Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Hi, the question is in the title.
How do you renew Protools (standard) license after your first year of Carbon?

As a Perpetual renewal ?
As a Subscription renewal ?

Since it's a subscription until you let it expires, I assume you renew it as a subscription if not yet expired and as a Perpetual if expired.

Also what happens if it expires? Do I have the 30 days window to renew or need to reinstate?

what plugins exactly do you loose?
Do you get them back if you renew or reinstate..?


Any Idea?
Thanks,
Alberto

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Personally I would recommend to keep your perpetual license and renew the "Support & Upgrades Plan".

The perpetual license will always work even if the support plan expires (up to the latest version before plan expires). And the "Support & Upgrades Plan" also includes HEAT, Melodyna, Falcon and all AVID plugins (as long as plan is kept active). But the most important thing is to keep Pro Tools permanent license!

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Let me explain better.

My first year license is about to expire, and if it does it will turn into Perpetual.

I don't understand which renew pack to buy, since my store gives me 2 options:

Renew as a subscription holder
Renew as a perpetual holder

And also it's not clear what happens If I wanted to renew the license after expired.... do I have the 30 days window to renew or do I have to "reinstate" from day 1, which is more expensive?

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

This used to be relatively simple for Carbon.

Carbon used to come with a standard PT perpetual license with one year of support+upgrades. If you do nothing after a year, the license remains perpetual and you are stuck at the last version you had access to. The alternative is to pay for a year of support and upgrades - about £200 / $200 per year. There is no option or need to move to a subscription license.

The confusion used to be that if you already had a standard perpetual PT license before you purchased the Carbon, you could INSTEAD choose to extend the support+upgrades on your existing perpetual license for one year.

Now is it substantially more confusing, because many/most people who bought a Carbon get a Perpetual ULTIMATE PT license as well. Yes - you get BOTH standard and ultimate, both with support+upgrades for a year. At the end, you have to decide to:
1) do nothing, in which case you keep both perpetual licenses, stuck at the final version.
2) add (pay for) support and upgrades on Standard PT
3) add (pay for) support and upgrades on Ultimate PT
4) add (pay for) support and upgrades on BOTH Standard and Ultimate.

At no point is there any real sense in moving to a subscription if you have a Carbon.

You should be able to see all you options inside your Avid account, although PT standard and PT ultimate are in different places - and in my case they have different dates because I received the PT Ultimate as a "gift" from Avid when they started the Ultimate promotion with Carbons, some time after I'd purchased the hardware.

DO NOT let it expire, unless you have already bought a reinstatement or are sure you can buy one from a reseller - be certain they have stock. All Avid reinstatements were withdrawn a year or two ago, and then unexpectedly brought back for ONLY December this year.
(by all means let it expire if you just want to go to a Perpetual with no support, but don't assume that reinstatements will be available again).

Dominic

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Thanks Dominique. Still confused.

I cannot renew inside my avid account. It says contact reseller.
The store I'm buying from has 2 options

Renew as a subscription holder
Renew as a perpetual holder

Inside my avid account my plan is : Carbon Pro Tools Subscription
That confuses me .... Do I already own a perpetual or am I still under subscription... therefore what to buy?



PS: I never got the "gift" of perpetual, I was one of the first to buy. Should I ask Avid?

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Yes, you need to check with Avid and your reseller. Be careful with resellers - they often give incorrect advice, at least in the UK.

Dominic

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Thanks Dominc, Avid is taking the usual time to answer..

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Same situation here, under Pro Tools Carbon in My Products I have a line for the hardware and a line that reads Pro Tools Carbon - Pro Tools Subscription with a system ID one digit higher than the hardware. It's status reads Expired on December 26, 2021 but on my iLok it's expiration date is shown as today January 2nd, 2022 at 4:59pm.

When registering the Carbon and selecting the one year subscription option, it was stated this would turn into a perpetual license at the last version available if not renewed. Has that actually happened for anybody yet?

Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

This is how it goes with carbon according to the promo. One year subscription with perpetual parachute. Carbon was introduced early last year. Later on, last year in December, you were allowed to reinstate an expired perpetual plan. However, it didn’t pertain to subscriptions; which misses the whole point of perpetual renewal on carbon since it’s only a parachute after your subscription expires.


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Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Yeah, problem is the perpetual parachute never opened, original 1 year subscription expired today and no perpetual license, thud.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

The Pro Tools Ultimate license is located in your Avid account under Products Not Yet Downloaded. If it's not there contact Avid.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Dude.. this was big. It was actually there, and since I never activated it, I seem to have a 1 year Ultimate subscription from NOW.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

This is strange. Mine expires in 2 days and I'll let you know if parachute opens.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

This is the reply I got from Avid:

"Since your license is expiring in 3 days, you may purchase a Pro Tools | Carbon Pro Tools Subscription renewal.

Since you have purchased from a reseller, you should purchase a renewal through a reseller as well. "


So it looks like until the subscription expires you don't have a perpetual, you're actually under the subscription plan.

It would (hopefully) convert into perpetual only if you let it expire.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Let's not confuse the terms of subscription and license. It's a license with 1 year of support. The 1 year of support doesn't start till you activate the Ultimate license and you don't have to activate it till you are ready ( next week, next month, next year, two years from now, etc). After the 1 year of support is up you can purchase an additional year of support like you would with any other Pro Tools Ultimate license( $399.00 USD a year). Right now you have 2 licenses, a Carbon Pro Tools Subscription Perpetual Parachute, and an Ultimate license. Also, you can not sell or transfer the Ultimate license to another iLok account (person) but you can use the 2 licenses on separate iLoks (therefore on 2 different machines) attached to the same account that your Carbon is registered to.

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Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

I was going to tell you that the Carbon PT Subscription Perpetual Parachute you got with Carbon doesn't turn into a perpetual license until you let the subscription expire. So if you continue the subscription now and later you decide not to renew, at that time it turns into a perpetual license, and whatever version of Pro Tools you have at that time you'll be able to continue using from that point forward. But I see Avid has contacted you now.

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Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

It's still kinda weird.

The reseller has 3 update packages for standard PT (and same 3 for Ultimate) :

1) Update & Support Plan Renewal 198$

2) Update & Support Plan Reinstatement 257$

3) Subscription renewal 317$


They're telling me I have a subscription licence at the moment so I would have to buy pack3.

It's more than 100$ more thank pack 1 but I actually own the software, it just didn't convert to perpetual yet..

I probably would just let it expire and purchase plan 1 (there's should be a 30 days window as stated here: https://sforce.co/3eMRK3c)

Even reinstatement (plan2) is still 60 bucks less than subscription (Plan3).

I think it's very dumb and confusing.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Thanks, my PT Carbon one year subscription expired 9 days ago and no perpetual license has arrived yet. When I dragged the license from my iLok2 to my iLok 3, the subscription expiration date changed from 12/26 to 1/2, which was funky, but it did expire after that so I submitted the ticket the next day. And yes, I tried dragging it back to the other iLok again to see if there was some perpetual grace period shell game going on, but sadly no.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Hey all, I'll reply back with more detail once I am back in the office, but lemme TRY to quell some of the confusion...

The parachute, as one of you stated earlier, did not deploy. There is a bug logged and IT is working on it.

For now, ALL of you should have PT Ultimate Perp in your Products Not Downloaded section of your My Avid account.

Once the parachute is patched... you will have the option to renew the parachute Subscription OR let it stay in a Perpetual license state. While it is perpetual, you currently will have the option to renew the subscription at any point in time.

Also, since you all received a Perpetual Ultimate license, you will also have the option to renew the Support contract to continue receiving software updates, plugins and support.

I'll be back in the office tomorrow, so let me know any specific questions you have and I'll try to address them.

Mark

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

My understanding was when it's time to renew your Carbon Pro Tools Standard license (subscription) you would be purchasing the support plan renewal and not the subscription plan. Is this correct or not? I also would like to know if the end user is given a 30 days grace period to renew the Carbon Pro Tools Standard subscription as the current Pro Tools Ultimate / Standard license holders are afforded?

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

It’s confusing. The new offer was without a parachute, but an ultimate subscription instead. Which amounts to 799.00 instead of 599.00 for a perpetual.


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Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

These are also my questions, Thanks Mark

PS: I confirm my PT standard expired today and the parachute didn't work.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Got my ticket response this morning;

"Current Response:

Entered on: 1/6/2022 4:21 AM Entered by: XXXX

Hi Michael,

Thank you for contacting Avid Support.

Please log in to account.avid.com then go to "Products Not Yet Downloaded" under My Products to get your Pro Tools Ultimate Perpetual license.


Regards,
XXXX
Avid Global Customer Care"

Yeah, I know about what was supposed to be the additional Ultimate Perpetual license, but unless I misunderstood the wordsmithing of that offer, the original vanilla subscription was supposed to become a perpetual as well. Hopefully, that response just left out the "For now," from the response above.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Baaack!

Let's start with the simple part... you ALL currently have a Pro Tools Ultimate Perpetual license in your Products Not Downloaded.

It is a normal perpetual license with a year of support & upgrades.

Once the year of support & upgrades lapses, you can choose to continue the contract to continue receiving updates & support.

The Pro Tools Subscription portion is new, and is currently not functioning as expected.

It is what we have been calling a Perpetual Parachute and it is intended to ALWAYS leave you with a Pro Tools license so you can always use your Carbon.

Once the Pro Tools Subscription expires, it is supposed to turn into a Perpetual license. This is not working correctly and we are actively trying to get it fixed.

Once it lapses into a Perpetual license, you can obviously continue to use PT, but you will be missing the goodies (updates, plugins, Heat, support etc) that came with the Subscription.

You can renew the Subscription at any time to flip the Perpetual back to a Subscription. There is not a grace period, you can currently renew the day after it lapses or a year later with no penalty.You can do this from MyAvid OR from a reseller... I do not think these are working correctly at the moment either. I have additional calls on this topic today and again on Monday to understand why.

I hope this helps... we're working hard to get the licensing all sorted for you all.

I'll let you know mor eonce I know more!

m

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

We appreciate you Mark.

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Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Thank you Mark, the Ultimate licence is cool.

But I am even more confused on what to buy when renewing.
There are several available options:

1) Update & Support Plan Renewal (For owners of a perpetual license with valid update & support plan

2) Reinstate licence (For owners of a perpetual licence without a valid update plan

3) Crossgrade from a permanent license with an expired Update & Support Plan to the current Pro Tools version

4) Annual Licence Renewal (For owners of a valid Pro Tools annual licence)


Thanks for sorting this out.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Alberto

You will eventually have two license to renew... The original PT Subscription and the bonus PT Ult Perpetual license. It's your choice to renew one, both, or none... but hopefully not none!

So the items you listed above would be for the PT Ult Perpetual license. You would most likely choose the "Update & Support Plan Renewal"

The PT Subscription would just be a Subscription renewal. You will be able to get there from your MyAvid page by selecting the "Buy Again" button to the left of the expired PT Subscription.

Do not do it now... it will take you to the incorrect place.

I'm hoping to have this all fixed next week. Please continue to let me know if you have questions, and I'll let ya'll know once this train is pointed in the right direction.

Thanks for ALL of your patience and understanding.

m

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Thanks Mark, Is this valid before the update and support plan expires, after it expired, or in both cases?


PS: Actually those options apply to both Ultimate AND standard, since it will (eventually) convert to perpetual if you let it expire.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

With the Ultimate, it's already a license. You have a 30 day grace period after the 1-year support and upgrade plan ends to re-up. The catch is if you don't re-up in that 30 days you'll have to buy a reinstatement plan to get back on board with the latest updates. Avid no longer offers reinstatement plans and you can only purchase one through a dealer but they are very scarce and cost $999.00. Avid did for the month of December in 2021 offer reinstatements for Standard at $249 and Ultimate at $499 but that deal is gone. I did check and RSPE Audio and Video Solutions do have a few discounted reinstatement plans left in stock. To continue the support and upgrade plan for Ultimate is $399 a year if you don't let it lapse.

The Carbon PT subscription perpetual parachute is just what it is a subscription but with an option so if you don't re-up your not left without a license, cause it turns into a PT Hybrid Standard/Subscription license sort of at which is unique to the Carbon PT subscription license only. As Mark said with this license you can re-up anytime to continue the subscription for another year and receive the latest updates without penalty, unlike the Ultimate license as I described in the last paragraph or any other PT license. I do believe to continue the subscription it cost more than the PT Standard support and upgrade plan and that is the only catch.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

So basically only the Standard PT license is unique to Carbon

When you let it expire you get a perpetual, but you can reactivate the subscription by just buying a "renew subscription" pack ( like if you still had an active plan, that's what no penalty means i suppose)

Ultimate is like for non-carbon users, a perpetual with 1 year support.

Is this correct?


Alberto

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Correct. To continue the subscription is priced at $299 USD a year and the Ultimate support and upgrade plan is $399 USD a year. Remember you can't let the Ultimate support and upgrade plan lapse for more than 30 days after the support and upgrade plan ends or you'll need a Ultimate reinstatement plan which may not be available from any dealer at that time. That's the trick Avid has imposed to keep some of us on the support and upgrade plan continuously.

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Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

So, with what was said above in red, does that mean that you are surrendering your perpetual license for a sub, or will it revert back to a perpetual when you let the sub end? And I’m strictly talking about the standard PT license that comes with the Carbon after the perpetual parachute deploys.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

I'm going to assume whenever your stop the subscription it turns into a perpetual. As it was stated before its a subscription perpetual parachute. It turns into a license once you stop the subscription so you'll NEVER be without a license to operate your Pro Tools Carbon you paid a premium price for. So I'm led to believe that because Avid is allowing you to start and stop the subscription at will, anytime you don't re-up it turns into a perpetual. If you want to get current you'll have to re-up for at least a year's subscription. I guess that's the meaning of Avid's Perpetual Parachute.

We can still ask Mark just to be sure.

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Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

I would love to test this theory but since I already owned an Ultimate license prior to my Carbon purchase, I opted to surrender the PT Carbon Subscription Perpetual Parachute license in favor of an additional year of support and upgrade plan for my current Ultimate license.

Now I have 2 Ultimate licenses (one in my products not downloaded yet Avid account). So now my support and upgrade plan doesn't expire till March 31, 2023, on the 1 Ultimate license I'm currently using.

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Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

I assume that's the case too. I think you have a subscription everytime you renew it and a perpetual in the "expired" period.

That is, very unique and a way of promoting Carbon-

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

and also: what version of "ProTools Carbon" does it fall back to once you stop a subscription that was started after letting the provided license expire to a perpetual license?

What I am getting at is this: Would they let you skip a couple years and get around the ugly "reinstatement" fee by just buying a single year of subscription and then being up to date - also once if falls back to perpetual again?

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

To my understanding, you would be stuck at the last version that was released before your subscription expired. Once it expires your subscription turns into a perpetual parachute which by their meaning is you can renew at any time without penalty for a year (currently $299 USD) to get the current PT version (and the Complete Plugin Bundle for that year). When any PT Carbon subscription expires (Perpetual Parachute) you'll keep the last version released while your subscription was activated.

This is a nice bonus for Carbon users as the rest of us perpetual Standard or Ultimate License owners would have to buy an expensive Reinstatement Plan to get current if we let our Support and Upgrade Plan lapse.

Also remember this only applies to the PT Carbon Perpetual Parachute license that comes with every Carbon, not the PT Ultimate license that you were given during the promo period. The Ultimate license you must re-up every year ($399 USD) to stay current or risk not being able to update in the future. Avid no longer sells Reinstatement Plans for lapsed perpetual license holders. There are still a few available from dealers but that won't last long.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

thanks for the reply!
this sounds too good to be true,
if you don't mind me asking, where did you get this information from?

just to be 100% clear on this:
I'm talking about the situation where you have a Carbon perpetual parachute license,
which you then decide to start another year of subscription on (if this is even possible).

Let's say you are on 2021.12 perpetual parachute.
In 2026 you pay for one year of subscription on that license, get 2026.3 (or whatever).
In 2027 you let the subscription run out...
What version will your perpetual license be - 2021.12 or 2026.3?

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

38 posts and nothing is clear.

Some input from Avid would be useful.

Re: Carbon - How to renew? Perpetual or subscription?
 

Mark from Avid is where I got it from (it's in this thread).
Though it's not functioning as expected in the MyAvid account just yet, This is the way Avid intends for it to be.
I'll email an Avid rep. again to get more answers for you.