PT6.7 cs1 Export as text still wrong.

[Farmer Dave]

I get tired of repeating myself on EVERY SINGLE release of PT6, but the files list in Text Export is STILL wrong.

- Incorrect formatting
- Making up pathnames for files, saying some are in the fade files folder, etc..

I wish some other parties would chime in on this, as I know dozens personally that need & want this fixed. But for whatever reason, I'm always on my own with this issue.

[SimpleNatureSpirit]

There is a 'text export' function

What is it used for and what is the command sequence to get to it?

I'd be happy to see what you mean.

[Farmer Dave]

It's under the file menu, and it's used to export data about the session. In our case we used this function to gather session data, and then a separate utility, to copy & consolidate sessions, for delivery to the mix stage (This was for the Lord of the Rings films I might add, not just a garage operation), and also to share sessions that were being worked on concurrently with people in multiple places (even multiple countries.)

People will say just to use the "Save Session copy with Audio" instead, but that only scratches the surface of what we were able to do using this utility.

BUT, without valid paths to the audio files, using the "export as text" function, the Utility is useless.

I've reported it here as broken, on every single PT6 release.

[Guy Bouchard]

What is that utility Dave?
thanks

[Farmer Dave]

It's a utility I wrote for myself, that wound up being adopted when we were on Rings. Numerous mods were made to it over the period of the 3 films. It got used for all Sound Effects, Dialog, and foley delivery to the stage, plus delivery of conformed premixes, etc.. The foley editor also used it to share sessions back & forth with the foley team in Sydney, and they had no problems with Unique ID's because of it. Same for dialog sessions, when ADR was being recorded in London.

It was orginally intended for 2 things, to do Finder level copies to avoid Retrospect multiple backups of the same files, and to preserve the Unique ID's of audio files when sharing sessions. It wound up having very creative uses, like seeing how large your session would be before copying, compositing multiple sessions, making sure that copies worked even if there were duplicate file names, etc.. All are things that can't be done with a "Save Session Copy with audio", or "importing tracks & copying".

Companies in the UK, Australia, and the US, have inquired about it, but I keep having to tell them it won't work because PT6 text export is broken.

I was considering releasing it to the public, but since DIGI hasn't taken steps to fix this, I haven't, and can't. Frankly a public release is less important to me than the fact I've lost the ability that I (and the people I work with) have come to rely on.

[Matt Stutter]

Regardless of what Dave was using this for (which was FANTASTIC BTW) no one else can even consider finding a use for the export session as text. As Dave said in his very first post on this topic - the information provided via save as text isn't correct, bears no resemblance to normal formated text and is completly random in it's formating....

<rant off>

[matt connolly]

Maybe an XML output option would be more organised and widely useful. Just about every database app these days can import XML data.

[Farmer Dave]

Yes, maybe XML would be a good thing, but even if it worked as before that would be OK with me. It's not just formatting though, PT is making up path names. If your sessions are always self-contained, that can be dealt with (though not the prettiest way). But if you pull files from all over several drives, and reference the original audio, the resulting PT text output is completely useless. You'll wind up with complete jibberish for paths. It'll say file A is in the audio files folder, file B is on drive 1, file C is on drive 2, file C is in the Fade Files folder, file 4 is on drive 1, etc.. Some of which may be true, but it's got to be 100% accurate.

I thought it if was just a text format issue, I could deal with it, but it's making up stuff, and making it up wrong.