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How Many Of The Top 25 Pro Tools IdeaScale Ideas Appear In Pro Tools 12?

Russ Hughes

When Pro Tools 10 was announced Avid proudly announced that many of the features found in Pro Tools 10 were those found in the top 10 Pro Tools IdeaScale most requested features.

For those unaware of Pro Tools IdeaScale, this was set up by Avid several years ago to gather user ideas for features they would like to see in Pro Tools. At the top of the Avid run site they say:

“Welcome to the Pro Tools IdeaScale User Forum - In this community you can submit an idea, vote on existing ideas or add your comments.”

However in recent years it seems that most of the suggestions made and the voting has been in vain, as right now it seems none of the top 25 ideas on the site have been implemented, they are certainly not mentioned in the product info for the upcoming Pro Tools 12. We may be wrong and find that track freeze may be part of the collaboration features, this is not clear from Avid’s own information on their website about Pro Tools 12. Even if this is the case then it still leaves 24 of the top 25 ignored.

As a matter of fact cloud collaboration, in app purchases and selling your content don’t feature in the top 25 of the list at all.

It seems that Pro Tools IdeaScale may be less effective at getting Avid to listen than the Pro Tools community would hope.

Update

on 2015-01-26 11:20 by Mike Thornton

Several folk have asked us to post the list of the top 25. So below is the full list of the top 25 most popular active features on the Pro Tools Ideascale along with the summary from the user who posted it….

  1. Freeze tracks feature

  2. This one freeze feature would fix your TDM and LE DDL limitations. It would also allow faster than real time bounces because if you froze most of the tracks then the processing to do a mix bounce could be done in the back ground.

  3. Folders in the Region List

  4. For better region management i would like to see folders in the region list. It would be great if you could assign one or multiple tracks to a folder in the region list and all the recordings and edits of the track(s) end up in the designated folder in the region list. This folder could then also be created in the Audio Files folder for even better file management.

  5. Save/Load Plug-in ‘chains’ (common plug-ins combos)

  6. It would eliminate the awfully slow process of importing session data, copying plug-ins, deleting tracks, etc.

  7. Marker Improvements

  8. I would REALLY love a change in the markers. Please have multiple marker rulers in the edit window. I would also like to be able to set custom colors to certain markers. Also, in the marker list, I would love to be able to re-sort alphabetically and renumber sequentially after re-sorting. Primarily what this would allow me to do is set ADR markers, foley markers, music markers, dialog markers, etc…

  9. Phase switch on every track in the mix window

  10. Would make life so much easier, especially when recording with multiple mics.

  11. Multiple sessions at the same time

  12. The ability to open 2 sessions at the same time with only one session being active - the other one inactive (active/inactive switch). You then could compare two sessions and copy/paste instantly regions/region groups etc. without having to import/export whole tracks.

  13. Undo Deleted Tracks

  14. All users claim for it for long time. All another software have it. All people does not understand why PT doesn’t have it yet.

  15. Bus Soloing Feature

  16. We could use the ability to solo a bus instead of having to select all the individual tracks in order to hear the mix.

  17. Keep the waveform visible when sliding the region…

  18. Click on a region and try to line it up with another & you have to guess where it will end up. Be nice to have the waveform ALWAYS visible so you don’t have to guess.

  19. Shortcut for making two mono audio tracks into one stereo.

  20. Kind of the opposite of Split Stereo Track into 2 Mono Tracks.

  21. Batch Track Naming

  22. In current PT If I need to name 30 tracks e. g. Foley 1—Foley 30 I need to do it one track at a time. This is rather time consuming when dealing with large sessions. It would be nice if I could select a number of tracks, type “Foley” and let Pro Tools assign consecutive numbers to “Foley” automatically. PT should be smart enough to understand that if I type “Foley 10” I need track names start from 10 and on. And it would be nice if we could get this batch naming in the IO Setup window too.

  23. Region/Clip Based Effects

  24. EQ and gain parameters could be assigned to clips. This would greatly simplify automation and editing especially in post production.

  25. VST Support!

  26. Pro Tools should have it’s own VST capability so us Pro Tools users can have a much wider pallet of instruments using only one DAW. That one DAW should be Pro Tools and nothing else. Does this make any sense to you guys?

  27. Fix Bugs Before Adding New Features

  28. ‘Fix all known bugs BEFORE adding any new features.’ was merged with this idea.

  29. Sum To Mono Option On Master Fader

  30. To check mixes in mono. self-explanatory.

  31. An option to automatically mute a track as soon as it starts recording

  32. To allow monitoring using the console rather than running thru the digital interface. This gives you unlimited communication with the performers while the session is playing.

  33. Trim knob on audio tracks

  34. A trim knob that works like the plug-in placed before the channel plug-in path would be nice. This would help in facilitating proper gain staging of tracks that are recorded too hot or too soft without using up a plug-in slot.

  35. Smart Session Cleanup Function

  36. I would like to have a smart, half-automated way for cleaning up sessions after a mix is done. The function should allow me to remove unused playlists, consolidate all audio files, delete unused audio regions and put everything in a new folder that contains only the audio needed for the session.

  37. Track Folders

  38. Big mixes require good organisation, it would be great to be able to have track folders (for example-for your 32 tracks of drums!)

  39. Plug-in Manager With Version Indicator

  40. A build-in plug-in manager that would allow you to turn plug-ins on or off AND clearly specifies the correct versions of the installed plug-ins.

  41. Control|24 and ProControl drivers for Pro Tools 11

  42. I would pay for this :) Could you please help us with that?

  43. Red book CD authoring

  44. It would be nice to have a Redbook CD authoring system included within Pro Tools similar to CD architect.

  45. Make it possible to enter fader/pan data with double click+number

  46. Digi, please make that possible, would speed up things a bit.

  47. Graphics GPU Accelerated

  48. I think this will be less taxing to the CPU if the majority of the graphics runs off the actual GPU. Example. A lot of the plug-ins have meters, or some graphics that moves around. The bigger the session get the more taxing it is on the CPU.

  49. Audio to Midi

  50. Where is audio to midi?!? Digi, its 2009! You have a great program but sometimes I wonder… If we had this, we wouldn’t have to buy Drumagog to replace live drum sounds. We’d do audio to midi, then use the new midi track with BFD or DFH Superior. We could sing a bass line and then have XPand play it on the bass!

As we have already said the only one of these feature requests that may be in Pro Tools 12 is the Track Freeze, however it is not clear from what Avid have published so far as to whether Track Freeze will be available as a stand alone feature or only as part of the collaboration workflow.

It is also disappointing that a lot of these feature requests are 5 years old and still not implemented.