Featured Suggestion:Tabbed Multisession Support for ProTools

[Nathan W.]

Okay,

So I thought it would be really cool to have a tabbed multisession support for ProTools like FireFox, or Safari. No more closing a session, opening a session, just click on new tab and you're on a different session. I imagine you'd need some serious RAM for this! =)

Nathan

[TheHenchman]

You mean the way Nuendo does it?

[airon]

I do not expect people to spend money on HD hardware to run multiple sessions, unless its for editing purposes.

It could be useful though to have the option to run multiple low-DSP sessions, especially for recutting stuff from picture changes. It could save a lot of peoples days, not just the poor sods in the foley editing department. We still have loads of RTAS power anyway, and if Digidesign does its homework, this functionality should be a very real possiblity.

This also sounds like a call for sequence bins. I admit, I like Nuendo for its easy transfers of clip sequences to a another session, which is what's great about Avid or AudioVision for that matter.

[1150Post]

Thanks for bringing this idea up. I discussed it with everyonr, from Wendy Abowd down, at NAB.

How about some ideas about how this should work, and wht we need it, so hat they move it up the list...

I've said my piece directly, but they need your ideas as well. Let'er rip!

[steppenwolf68]

So I thought it would be really cool to have a tabbed multisession support for ProTools like FireFox, or Safari. No more closing a session, opening a session, just click on new tab and you're on a different session. I imagine you'd need some serious RAM for this! =)

I second that!!

[Frank Kruse]

They need ideas? There have been endless threads over the last years about these standard feature-request. Bins and sequence-handling. One way do do it is part of their own product line: AVID. Another way to do it was killed years ago: AudioVision. Then there are a bunch of competing products and how they do it.

IMO, there are so many good ideas in these apps (see clip-editor that could carry a whole sequence) it´s not really necessary to re-invent the wheel.

While re-invnting the wheel ONE good thing to cover the time till the release of the feature would be an implementation of region-groups that makes sense: They shouldn´t lose their volume and pan-info (and other automation parameters) when transferrend to other sessions or being dragged from the region-list. Also a short-cut that groups the focused automation-parameter in a selected region-group this would save constant creation of temporary edit/mix-groups when working with region-groups.

Otherwise a tab-style session window would be cool ;-)

frank.

[Tom Smith]

One thing that I particularly like about Pro Tools is the simplicity and straightforwardness (is that a word?) of it's user interface. I would hate to see the works gummed up and more screen real estate taken up by essentially useless objects like tabs with pretty little icons, etc. As it is, I already keep things like track colors and comments turned off 99.9% of the time and unnecessary rulers off 100% of the time.

If the ability to open more than one session comes to Pro Tools, rather than tabs, I'd rather just have a seperate edit & mix windows for each session that I can size and arrange however I see fit. This would facilitate drag & drop of regions, plug-ins, automation, etc. between sessions and allow visual comparison of sessions. Tabs are okay for a web browser where the object loaded into each tab are pretty much read only and mutually exclusive but would really limit the potential for useful interactivity between PT sessions.

A compromise design might "dockable tabs" similar to those used in the floating tool bars of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, et. al. You could have your tabs and then if/when you need to see the edit window of more than one session, you could simply drag the tab out and drop it outside to create it's own window.

[cmaynes]

A tapped session methodology would be perfect- Basically it would behave in a WSIWYG metaphor- i.e. you see the session, you hear the session.

+1



charles maynes

[Chief Technician]

Thanks for bringing this idea up. I discussed it with everyonr, from Wendy Abowd down, at NAB.

How about some ideas about how this should work

Implement Quick Look so that we can look at sessions without opening them.

[Nathan W.]

"One thing that I particularly like about Pro Tools is the simplicity and straightforwardness (is that a word?) of it's user interface. I would hate to see the works gummed up and more screen real estate taken up by essentially useless objects like tabs with pretty little icons, etc. As it is, I already keep things like track colors and comments turned off 99.9% of the time and unnecessary rulers off 100% of the time."

Quite simply turn OFF tabs in the Preferences section of ProTools. TABS would be excellent for voiceover sessions where I could quickly go from one session to the next.