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Old 10-20-2022, 12:27 PM
imatt23 imatt23 is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2022
Location: Madison, WI
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Default Am I able to transfer projects to another account/pc?

Forgive me as I am brand new to Pro Tools.
But I am looking to practice on working with mixing projects at home and be able to transfer them to a local studio that already has Pro Tools. I have the Student Studio Subscription of Pro Tools, 2022.7.0 and they have a slightly older version, I know they have a permanent copy of Pro Tools on an iLok key.

I'm not sure if I need an iLok key as well or be able to transfer my projects on a portable hard drive. Or if I can log in with my account and save progress on the cloud.

I'm not sure if it's that complicated but I'd figured it's worth asking someone that is familiar as the engineer there wasn't sure.
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Old 10-20-2022, 01:43 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
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Default Re: Am I able to transfer projects to another account/pc?

Welcome to DUC.

This is both simpler and much more complex than you probably imagined.

OK first being super clear on naming is important.

In Pro Tools land

"Projects" refer to content stored online in cloud projects in Avid cloud. Cloud projects are notoriously buggy and a great way to lose your work. Very few users, here, including folks with decades of experience will use cloud projects.

Sessions refer to content in Pro Tools session format stored on local disks. The standard way of working/interchanging Pro Tools work.

You should be working exclusively with local sessions stored on your computer. If you mean sessions, stop calling them projects.

Anybody who tries to get you to use Cloud Projects you should punch in the face.

If you are using cloud projects now, punch yourself in the face, then Save it as a local session.

You can move a session from a Mac to a PC or visa versa by just copying it. You can do that by copying to a USB memory stick or you can even say create a zip file of the session folder and copy to cloud storage and the other person download to their computer.

When using interchange media like a USB memory stick it can use an exFAT filesystem that can be read and written both from a Mac and a PC. But you cannot run the session on an exFAT filesystems (sessions need to run on NTFS on Windows and on APFS (preferred) or HFS+ on Mac). A common mistake with interchange media/drives is to have the drive still plugged in and accidentally start Pro Tools using the session image on the drive. Copy the session over and then unplug the drive, then start Pro Tools.

So now it comes to what does it mean to copy a session? In a typical well run system with good workflow all your media assets will be stored inside the session folder, so all you need to do is copy that folder or a zip image of it over to the new system. But if you have been sloppy you might have imported media without copying it to the session folder and when the other end unpacks the session they will find all that media missing. One way you can be sure all the media is in the folder is do a Save Session In... but you should also be sure your workflow is just not leaving assets outside the folder (or you risk say losing that work if the external assets are deleted). And sure there are cases with video or huge audio files/libraries where experts do work with external media, that's not going to apply to you.

Now you've moved a session. And most sessions will be compatible across different versions of Pro Tools as long as they are reasonably similar releases, Pro Tools has impressive ability to open old sessions etc. and this stuff is documented, but most of the time you should not need to worry if working on reasonably similar systems.

The practical problem folks often run into moving between their computer and a collaborator or studio computer is plugins. If you know what common plugins both the studio and you have licenses for and you can limit your sessions to only use those plugins then you can hopefully just move stuff. If the studio does not have some plugins you have used you may need to bring your iLok or other licensing method to the studio, or maybe they loan some of their plugin licenses to you. Or maybe one side temporarily rents/subscribes to some plugins. If say using large sample libraries you might put them on an external drive and bring them as well, to save download time at the studio (studio systems may not have Internet access, or have convoluted ways to get stuff onto them).

A secondary issue us being careful not to mix work that say yes features in Pro Tools Ultimate in the studio (if they are using Ultimate) with Pro Tools Studio on your systems. Examples are say track and I/O limits, use of advanced automation, etc. in practice I'd be surprised if this is a problem.

And when you open Pro Tools sessions at either location you are likely using a different audio interface/playback engine and that can cause issues. Pro Tools has really nice flexible I/O setup that allows you to logically name I/O ports/busses/paths etc. and helps move even complex sessions between environments, but it can take work. You can also help by just trying to simplify I/O use and labeling things nicely. You will hopefully pick this up when moving between systems and having to change stuff, read the Pro Tools Reference Guide about I/O setups and play around to understand what it's all doing and ask folks for help.

Now that all an outline. The reality is you need to start by asking the studio/collaborators you are working with about all this. They may have strong rules/opinions/suggestions about how you need to do stuff. Wether you can have additional plugins installed on their computers, how to do that, etc. What versions of Pro Tools they would prefer to see you using etc. etc. Strong advice from them is often a good sign. "ah do whatever man" or "we have no idea" is a bad sign. They will also hopefully have clear advice on how to handle I/O changes and may have specific saved .pio files to load into the session at their site. They might also have session templates they prefer or want your to start using on your system. Talk to them.
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  #3  
Old 10-20-2022, 10:03 PM
imatt23 imatt23 is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2022
Location: Madison, WI
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Default Re: Am I able to transfer projects to another account/pc?

Man fr thank you for taking the time to explain it to me. I understand it much better now. You are knowledgeable about Pro Tools, may I ask how you learned? Whether it was self taught online, from someone else, or from experience.
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