Here’s what Paul has been up to over at Neyrinck!! Brilliant!!

Because a) theremins are awesome, and b) big things are awesome

a+b=

The IBC trade show is underway over in europe at the moment, and each day on the main stage of the Avid booth they are doing a “Technology Preview” of some features they are working on to incorporate into a future release of ProTools – no delivery date and big fat disclaimer on the head of this demo!

So the key new features they are working on:

AUDIOSUITE HANDLES – edits can be made to the top and tail of clips that have had effects “rendered”, MASSIVE time saver depending on how this is eventually implemented.

36dB Clip gain adjustment – a new clip based gain playlist seperate to volume automation – should help differentiate between dialogue editors work and mixers work in some respects. Long time feature request based on Nuendo features in years past.

Disk/Ram caching – super fast playback of big sessions, straight from ram. They say this helps with ISIS storage, I wonder if other 3rd party systems will see similar benefits? Fingers crossed.

Fades – REAL TIME! – no more fade files getting lost and having to be carried around

Crossfade view – showing ins and outs, responding to the clip gain, as you move regions around and update the shape.

Anyways, all good news from the “Gods of ProTools Development” – this video was a lovely Birthday present! Fingers crossed we see some of these features before too long!!

So the last few days I’ve been loitering with intent over at the Hordern Pavillion in Moore Park for the Integrate trade show.

Lovely to catch up with so many familiar faces and to have a well attended “drum mastery” clinic, thanks to all who attended and I hope you got some tips and tricks out of it.

However, I just need to have a rant – and since its my blog, I get to do that within reason…

So, “Mastering Engineers” for music. I’ll freely admit I was late to the session, but in the 10 minutes I listened to a panel discussion about mastering I heard the word “loudness” bantered around about a 100 times, and yet at the mention of loudness metering these Mastering folk’s eyes glaze over and they show disinterest for the most part (Rick ONeil the exception who is off to check them out he says).

How can an industry who, in the absence of vinyl for the most part, primarily be concerned with loudness of track after track and compressing and dynamic range NOT be using LKFS and loudness meters every minute of every day!! I just don’t understand how the music industry is working in such a vacuum that they are ignorant of trends in audio, changes in metering and the way audio is being worked with for broadcast transmission. Loudness metering is surely one of those fantastic great steps forward that should (in my ignorance I assume) make music mastering that much easier, more consistent and less political.

For Example

Band member A “we want that song louder”

Mastering engineer “how much louder?”

“Band member B “oh, you know, just a db or two”

Mastering engineer ” ok sure – the rest of the album is LKFS -14 and this one is -12, have a listen”

Band who cant really hear the difference anyway “Yeah sure, ok man thats good”

The meters never lie, they give you a the best statistical measure of how the human ear perceives the loudness of program material, over time – how can this not make the music mastering crowd jump up and down in excitement? RMS over time? WTF?? Why would you bother???!!! VUs??? FFS How is that going to help??

Maybe the Power of Greyskull is needed to move these Masters along with the times, or at least to get them to read some industry literature beyond the album liner notes and “thank yous” on the latest album by “song of the month, Chick 102″…

OK, perhaps overly harsh, but please, to the music mastering engineers of the world, read up on loudness metering, R128 and LKFS and LUFS. It may actually help you in your day to day work – and maybe, just maybe, it will be a tool to help manage the loudness war that many of you complain about?

My, my, what an interesting few weeks it’s been! Apple have launched their all new, ground up rewrite of their flagship video editing solution Final Cut Pro and dubbed it version X – apparently V8 and V9 went missing somewhere along the way (the most recent version was V7).

The hubbub has been that FCPX has significantly less features than its predecessor. Things missing:

That said, its price point has dropped to a measely US$299 – very much in the consumer price point. Consequently many folks are pointing the finger accusingly dubbing it IMovie X and mainly saying Apple have lost focus on the pro space. REALLY?? Colour me surprised, (cough ipad/iphone/ipod, cough)

Oh – and FCPX doesn’t have OMF/AAF/XML exporting options so their new flagship editor cant even collaborate with Soundtrack let alone PT – or earlier versions of FCP apparently. So it’s all created quite a mess and left the door open for Avid to pop in and say things like “um, hi guys, we still care about professionals”.

The funny thing is listening to all the Avid buzz and how dated it is – most of the bloggers/reviewers commentators have totally lost touch with Avid and the changes at the company in the last 3-4 years since Gary Greenfield took over. Often saying Avid have been “on the ropes” and maybe they can “come back” since Apple have dropped the ball – thing is, Avid have been gaining credibility and respect since the GFC with their change of management but the Cult of Apple largely dismiss this sort of stuff. Gary G and Kirk Arnold and the Avid mgt team have been meeting with pro editors all over the world for the last few years and making products to meet their needs, exactly the opposite of Apple in this recent release, but I guess they simply don’t have the marketing budget to fight Apple on their ground.

Yes yes, I used to work for them and come across as a fanboy, BUT, Media composer has a non-destructive policy when it comes to field recorder metadata, MC passes markers in their AAFs, supports grouping clips of polywavs, stereo tracks support, RTAS plugins come across to PT9, the list goes on of things that Avid MC does RIGHT. NO, it’s not a perfect workflow (that’s a pretty shifting landscape) and Avid should be doing better with interop today than they are, regardless, it’s better than NOT working with an editor on FCPX who can’t export anything to you…

There’s a bit of buzz going about online referring to a new pro audio “cloud” service called “Gobbler”. This is partly created by their lovely web site and promise of easier online collaboration for all DAWs, and partly by their promise of free Gbs of cloud space for folk who sign up their mates, mormon-style (assuming the mormons give you a good offsite backup plan if you win over an infidel).

I’ve been using it a little bit the last few weeks in between teaching at UTS, and its quite snazzy – scans your HDDs, you tick the projects you want to backup and it takes care of it in the background. The only thing I couldn’t find was any information about how its reading my PTF file to figure out where my files are that need backing up. The KEY THING is that its ONLY backing up audio files that reside in the “Audio Files” folder inside the folder that contains the PTF you tick – Gobbler is yet to become a 3rd party developer with Avid so their can “Read” the PTF file format, so this is the only way it can work currently.

If you’re a fan, drop a line to your local Avid rep to suggest they partner with Gobbler, it would certainly make all our lives easier if we could use this service with the security of knowing its backing up all files REFERRED to by a session, rather than just the ones in the folder.

Oh, and if you want to use it to send files, it forces the recipient to sign up to Gobbler before they can receive the files, which is a bit of a bummer/limitation when sending mixes to clients.

Anyways, check it out!

Well, I have quite a bit on my hands coming up at UTS:Proschool. Tanny, our business manager, has managed to almost fill not just the usual 4 classes we run mid year, but nearly SEVEN short courses!!

Places are still available for those who act quick, and I might add that we are open to discussing “prior learning/experience” when it comes to which courses you wish to take if you want to try your hand at the 200 level or above. Not many schools run these courses, so it’s not common to get a chance to enroll in so many of them in such a short space of time, running in sequence.

Dates are as follows:

Pro Tools 101: 22 – 24 June, 9.30am – 4.30pm

Pro Tools 110: 27 – 29 June, 9.30am – 5.30pm

Please note these are taught at UTS/ 2SER radio studios

Pro Tools 201: 30 June – 1 July, 9.30am – 5.30pm

Pro Tools 210M: 4 – 6 July, 9.30am – 5.30pm

Pro Tools 310M: 11 – 13 July, 9.30am – 5.30pm

Pro Tools 210P: 20 – 22 July, 9.30am – 5.30pm

Pro Tools 310P: 25 – 27 July, 9.30am – 5.30pm

Please note these courses are taught in the UTS Bon Marche Building

Bookings and prices are available here

You can contact the school with any questions here:

Tel: +61 (0)2 9514 9931
Fax: +61 (0)2 9514 2296
Email: Fass.shortcourses@uts.edu.au

Check this out! New app from Avid that turns your Ipad into a music stand!! Awesome idea!

(Ta to Geoff McGahn for the link on FB)

http://www.sibelius.com/products/avid_scorch/index.html

Avid today announced PT 9.02 patch. Lots of stability improvements and bug fixes!

Avid 902 patch homepage

A couple of interesting notes from the readme (yes, I read them!)

Actually I started to copy and paste good ones as I hit them and after copying pasting so many I figured you wouldnt read them I stopped, I also realised at that point in time I was only 20% through the readme. So, in summary, MANY FIXES, MANY GOOD. If you care more, feel free to download and read the aptly named readme file as I did.

This month only, 2 hours of tutoring either online via skype or in the studio, only AUS$100. Session must be taken before Jan 31st. That’s a saving of 33%

HDV camera can be set up to show you my DCommand while we go through advanced automation topics or ICON navigation

Speed up your editing and get the most from your control surface!

Use this quiet time at the start of the year to get your chops up for 2011.

Drop me a line to book via the contact form.

Well. PT9 has hit the “online shelves” and folks have bought it up in what seems like a bit of a frenzy. A stack of love from LE users world over for the key feature requests (ADC in LE, unlocking from hardware, more tracks, TC ruler, digiT, MP3 amongst others) but the HD users and post guys on the forums – maybe the verbal minority – just cant seem to find the silver lining.

I think I made it abundantly clear in my last post that I for one am very grateful for this release. Less shannanigans moving projects from home based studios to pro studios and a more common feature set for all.

The main gripes and whines are things like “but whats in it for HD users?? You’re hitting us up for all this money for PT9HD upgrade and what do we get for it? Bugger all”. Simple answer: don’t buy it! You have backwards compatibility with PT8.1, you have Snow lepard support, if you dont see a good reason to buy PT9 HD, wait for the next release…

Whats that you say Brent? A NEXT RELEASE???

Yes folks, I can (sarcastically) confirm (from my own conjecture and suppositions) that Avid are NOT ceasing to develop the ProTools brand and PT9 will NOT be the last release of this software system ever. Yes, there may even be FUTURE FEATURES IMPLEMENTED.

It seems like a bunch of post and HD users are ignoring this simple fact. Its a single release – more will come. Did your parents not ever bash into you to have some patience? That “all good things come to those who wait?”. I don’t have a clue for sure what will come next, there’s much conjecture of some sort of HD DSP card replacement (all well and good without Motorola DSP chips to power it) but I DO have some faith that the guys at Avid will continue working, they are obviously listening to client requests and trying to meet them as this release makes bloody obvious and I for one am very happy with PT9 and what the future holds.

/me endeth rant

/me lies, it continues

So – Post features? I saw some guys whining about the Media composer interop features. Great, you work with FCP, did you forget that with PT8 you got support for Decklink cards for HD QT playback from your beloved FCP clients? This time around, the home team gets the advantage. I for one see not-insignificant time savings when communicating with MC editors now that we can share RTAS plugin settings and memory locates. The vast majority of film and TV clients in Australia work on Media composer, so I’m grateful.

Handles from mixed frame rate Avid sequences. That, for some, is a huge deal. Yes, it reminds users we dont have handles when we process stuff with Audiosuite, but you know what? Just a guess, I reckon Avid knows about it!! Maybe, just maybe, in a world suffering from the global financial crisis, with less programmers than they had 3 years ago, with a streamlined company structure, maybe they cant just wave a magic wand and invent this stuff overnight? MAYBE it will come in the fabled hypothetical NEXT RELEASE? Who knows. I dont see the point in whining about it now though.

AAF improvements – they are STILL fixing things and addressing bugs and making their interop more stable, with every release. Yes, lets snub our collective noses at that one. Thats no achievement is it? Especially since they have thrown away the revenue they were making with DigiTranslator to keep those programmers employed, oh wait, they still have jobs and Avid are paying for these fixes without that revenue now. I want to whine about that don’t I? Somehow thats a bad thing? Oh yeah, I bought DigiTranslator 5 years ago and now you’re giving it away for free?? I’m outraged. It’s AUS$800. The average post room books for AUS$100 an hour. Thats a days work. It’s been 5 years. Maybe try a different business if that’s a concern. Did you know you can claim some equipment purchases, like software, back on tax?? For crying out load!!

Last I checked some car companies were including air con with their cars at no extra cost. I bought a car with aircon 3 years ago and paid for it! I’m outraged!! I’ll write to Holden, AND ford! They’re all doing it! The EVILLLLLL!!

On top of that, you remember the IO setup changes in 8.1? Now, with PT9 everyone can talk the same language and we can move sessions around without radically moving our outputs around all the time. Not a feature of PTHD9, but a byproduct of compatibility that the PT9 release begets. THAT is a good thing and not mentioned by Avid in this release.

/me really endeth the ranting now

So yeah. quit your whining and get off the forums and go mix some stuff and make a living so you can afford to buy whatever software you want. If you dont want PT9, fine. Don’t buy it. I for one am all onboard and taking advantage of the timesavings to get my jobs done faster and move onto the next project.

Avid aren’t the perfect company and don’t always get it right, but don’t the people who work there deserve a little gratitude and thanks for this release? I think so, and if that makes me uncool, so be it.

That’s probably enough emotionally laden blogging for this year. Back to tutorial videos next time…lol Who would have thought having a blog could be so cathartic?

Hi all,

As most of you know I’m now teaching the Avid audio/Digi curriculum at UTS:Proschool a few times each year.The next round of classes is coming up in just a few weeks.

Why consider UTS:ProSchool?

a) We’re the only Avid audio partner to REGULARLY run all the courses

b) We run them in order, back to back, so if you are traveling you can feasibly complete up to 200 level operator certification on one trip

c)We offer great bundle pricing

d) I teach it! I’m kinda fun!

So if you’ve been thinking about brushing up on your PT chops, dont put it off – get amongst it with some serious day in day out training without any distractions – and get a WW recognised certificate to boot!

101 starts from only $545, 110 is just over a grand for 3 days intensive training and the whole enchilada (110, 201 and 210P) is4K for the lot.

Classes filling up so get in this week to secure a place.

If you haven’t already heard, check out the group (buy) action over at Tim Prebbles blog. The kind folk at SoundMiner have offered 10% off for 10 people, 20% off for 50 people. With their imminent release of the new Soundminer HD Pro low cost search tool it looks like a great deal.

Many thanks to Tim for taking the initiative to this to make it happen!

Also, while you’re there, check out Tims latest SFX collections for sale at Hiss and Roar.

Well! A bunch of new product releases announced today! Pro Tools HD version 8.1, a free update for 8.x HD system owners!

Now, you may think, 8.1 is a point release, probably some bug fixes and support for the NEW INTERFACES ( back to those in a tic) but in actuality, 8.1 sees the release of a massive, amazing, brilliant new feature set that will save serious mixers potentially hours and hours of their life. No, its not HEAT, the new tube/analogue warmth buss flavour feature….it’s the I/O setup.

Yes, the I/O setup! New in 8.1, the I/O setup has been totally overhauled to make moving sessions between rooms a much, much easier process! Avid audio listened to the gripes about moving large projects between rooms, endlessly moving those little squares around to just get audio out your speakers. Taken from the I/O Setup primer:

“In Pro Tools 8.1, changes to the I/O Setup have
been made in order to solve session interchange
issues (such as maintaining studio settings on
different Pro Tools systems) and to provide better
overall workflows for session interchange. In
lower versions of Pro Tools, I/O settings are recalled
from the Pro Tools session document, so
studio settings corresponding to your hardware
could potentially change each time a session is
opened. This can result in a temporary loss of
monitor paths. In Pro Tools 8.1, I/O settings can
be recalled from the system. This means that
your studio settings can be maintained when
opening sessions created on other Pro Tools systems”

So, THAT is cool! Cant wait to play with it and put it through its paces.

Secondly, the new interfaces! It’s been over 7 years since Avid nee Digidesign released the 192io and 96io series of HD interfaces. Since then, manufacturing has gotten cheaper, specs on AD/DAs have improves and low jitter clocks have become much more affordable, time for Avid to up the competitiveness with some new hardware. AND they got Butch Vig to talk up the sound of them!

The pick of the bunch definately looks to be the OMNI…preamps, monitoring, some analogue and a bunch of digital ins and outs…a bit of everything for everyone in  small 1RU box. Retailing in Australia for around $3600, cant wait to hear what this box sounds like.

Another important and long overdue addition to the IO choices is the new MADI interface. I’m guessing that with 64io to arrange in your I/O setup this box was a bit part of the reason to overhaul the way ProTools addresses output paths versus internal bussing.

Given Avid just acquired Euphonix I wonder if they looked over the Euphonix AD/DA specs before release? Only good can come from that pedigree. Another interesting question will be how these interfaces fair against the main rival that was announced a few weeks back, the updated Apogee Symphony IO. I’m sure info will come to light soon, hopefully some of it will be objective!

Lastly, HEAT…Harmonically Enhanced Algorithm Technology. Niiiiiiice acronym usage! So basically, a button at the top of your channel strips to turn it on or off and a global “character” setting for drive and tone across your mix buss. Very cool idea. A 30 day demo download is available and I’m very keen to try it out in the coming weeks.

We’ll also be running 8.1 and HEAT at the Integrate trade show in Sydney next week at AT World is anyone is stopping by. I’ll be running two masterclasses on behalf of UTS:ProSchool and plans were hatched today to present a mixing automation seminar at AT World as well. Hope you can make it!

If you are coming down to the Integrate 2010 trade show at Sydney’s Hordern Pavillion in a few weeks (August 24-26), I’ll be presenting Pro Tools “masterclasses” as part of the seminar series, flying the UTS:ProSchool flag.

Topics such as shortcuts to speed up editing and other HD specific topics like snapshot automation and VCA faders will also be discussed.

More information here

Hope to see you there!

A little survey to establish what you readers would like me to blog about next?

Well, the buzz on the street was the NAB announcement that Avid (aka The Borg according to many, unimaginative detractors) have struck a deal to acquire well respected console manufacturer Euphonix. The full news story is here.

There’s pretty much two camps on this one – those who use Pro Tools love the idea, those who use other systems are wetting themselves they will lose the only viable market alternative to ICON, their Eucon protocol.

Basically, Euphonix make great consoles and when ICON came along, realised that integrated with a DAW would be a good thing, so they made a communications protocol for a DAW to send and receive mix information to their mixing hardware, a bit like  HUI but on steriods. Its a bit like HUI becuase it’s seen as an “open platform” that many developers can use, such as Logic, Pyramix and Nuendo and the like. Nuendo and Euphonix have very tight integration today using Eucon and have sometimes been mentioned as a viable alternative to ICON and ProTools, but most clients still go ICON due to price, support, and most importantly industry adoption of PT over Nuendo.

So what does this mean going forwards? Well, I dont work for them anymore so this is just conjecture, but here’s a few ideas Ive seen posted by folks in LA and discussed around the world in the last 24 hours:

Eucon protocol on Digi hardware – ICON and C24 working as a control surface for Logic, Nuendo and Pyramix? Sounds like a good idea to an ex Digi sales guy. It expands the possible candidates who would buy Avid Audios mid prices offerings (c24 vs Tango, what would you buy?)

Eucon protocol in ProTools – I dont know how long this will take with the current economic climate, lack of resources etc but I’m guessing this HAS to happen to make this acquisition make sense. I just dont think it will happen overnight…

Eucon in Media Composer – this would be a good thing when you look at the Artist series. Its a modular control surface with jog/shuttle wheel and programmable touch screen. Why should it just be an audio device? The Command8′s buttons can be used to control anything in Media Composer, the Artist series would simply be a new and improved version of the same thing. Sexeh…

Euphonix not only make consoles for audio post, but many of them are used in broadcast situations for live to air mixing. Venue and ICON sit really on either side of this industry and have wanted inroads for some time. I would expect Euphonix style technology would be an asset to the ongoing product line when it comes to Avid Audio selling consoles into broadcast alongside their video offerings where the own that space.

Console automation? In feature film post storing your mix automation on the console would seem to me like a PITA. Any time you have to chase a picture recut and reconform your mix, you can do that fairly easily in ProTools using third parties like VK, Conformaliser, Editrace etc You would then have to reconform your mixing console automation as well and hope the two marry up nicely! If I were a large scale euphonix user, chances are I’m using Pro Tools as a dubber and to me I’d be begged to access the Pro Tools automation features from the desk, or at least store the desks automation inside the PT session.

Then there’s the automation tree – a Euphonix consoles has an incredibly elegant way to following the progress of your mix. A bit like a labelled undo tree where you can see where decisions have been made and you’ve changes directions in the mix. In the real world, Ive heard its great but you only use the three most current levels most of the time, whereas the tree is sold as a feature with many levels of recall. Still, this sort of feature would be great integrated with ProTools. Either into the software so all Avid Audio’s surfaces benefit or just some level of communication between the two to restore a saved PT session that matches that tree state. who knows?

Really, looking at the existing Euphonix product line, there aren’t that many places they and Digi overlap:

Artist series – replaces the aging Command 8 and makes it much more attractive to a wider market

MC Pro – I had no idea this existed until today and it looks pretty much like the mock ups Ive been shown by clients wishing for an “edit station” for sound designers using Pro Tools for years. Again and again folks have said “yes, you do good mixing surfaces, but I just want something intuitive to edit on and ride a few faders” Looks like a winner if it starts to talking to PT soon.

System 5 MC…well, there’s the rub. Its a controller only and sits in the same space as DControl in many ways. I’m guessing ICON and system 5 MC will have some sort of love child down the track and this area will get tidied up.

System 5 Fusion – brilliant! A tracking room solution! Clients wanting to record many audio channels into ProTools have often bemoaned the existing mixers and how to set up headphone mixes and latency etc A System 5 fusion that talks to PT would be ideal for Pro Tools based recording facilities as you’d have the brilliant sounding front end and then could use it as a mixing surface inside the box when the session is finished (with all the automation benefits, third party plugs, and conforming assistance etc)

System 5 – well, some folks would say ICON sits here as well but I think we all need to sit up and smell the roses and know that isnt the case. System 5 has a brilliant reputation for sound quality, expandibility and automation ease of use/ergonomics. ICON just doesnt have the same build quality, largely because the System 5 is about 4 times the price! You get lovely meters and feedback on this sort of console, a common gripe with ICON ops. If a system 5 could talk to PT with regards to automation, again you’d have this lovely integration. Set up the PT rigs to playback audio through the Euphonix mix engine, but some vapourware future feature allows you to send your mix state to PT, EQ/Dyn as virtual plugins (ie plugins in the mix window for automation but the processing is being done by the console) then when a picture cut comes along, you reconform your PT session and your console now tracks to the new automation. THAT would be quite cool I would imagine.

Anyways, lots of conjecture and ideas on where this could go.  To me, as a PT op, I see it as a brilliant thing and wish the team at Avid Audio all the best on bringing everyone’s wish list to fruition over the coming years.

Hi all,

A close friend and mentor, Chris McKeith, now runs the Audio department at one of Australia’s leading film schools, AFTRS. He asked me if I could pass on they are running a short course on location recording and enrolments have just opened up.

Head on over to this link to check out the details.