when complete, to get reliable results...

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by amathie

I'm just trying some things out with a new MacBook Pro.

So far I've just kept Pro Tools sessions and media on the internal SSD but was interested in trying out storing them in the iCloud Documents folder. The iCloud Desktop and Documents folders are mirrored locally on the Mac in ~/library/mobile documents and so I was hoping that by doing this it would allow PT to access sessions and media from the local drive and, with a fast internet connection, simultaneous have automatic backup on Apple's iCloud servers; a bit like Drop Box or other similar systems.

Whilst it's easy for a user to access the user library which has now been hidden by Apple (Finder/Go ...hold down Alt Key...Library appears in drop down menu), there doesn't seem to be a way to access it via the PT open/import file dialogs. From what you are suggesting and from my experience above, I don' think it's likely to work!

I wasn't sure what you meant about iCloud. Was there something specific to Pro Tools or music production, or something else, eg that it's a poorly implemented concept etc?

You should not be doing this. Pro Tools expects decent performance local storage. Much of the proper setup of Pro Tools is getting good fast local storage. One reason that modern Macs are nice is their PCIe/NVMe SSD is so fast you can put sessions on the boot drive and not need dedicated audio/session drives. Disk cache can help hide underlying disk performance issues, but with a cloud storage, you likely don't even know when/if files are actually saved to the cloud.

And you have decided its OK to run Pro Tools on you Mac with networking (presumably WiFi) enabled and generating network traffic for this iCloud storage... you may or may not get away with that depending in how demanding the Pro Tools workload is, how small an IO buffer/low a latency you are trying to record at. If you have not already you need to read and follow the Pro Tools optimization guide, in the install documentation or under the "help us help you" section up the top of each DUC web page.

iCloud and similar services are slow rubbery connections designed to slowly sync files. They are just inappropriate to record a session to. They can be great for backing up/archiving to... zip up a session to save space and drag and drop onto the cloud storage... and check it eventually all gets there.

[Darryl Ramm]

~/Library is hidden by the Finder by default. It is possible to unhide that, and that is well documented on the interwebs. Or its always accessible by low level tools like the command shells/Terminal or Pete Gate's popular PT Prefs utility (better to use that than manually trying to mess with trashing preferences... which every Pro Tools users will need to do at some time). But stuff in there is hidden from normal users for a reason, messing with that might cause all sorts of problems. And again, what you are trying to do is just a very bad idea.

[amathie]

Darryl, thanks for the very sensible advice which I will heed!