Pro Tools Collaboration feature is something we'll look back at and laugh....

[dr_daw]

So, I've been working on a project for a few months testing the 'Collaboration' feature that was to be the 'holy grail' of PT's 12. To say the least, this is one of the biggest waste of resources I have ever been exposed to as a customer.

I run a system that, for my purposes, gives the illusion that it is bullet proof. It is this reason that I reached out to the community to try to do a project via the new feature. The first thing that became apparent is that if you intend on doing a full 'live instrument' project on what Avid provides for free...forget it! In the beginning of the trial I did all my drum takes (8 tracks) into the cloud with only a stereo stem of the mix with no drums. Three takes took up the entirety of the space provided.

To this we adapted, saving the mix or stems as a session, working on it locally until the final takes got approval (via committing the drum buss and only uploading that to the cloud). The project owner then had to purchase more space in order to upload to takes of 8 track 24/48 drums.

After thinking that we beat the system and were off to the races the next hurdle appeared. Once beginning the second song using what we learned after the first; two of the collaborators were unable to upload tracks. Full disk repairs, prefs trashes, reboots did not solve the problem. The result in order to maintain fluidity in the project was to use the FREE space available on Dropbox to transfer files (a method that I've used to complete two EP's with artists and mix engineers across the country).

This resulted in a second change to our workflow in which that only mix stems were uploaded to the cloud, they would be downloaded and saved as a session locally and worked on that way. Again feeling like we had beaten the bag of crap coding sold as a marketing scheme I've attempted to move on to the third song.

I'm now 3 hours into just simply trying to sign in and being plagued with a blank sign in screen, no connections and the like. Being a new father with a finite amount of time for recording. I value my ability to be able to record when creativity strikes; especially when I'm asked to do so by someone else on their project. They have expectations of me to deliver, and when time zones get involved the ability to troubleshoot goes out the window.

This is more of a story that I feel may not be suitable for this thread, and I'm not looking for solutions to my problem. Those of you that know me here, know that I am always open to ask for help. This is more of a statement to confirm what all of us thought...that years (maybe even next year) we'll look back at this collaboration feature and laugh! Just like we do with Mini discs, key-tars, and egg cartons for acoustic treatment.

Here are some screen shots of tonights wasted creativity! Thanks Avid! You guys are swell.

[YYR123]

I've never tried it....

I bet there are people who look at how much traffic this feature does/doesn't receive.....I would like to know...I bet it's shocking

[amagras]

I have a Samsung smartphone, just for that my Dropbox was expanded to 50gb free, that's even better than Wetransfer. I record guitars online for an amount of producers, so far none of them has asked about using the cloud collaboration I have listed on my website.

[clausiii]

I recently started using it with a friend. I like it! Of course it's not perfect, fe i'd like to get push notifications (or a simple mail) even when PT is closed when another one has changed something in the session/project.

[deanrichard]

I don't use it, so for me it doesn't offer any value. My guess it that the percentage of PT users who do is very small, and the ones who pay for the service is much smaller still. But for the ones who use it, I'm sure it's useful.

Originally Posted by dr_daw

So, I've been working on a project for a few months testing the 'Collaboration' feature that was to be the 'holy grail' of PT's 12. To say the least, this is one of the biggest waste of resources I have ever been exposed to as a customer.

I run a system that, for my purposes, gives the illusion that it is bullet proof. It is this reason that I reached out to the community to try to do a project via the new feature. The first thing that became apparent is that if you intend on doing a full 'live instrument' project on what Avid provides for free...forget it! In the beginning of the trial I did all my drum takes (8 tracks) into the cloud with only a stereo stem of the mix with no drums. Three takes took up the entirety of the space provided.

To this we adapted, saving the mix or stems as a session, working on it locally until the final takes got approval (via committing the drum buss and only uploading that to the cloud). The project owner then had to purchase more space in order to upload to takes of 8 track 24/48 drums.

After thinking that we beat the system and were off to the races the next hurdle appeared. Once beginning the second song using what we learned after the first; two of the collaborators were unable to upload tracks. Full disk repairs, prefs trashes, reboots did not solve the problem. The result in order to maintain fluidity in the project was to use the FREE space available on Dropbox to transfer files (a method that I've used to complete two EP's with artists and mix engineers across the country).

This resulted in a second change to our workflow in which that only mix stems were uploaded to the cloud, they would be downloaded and saved as a session locally and worked on that way. Again feeling like we had beaten the bag of crap coding sold as a marketing scheme I've attempted to move on to the third song.

I'm now 3 hours into just simply trying to sign in and being plagued with a blank sign in screen, no connections and the like. Being a new father with a finite amount of time for recording. I value my ability to be able to record when creativity strikes; especially when I'm asked to do so by someone else on their project. They have expectations of me to deliver, and when time zones get involved the ability to troubleshoot goes out the window.

This is more of a story that I feel may not be suitable for this thread, and I'm not looking for solutions to my problem. Those of you that know me here, know that I am always open to ask for help. This is more of a statement to confirm what all of us thought...that years (maybe even next year) we'll look back at this collaboration feature and laugh! Just like we do with Mini discs, key-tars, and egg cartons for acoustic treatment.

Here are some screen shots of tonights wasted creativity! Thanks Avid! You guys are swell.

[Meads]

Originally Posted by deanrichard

I don't use it, so for me it doesn't offer any value. My guess it that the percentage of PT users who do is very small, and the ones who pay for the service is much smaller still. But for the ones who use it, I'm sure it's useful.

Imho Avid should focus on what benefits MOST of their users, not wasting resources catering to a select few, whilst abandoning work on vital things. Like - you know - fixing stuff.
I wonder how much better PT12 would be by now if they hadn't been working on CC.

[mlemos]

I came across an article the other day that said that Avid have over 50k paid subscribers for their cloud. That's way more than I would have guessed.

[clausiii]

Originally Posted by mlemos

I came across an article the other day that said that Avid have over 50k paid subscribers for their cloud. That's way more than I would have guessed.

Interesting!
May i have a link of this article please?

[YYR123]

Yeah 50k is more than I would have expected as well

[moshuajusic]

Originally Posted by mlemos

I came across an article the other day that said that Avid have over 50k paid subscribers for their cloud. That's way more than I would have guessed.

Originally Posted by clausiii

Interesting!
May i have a link of this article please?

If you google "avid 50000 cloud subscribers" you'll see a bunch of articles that say "The company now has over 50,000 cloud-enabled paying subscribers and 40,000 enterprise users of Avid's MediaCentral platform." That does NOT necessarily mean they're paying for or even using the cloud service. I read it to mean that they're subscribed to an upgrade and/or support plan, which includes a few crumbs of cloud storage.