Malcolm Boyce wrote:I know the current market is dictating that direction, but I suggest it won't always be the case.
Oh I'm not saying PT will be king forever, just that it's not going to lose it's position anytime soon. If Avid just vaporized into thing air I would guess that it would still take 3-4 years for it to stop being the standard.
Consider a medium sized shop like us. anywhere from 5-10 employee's, 2 audio suites 2 videos suites. I would hazard a guess a total lifelong investment of $30k-$40k in Avid/Digidesign audio hardware and software and 15 plus years of Avid archives. We will need some type of Pro Tools system for eternity just to access these archives. In order for us to switch there will have to be another product that will save us money. Either by time saved so we can have more clients, or equal or better performance for less cost. Preferably it has to be used by a large segment of the population to give us the largest client base. It also has to have enough of a benefit to outway the minimum of 6 months it will take to retrain staff up to a similar capability that was attained on Pro Tools. I've been working on my PT chops for over a decade, and on a daily basis 40 hours a week for almost 6 years. My boss for even longer although not nearly as much on a day to day basis. He started on Cakewalk over 20 years ago as a MIDI sequencer.
Is there anything on the market that even comes close to meeting these requirements? I don't know of anything.
Now consider the real big boys like Skywalker Sound. They have over 50 suites, just for audio. Instead of 10s of thousands of dollars, they have 10s of millions of dollars invested. They can afford anything they want, and believe me if it would save them money they would switch without thinking twice. Things like the ability to cut ADR with the edit that was just finished 5 minutes ago over the fibre network directly from the Avid project are priceless timesavers. No one else is even in the same postal code, let alone ballpark.
The small one man shop doesn't have these kinds of worries, and can make just about anything work. But until some kind of sea change starts from the top down Pro Tools will be the dog to chase. And it's cheaper to be in the game a high level than ever before.
Malcolm Boyce wrote:Considerable people, with considerable experience are already trying and favouring other options.
There are far more considerable people with considerable experience who are trying other options but still working on Pro Tools. Even if they prefer the other options, they still use PT. What does that say?
Malcolm Boyce wrote:The hard part will be people having to learn how to be cross compatible platform wise, but that's always been an issue with sessions traveling.
Exactly. It will always be an issue be compatible cross platform. Which another good reason to have your entire team working on the same platform. All I need to know to transfer a Pro Tools session is what version they're on.
Malcolm Boyce wrote:I have no doubt in my mind that if I were preparing tracks for Andrew to mix or OD to, or if he were doing the same, with a maximum of two e-mails back and forth we'd be up and running with no issues. I dare say many wouldn't have the same confidence or ability to provide that degree of understanding and competency.
Indeed you're absolutely right and continue to make my point. Same platform transfers are close to idiot proof, with 5 minutes of training. If I'm sending a track to be mixed or something by someone else, I'll do most of the things I would normally do to send a session to another platform. Consolidate regions, triple check every edit point, print any essential effects, etc. However what if a project is part way to completion. Here's a real world example that I was discussing last week with a colleague:
Not a large session, track wise, but many takes. Like 70. Every take is on it's own individual playlist, with markers and notation about which parts of which takes are to be used. Someone other than the tracking engineer will be doing the editing and mixing. How long would it take you to prepare that for work on another platform? I can't imagine doing it in less than 2, 8 hour days, at least not without being very confident that nothing was missed. Transfer time on the same platform? Zero. Open it in the edit suite and start working. I'm not saying the platform has to be PT, but it does have to be the same, and at this point the standard is Pro Tools. Not using PT is no different than 20 years ago moving around between studios trying to use 1" 16 track instead of 2" 16 or 24 track. Sure it can be done. Not recommended though.
I don't say this very often to you, or anyone else Malcolm, but you're flat out wrong. People have been saying the exact same things you're saying for as long as I've been on the internet, and they've yet to come true. Now of course if something catastrophic like Avid going belly up could change things, but barring the usual course of events Pro Tools is still a long ways away from being unseated as the DAW that all other DAW's are measured against.