Pro Tools interface beautification

[Xin Zhang]

Originally Posted by Dale-c

Interesting thread. The single biggest issue that keeps me on a mac over windows is the lousy master window that makes full screen and multimonitors so inferior to a mac. Even on my Macbook, I can go full screen with both of the edit and mix windows and then swipe back and forth. This is an efficiency saver vs windows that helps ms work faster. There are other pros and cons on both platforms. I think if this UI of the windows was equal then using a PC would win out. But the way it is, the mac is just better.

You are right! I think so too! I don't know why the official doesn't pay attention to it. The market of Windows is much larger than that of Mac.

[Undead Goat]

Originally Posted by Reki

The title in this post describes an underlying element of the way Pro Tools windows are managed. Nowhere else in the OS is this Windows Vista element shown, which initially led me to believe that Pro Tools itself was specifically coded to have the vista style borders. So it stands to reason that, the way you get rid of the Vista borders is to just update the UI. However, every subsequent pro tools update then on that changed the UI, including the addition of a dark theme overhaul, it did not change the vista borders at all. Upon further reading, I believe this is actually the result of how windows are managed within Pro Tools. Unlike most modern creative apps, Pro Tools does not offer a meaningful degree of multi monitor support at all. Instead, it relies on a parent / child window style of management that forces this legacy element onto the Pro Tools experience. This is only restrictive and counterintuitive for production and efficiency, seeing as having multiple monitors is not something that pro tools has the ability to take advantage of. It seems that the way to solve this is to redesign the pro tools windows to have multi monitor support.

In addition to the “Vista style” window borders, file dialog boxes (open, save as, etc.) are also outdated in Pro Tools on Windows. If you have Windows set to dark mode for File Explorer, you’ll notice that Pro Tools file dialogs ignore that setting. Actually, Pro Tools is using “Vista/XP” era file dialogs as well which pre-date the dark mode option (select File-Open in Pro Tools, and File-Open in Windows Notepad to see the difference). My assumption is that they’re using older Windows libraries to instantiate things like file dialogs and window borders. While it still “works” for the time being, you’d imagine that at some point Microsoft might deprecate those libraries, so Avid should address it. In addition to being aesthetically unpleasing, it’s just seems a bit lazy (Windows 8/10 have been out for several years) or potentially indicative of some other deeper issue with being able to update that code within the application.

This is the singular most useful reply to these sorts of topics that I’ve ever read. Kudos! ^^

So the million dollar question is whether this is an Avid thing as opposed to a Windows thing. The answer is mixed. It’s both a Yes and a No. It’s a Yo.

In my case it was seldom about whether or not the borders were “just blue”. Rather, it’s only one item in a collection or a list of very small, very minor inconveniences that eventually compound to a larger problem between the difference(s) between the mac vs pc version. It’s the thing I notice straight away because it’s right there staring at me all day.

The colors of the borders don’t do anything in terms of workflow. But when I, a creative hobbiest / semi professional, decide to hook up a 4k monitor to do multimedia work for both video and audio, and that same 4k monitor doesn’t work on pro tools because the high dpi mode is so broken and ends up chopping off the file menu, that, literally becomes unusable.

that is to say, regarding the colors, the interface, scaling issues, etc. all appear to stem from the same underlying cause - a lack of proper multi monitor support forcing a parent / child window layout. Macs handle this slightly differently, so it's been less of an issue on that front.

It's mildly frustrating when the response has contunually been met from the white knights jumping to Avid’s defense about how it’s “not a big deal” and that it “works fine” for them. Like, I’m genuinely happy for you and all, it’s just that for about 600 bucks a year I expected just a tiny bit more.

Anywhoo, eventually I made the switch over to Apple silicon and, although the transition was a bit rough at first, the updates have rolled out and have gotten the software to (finally) behave in a way that I expect it to.

It ultimately came down to the singular, most expensive bug fix I’ve ever had to deal with.