Following on from my post on the Fade window bug, the other person who posted on the DUC post “mrsticks” – Mark Bensi emailed me over the Christmas break.
I’m a music editor for film, TV and music libraries. I discovered the fades dialog box bug after upgrading to PT 8 on my PPC G5. As I wrote in the DUC, I use the fades box for every fade I create because of the precision that it gives me. I realize that a lot of editors do not use this feature very often. That’s evidenced by the fact that virtually nobody else-to my knowledge- has brought this bug to Digi’s attention.
Now I just discovered that my PT8 version 8.0.1 will be the last and final version for my PPC Mac. It seems that the flaw will not be addressed for my particular computer. (And who knows when they will even get around to fixing this bug anyway) My only solution now is to buy a new Intel based Mac. I’m very frustrated at the idea of having to do that.
Mark, thanks for the comments. I feel your pain. When Pro Tools 8 came out I was still running a G4 Dual 1.42Ghz machine that I had bought second hand when the G5 Power Macs changed their slots and Digi went over to pci-e cards. My solution was to buy the fastest G4 I could find which I bought second hand on Ebay and run it for as long as possible. You can read more about this in my Sound on Sound article here. I knew its days were numbered when I reviewed PT 8 for Sound on Sound as it went very very slowly but I had got a couple of very good years out of my second hand G4. So I bite the bullet and got a very good deal on an 8 core Mac Pro for around £1600 new and crossgraded my pci-x cards to pci-e cards too. However as I earn my living from this I budget for these kind of eventualities as this isn’t the first time this sort of trap has been laid. We had the same problem when PPC Macs came in.
I would suggest you might want to look around on Ebay for a second hand Mac Pro, even a Quad core machine will be fine, and will future proof you for a good while. After all Apple are dropping PPC support from Snow Leopard as well.
You are right, very few people use the Fade dialog box now. With the Smart tool I have the default fade shapes set the way I like them and I find I can deal with most issues with that, effectively auditioning the fade on the track. Very occasionally I will go into the Fade dialog box, usually if I want the start and finish of the fades to be in different places, but it is extremely rare. But even then I don’t tend to use the audition in the Fade window as in the early days in PT 4 it was very shaky as it used the Mac audio path to route the auditioned audio and tended to fall over so I tended to avoid it by setting the fade shapes, hitting OK and auditioning it on the track and that workflow has stuck!
Thanks again Mark for your comments.
Mike is Pro Tools genius and an award winning ‘audiomeister’, defined as ‘a person of great skill and authority in sound’. His vast array of credits include music (from classical to rock), drama and documentaries across all the BBC Radio networks, as well as audio post production for video and TV, ‘new media’, live sound, commercial CDs, DVDs and podcasts, helping clients tell their stories with sound. He has been described as "an oasis of calm in a stormy creative world"; "quick, creative & easy to work with"; "always going the extra mile"; and "invests himself in the success of your project"’.show me less content in the footer
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Seven radio producers – all based in the north of England – have joined forces to launch a new co-operative venture – ‘Radio Wizards’. It’s equally remarkable that their aim now is to work together on every kind of sound production... except radio!
"It’s taken over a year to get to this point," says ‘wizard’ Mike Thornton, "but now we’ve got a viable business plan, we’ve launched our website and we’re already starting to attract commissions. As a facilities provider we decided to facilitate this partnership and set them up with a web site to help kickstart this excellent partnership."
