4k high DPI support for Pro Tools 12 in Windows 10?

[TAMBOR]

Originally Posted by DAWgEAR

I am running a 28" 4K monitor via display port at 3840x2160 and in Windows 10 I have the following scaling settings

(i) Windows 10 Settings>Display>Change size of text, apps, and other items = 200%

(ii) Control Panel>Display>Set A Custom Scaling Level = 200%

What you are saying makes sense to me, because what you are effectively doing is running 1920 x 1080 on a 28" screen.

My theory is that if people running 4K would use a 45" +/- monitor no scaling would be needed and it would be very easy to read.

[DAWgEAR]

Originally Posted by TAMBOR

What you are saying makes sense to me, because what you are effectively doing is running 1920 x 1080 on a 28" screen.

Yes. I can't fit more elements onscreen, but my current setup is much more sharp than my previous monitor which ran at 1920x1080 native and at my age and with my declining vision, that is what counts for me!

If I run my current 4K display at 1920x1080 (not via scaling), it truly is blurry and horrendous. Windows, Pro Tools, everything.

Originally Posted by TAMBOR

My theory is that if people running 4K would use a 45" +/- monitor no scaling would be needed and it would be very easy to read.

Yes. I wish I could afford the price and the space!

[history]

Thanks for all of your replies. Dawgear, that is exactly my settings, and for my eyes it is very blurry. I am not sure what is going on under the hood in Windows 10, because the same monitor running OS X has Pro Tools as crisp and clear as the rest of OS X. Perhaps Avid is aware of this problem in Windows 10, I hope they can fix it soon! Thanks again everyone.

[Ivan Kosyakov]

Please vote for the bug request "Changing the size of text and other items for 4K displays is not supported" (Microsoft Windows). http://protools.ideascale.com/a/dtd/...ed/255370-3779

[history]

Hello, any updates about this? I've been running Pro Tools on OS X without scaling issues. Has anyone tried Pro Tools on Windows 10 since PT 12.7 as well as with recent windows 10 updates? Thank you!

[DAWgEAR]

As of Pro Tools 12.7.0 and with Windows 10, this has still not been fixed.

Those of us experiencing this cannot use the Score Editor nor any of the plugins/instruments included with Pro Tools that were developed by AIR.

I just paid my $399 HD annual support fee and I paid $599 for the year that just passed. For someone like me who composes using a lot of MIDI, a nontrivial percent of the Pro Tools product is unusable and has been unusable for over one year.

Not happy about paying through the nose for "support" and something as basic as this is not being addressed for this long!

[albee1952]

Just a side note on this; My rig runs a trio of 1920x1080 screens. I have multiple system drives for easy swap/backup and my daily-use C: drive runs Windows 7 and PT11.3HD and all screens look fine. My "experimental" C; drive runs Windows 10 with whatever the latest release(currently 12.7) and for some reason, when running the Win10 OS, the screens all look worse

[Vilming]

It seems this thread concerns two main issues: The lack of sharpness of the GUI on 4k displays, and (to some extent) issues with AIR plugins and score editor when 200% scaling is applied to allow for "normal-sized" text and graphic elements for smaller displays. I'm on a Dell laptop with a 4k display, Windows 10, Pro Tools 12.6.0, and apply 200% scaling. Regarding the sharpness issue I also find PT a bit less sharp than other applications, but Cubase is far less sharp. Studio One, on the other hand, is DPI-aware, so it looks super-sharp. So does Sibelius, which is DPI-aware (at least mostly).

Having followed Cubase for some time I observe their latest release did not include DPI-awareness, as requested by lots of users for a long time. I conclude this must be a bit of an effort to address for applications with lots of GUI elements and lots of legacy code. Studio One probably had this coded in early on, so the effort was probably not huge.

Aside from the less than perfect sharpness of PT, there is the far more serious issue (in my opinion) raised by DAWgEAR and others whereby AIR plugins and Score Editor cause GUI to shrink to a quarter of normal size on 4k displays with Windows 10 (and 8).

After quite a bit of trial, error and research I found a solution that works for me:

http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=2386570&postcount=20

[gandlz]

Hello guys,

just found this topic accidently and want to tell about a tool for windows 10 dpi scaling issues:
http://windows10_dpi_blurry_fix.xpexplorer.com/

According to some research Microsoft changed something in dpi scaling going from Windows 7/8 to Windows 10. I had some devices where even native dialog boxes and windows like device manager were showing blurry text. This tool helped me in these situations. I don’t know if it is the same issue here but it’s easy to try out und undoable of course. Good luck.

Gandlz

[DAWgEAR]

gandlz,

Thanks for sharing that link. I gave it a try and it appears to work for the Windows GUI in general, but I noticed that not all of the benefits translated into Pro Tools 12.8. Some fonts in Pro Tools appeared a bit off. For example some were darker/bolder. Nothing that would render Pro Tools unusable, but it looked less "nice". It was nice to be able to see more screen elements from Pro Tools on my monitor! Maybe the minor font weirdness is just on my system. I would encourage others to give it a try and evaluate for themselves.

Prior to seeing your post, I had been using 200% scaling at 3840x2160 on a 28" monitor. Other multiples appeared somewhat less sharp in the past. With the application from your link, I was able to use 175% and it looked as good as 200% (except for the Pro Tools issue noted above). However, my eyes are not what they used to be and I have set it back to 200%. I have left the application running on the Windows 8.1 setting, but at 200% and all seems well. I may try 175% again ...

UPDATE: After a while, I gave 150% at 3840x2160 a try ... it's been over a week and I'm sticking with it. Yes, things are small, but they are very sharp.