Help! Need to open PT 5.xLE sessions in PT 8LE

[JuanFerVal]

Hi everyone, after working for a long time with a 002, PT LE 5.3.2 and Mac OS 9 I finally upgraded to a MacPro and PT 8LE. The thing is I need to transfer all my old sessions to my new setup. I tried the other day with one session that I tried to transfer to a friend's machine which has PT 8LE. I changed the extension of my PT 5 session to .ptf but PT 8 refused to open it saying it was created with an older version of PT and couldn't be opened.
I really need to be able to open all my old sessions with my PT 8.
Is there a way to do this?
Please help me with this.
Thanks a lot.
Regards,
Juan from Quito, Ecuador

[Sparky1]

What happens if you just open Pro Tools - then open the session from within Pro Tools - using the original file extension? (I don't think you can just change the extension of a session)

You would then have to save the session as a current file type.

Sparky1

[JuanFerVal]

The thing is in PT 5 and Mac OS 9 there were no file extensions, so I just added the .ptf so PT 8 and Mac OS X could recognize the file as a PT file, but it gives me the "this session was created with and older PT version and could not be opened" error.

[musicalavtech]

Try importing the audio/midi tracks from the older sessions. That's only a partial work-around I know.

[soundgear]

This is long-winded, but worked for me with a couple of PT 5 sessions.
You will need to find a system with PT 6 on it, and maybe even PT 7.

Open a PT 5 session in PT6 and save it as a PT6 session.
then take that PT 6 session and open it with PT 7, and save it as a PT 7 session.
That session will now open in PT 8. You might not need to go through PT 7, but I did it anyway to be safe. I was lucky enough to have all the computers in the same room with all the different PT versions on. old g4, ibook and g5. You might not be that lucky, but it does work fine.

[Ben Jenssen]

For what it's worth: I have no problem opening my PT6 sessions in PT8.
From the "open..." menu. I don't think I have tried double-clicking in Finder.

[georgej]

+1 for moving the files to 6. I had files on 5 that would not open. I upgrade to 6 opened the files and did a save as which lets you format the files in the later format. Then I was able to open them on 7, which I am on now.

No experience with 8.

Good luck.

[JuanFerVal]

Tried importing the audio tracks from the old PT 5 session and it didn't work, and I have no way to get a hold of a PT 6 or 7.