Synchro Arts are beta testing their new product ReVoice Pro which is their new Vocalign tupe product. So what does it do?     ReVoice PRO is a revolutionary new audio processing program for professional audio editors. It supports the efficient use of two unique automated processes: Audio Performance Transfer (APT) Gives an audio signal the selected timing, pitch and/or loudness characterics of a "Guide" audio signal.  APT is powered by and includes an improved version of VocALign. Realistic Doubler Instantly creates natural-sounding double tracks. Link plug-ins are in development that transfer audio between Revoice PRO and audio editing systems. (they are available for Pro Tools in v49 and later of the beta product).

My Pro Tools Expert colleague From the AIR Users blog, Russ Hughes managed to grab an interview with some key folk to discuss and put to bed some of the myths about the new AAX plug-in format.  

Even though they have moved on to Pro Tools 10, Avid have released an update for Pro Tools 9, taking it up to v9.0.6.   Do read the pdf which lists out all the fixes, which are too many to list here, but also what I found even more interesting was the information listed under Compatibility in the pdf, the things that still break Pro Tools.  For example did you know that if you format your Mac drives using the 'Case Sensitive 'option Pro Tools won't record to them.   You can go to the appropriate pages on the Avid site to read more and download the update.

Back in April 2009 I posted about this and promised to produce a detailed guide… When making music documentaries iTunes has become such a convenient way to buy music but because of the consumer fair usage limits to get a track from iTunes into your Pro Tools session has involved burning an audio CD in iTunes and then ripping the CD into Pro Tools which takes time and wastes CDRs. However one of the upsides of the iTunes Plus format and Apple removing the DRM, is that it is possible to convert a purchased track in iTunes to a WAV file, export it, and import that into Pro Tools.   Recently Matt posted on comment asking when there might be an update on this, so for Matt, c-money and others, here it is….

I was scanning through the Post & Surround part of the DUC and found a post about mp4 codec recommendation question from Sparky3000...   Hey all, Forgive the question as I'm sure it's somewhere here, though I find me efforts with the search function at the DUC usually don't go well. (It's me, not the engine, I'm sure. :) )  Essentially, I've been working with DV vid for all of my mixes. (Longform shows.) I'm not getting stuff from out of town clients and converting from MP4 back to DV with Streamclip. Works OK, but seems to soften sync even more.  I've tried importing the MP4 directly, but it's always sluggish and choppy.  My system runs flawlessly with DV.  Any recommendations of a spec for an MP4 delivery that might work without converting to DV, or is this an "it is what it is" situation?   Thanks!  

This is what they say on their web site......   Our acclaimed radar display has long proven an efficient solution when upgrading audio production for broadcast, film and music from unsatisfactory peak level indicators to loudness-based metering. LM6 Radar Loudness Meter gives you direct access to this revolutionary meter whether you are using Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Nuendo, Wavelab, Sequoia, etc. on a Mac or PC and whether your productions are in mono, stereo or 5.1.

Here is what DTS said on the In Response to Pro Tools HD 10 Feedback thread....   I don't think I need to go into a 5 page long explanation trying to explain the rough times our beloved industry has gone through over the last years. I'm sure that all of you as well as all of us here at Avid wish for it to be different believe me. What I can asure you is that we continue to be very committed and passionate about our products and that we are very serious about making sure that commitment translates into into supporting our users and user communities the best way we can. Again, DigiTechSupt is a shared account which has been used by a number of different people throughout the years and which will continue to be used by a number of people for years to come. __________________ Avid Audio Tech Support As has been said in response to this thread, it isn't with the Avid staff left at the coal face we have the problem, it is some of the decisions made by senior management.

Following on from my post yesterday about the Price of Pro Tools 10 things have gone from bad to worse. Avid, have announced that as many as 200 staff have lost their jobs which is a little under 10% of the workforce. Losses have taken place across the board including marketing and bizarrely in customer support. News was given to staff yesterday, ahead of the Avid earnings anoucement today.   Unfortunately these are not the first job cuts Avid has made. At this time back in 2008 they shed 20% of their staff after bad 3rd quarter results. Then again in December 2009 they shed 120 more jobs. Good luck to Avid's management team; with many customers and staff alienated, and stock sliding off the cliff edge to nowhere, dropping from $20 in mid July to $7.25 yesterday so who knows where this will all end. but it could be Avid trying to save the share price nose dive. In December 2010 then announced a significant re-structure to be completed by the middle of 2011. As a result of which the shares rose back then by 25%.   It is sobering to be reminded that whilst some of us are not happy about the PT 10 pricing , or getting what they hoped for in Pro Tools 10, decent, hard working people are now without a job. However, we want to make it clear, our sympathy should go out to those people dumped by Avid and not to Avid itself.  Avid is big enough to look after itself, but the staff put on the scrapheap from key areas of the business like customer support need at the help and support we can give,  it is good people like you who made many of us hang on. Our thoughts are with you.

For regular readers of this site you will know that I have followed the progress of the Gobbler concept with a post Gobbler – New on line Pro Tools friendly backup system and an update. Then with the announcement of the demise of Mobile Me and an update suggested Gobbler's range should extend to sharing mix files, something I currently do using my iDisk. Next there was the 50Gb offer with a referral scheme which I came 6th in thanks to all your support.   Finally in July the start of a campaign to get Pro Tools and Gobbler to work together so that Gobbler could read the Pro Tools session so it could back up what is used in the session like the old Mezzo Archiver could.  Well the campaign has moved on Avid's IdeaScale site where users can post their suggestions for developments and we can all vote on them.

Wow, speedy response or what. Russ from The AIR Users Blog has just posted this.....   I've just had word back from Avid (on a Saturday and at AES), who are offering Max Gutnik to answer questions over the concerns raised by the community over Pro Tools 10 pricing. They are suggesting we submit the top questions; so I'm going to make this as democratic as possible and ask you all to submit questions on our Facebook page; then I'm going to ask everyone to head over there to vote for the questions using the like button. The 5 questions with the most 'Likes' by 6:00pm GMT tomorrow will be submitted to Avid and we'll get responses back as soon as we can (remember they are at AES). I know some of you don't have Facebook accounts, but I think with over 800 million users, you'll be able to find a friend or family member to post it for you. This is not about us getting Facebook fans, so once this is over if you want to 'Unlike' us, then feel free. Help us to help you. Our Facebook page is here Please route your questions through The AIR Users Facebook page. In the meantime watch this video.... However as an HD2 owner I have to say I am not impressed. Max talks about buying a new HDX system with software and an HD Omni for $9999. But as an HD2 owner i am going to have to pay $6999 so it makes my HD2 worth $3000, surely its worth more than that?    

Having read Russ's comments and questions and votes on his post, it got me thinking about this issue....   With this update, I believe Avid are trying to revalue the brand and especially revalue the HD brand. With the Pro Tools 9 release, Avid closed the gap between the 'LE' and HD product lines. That caused a lot of grief especially for the HD users who felt their investment had been devalued.   So I see two issues, the upgrade cost for the hobbyist and the upgrade cost for the folk who earn their living by it.

I am posting this here with Russ's permission. He has had a few requests from the AIR Users community to show the new Timeline Cache feature tested without HD hardware. so they have put it to the test and  try and make it fall over. This is a crash test; in other words, we are trying everything possible to make it fall over. Test Rig Their test machine is a Mac Pro Mid 2010 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 12 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC, and running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 The Session The test session was one Russ has used a lot and a good one to use; he knows it like the back of my hand. It consists of live drums, bass, 2 acoustics, main vocals, 12 backing vocals, Hammond, Wurly piano, loops and percussion. It has instances of Elastic Audio and a lot of edits. Conclusion Watch the video and make your own. Discuss.

Here are the official Avid videos on Pro Tools 10. First Pro Tools 10 software and the Pro Tools HDX hardware     Then here is one about the clip based gain feature     Here is one about the new channel strip plug-in     Lets take a look at the new AAX plug-ins     Next Russ from the AIR Users blog takes a personal look at the Channel Strip plug-in....      

AAX is a new platform that will eventually replace both TDM and RTAS plug-ins. There will be both AAX DSP and Native versions. There are new AAX plug-ins available with Pro Tools 10 will include Channel Strip, Revibe, Reverb One, Impact and Down Mixer. The existing plug-ins will continue to work in Pro Tools 10 on the existing hardware including HD Native and HD Accel.   The new architecture offers Improved floating point plug-in platform and is available for HDX DSP Accelerated and native workstations, is '64 bit ready'.   Avid have announced that there is 3rd party support from over 35 companies so far including;   * Bias * Cranesong * Dolby * Izotope * Metric Halo * McDSP * Soundtoys * SPL * Eventide * Flux * Waves * Nyrinck * Softube * Tubetech   Read about what the AIR Users blog say about it   Here's what ProToolerBlog has to say about it

Avid have today announced their next generation professional HD system, Pro Tools HDX.   It offers; * Up to 5x more DSP acceleration per card * 4 x the voices * 4 x the delay compensation * 2 x the I/O per card * Scalable up to 3 cards   More headroom, giving over 1000db of additional headroom in plug-in processing with floating point math. Complete system bundles will be available, You won't be able to buy cards and interfaces separately as you could before. * Pro Tools HDX & HD Omni * Pro Tools HDX & HD I/O * Pro Tools HDX and HD MADI Bundle prices will start at $9,999. and will be available"very soon". The new hardware won't support TDM plug-ins so again you need to be aware that all your plug-ins are available in AAX format before you upgrade.

This is a seriously post friendly update and offers a shed load of features we have been asking for, for a very long time.   Clip based gain workflow - this is as we have seen in the videos Real-time Fades - as we have seen in the videos, but backward compatibility needs careful management as PT10 doesn't use rendered files at all. Extended Disk Cache, Improved Disk Scheduler, Support for NAS - if you saw the videos then you knew the lot was coming, but it does mean that you can run sessions across network attached shared storage without having to copy the media across to a local drive. But note that the disk cache is an HD only feature. 24-Hour Timeline - hooray, especially if you have ever hit the session length limit. Visual Indication Improvements - things like global solo and mute indicators. Export Selected Tracks - this is great so rather than having to open another session and import, you can export selected tracks to a new session all from the source session.

Brent says.... "This is a series of videos I’ve been meaning to do for a while on how to get away from the mouse when editing. It’s a bit lengthy so I’ve broken into 3 videos but the topics they cover work together to bring the best from a mouse-less workflow."   Editing Bootcamp 1 - Zooms and Navigation from Brent Heber on Vimeo.   Next video: tabbing modifiers and the importance of preroll and postroll shortcuts…   Editing Bootcamp 2 - tabbing and selecting from Brent Heber on Vimeo.   This video starts with the basics for keyboard driven editing and wraps with the more advanced shortcuts for auditioning a region/your selection.   Editing Bootcamp 3 - editing and auditioning from Brent Heber on Vimeo.   The final video for this series on mouse-less editing. This video goes into nudging regions, region start and end times and generally puts what we’ve looked at over the last 3 videos together into a bit of a workflow.   Editing Bootcamp 4 - Advanced nudging from Brent Heber on Vimeo.   Hope you’ve enjoyed these videos and find them useful – the info is provided freely, all I ask is that you pass it on, let others know about these tips and tricks!   I have really enjoyed this series of videos. I already use about half the techniques Brent demonstrates in this series but I will be looking to implement some of the others into my workflow.  Thanks Brent.

Avid have released a 25 minute video of one of their IBC 2011 demos and it is clear that the new version whenever it comes, will be a very post friendly update.   So we have info and demos on the following.... Shared storage between Avid products in the same workflow, e.g. Media Composer and Pro Tools. Clip based gain adjustments, both on entire clip or on sections of the clip and dynamic automation. Real-time fades within the clip (no more fade files) Multiple audio-suite options (again within clip) and maintaining clip integrity for editing. New GUI for all factory-supplied plug-ins (example on the video), we may even get a few extra plug-ins as part of Pro Tools. File based audio clips within the time-line from RAM (You don't need 64 bit processing to do this as long as you stay under the file size limits!) Drive scanning from multiple drives either internal or attached, including NAS and we're guessing at this one, Thunderbolt. Native support for multi-channel files.  

Flux just want to remind everyone that the IRCAM Verb and Hear release special with 25% discount on all the IRCAM software is about to end, with the last day available Friday 30th September. Flux:: Online Store      

This is from their press release today.... Cinema is now on Your Radar - and it's Complementary!   Our LM5D plug-in for Pro Tools HD has been setting the standard for loudness metering in professional post and production studios for years. Now, it is joined by the new AM6 plug-in, and together they form: ‘Radar Meter Bundle for Pro Tools HD’. Our highly-acclaimed radar display has proven a fast track to upgrade audio production for broadcast, film and music from unsatisfactory peak level indicators to loudness based metering.