As part of our program to help you get ready for Pro Tools 12.5 and cloud collaboration here are the next two videos from Avid featuring Tom Graham and Gil Cowing.  In these two videos they look at converting a session into a project and setting up Collaboration Tools.

In part 3 Tom and Gill show you how to convert a session to a project. In the fourth video they discuss how to set up the Collaboration Tools, Preferences, and give you a quick tour of the Cloud Collaboration interface.

Changing A Session Into A Project In Pro Tools 12.5

If you have an existing session and you want to collaborate with other people you need to turn it into a Project. To do this go into the File menu and select Save Session Copy In… which is a feature that has been in Pro Tools for a long time but now has a new option added. If you go into the Format drop down menu at the top of the Save Session Copy In window you will see that as well as the Latest Version and options for other versions of Pro Tools, you will now see Project as an option in Pro Tools 12.5. 

When you select Project you will see that in the Items To Copy section the Audio Files is already ticked and greyed out so that all the radio files will be copied across to the project from the session.

When you click OK you will get the option to change the name and when you have done that and clicked OK again, Pro Tools 12.5 will start to gather up all the media associated with that session (just as Save Session Copy) has done in the past.  The big difference with a project and cloud collaboration in Pro Tools 12.5 is that it is put everything associated with the project into a Local Cache.  The default location for the local cache is set to your boot drive but in the Preferences in Pro Tools 12.5. In the Operation tab in the bottom left hand corner you have the ability to change the location of the local cache and so you can point Pro Tools to use one of your external drives for the local cache from here. This choice like most things in Pro Tools Preferences is system wide and not session or project specific. 

Setting Up Collaboration Tools In Pro Tools 12.5

In Pro Tools 12.5 there is a new Collaboration Tools block that you can add to the Toolbar section of the Pro Tools Edit window. This is where you set the Global collaboration options.

As with any of the tool bar modules when you add a module it will appear on the right hand end of the toolbar but if you hold down the Command key on a Mac or Control key on Windows you can re-order the toolbar modules to suit the way you work.

Then here are some track based collaboration tools that you will need to have access to which you can access from the View menu in the Edit Window views, you will find that Avid have added a Track Collaboration option to range of things you can view in the tracks on the Edit window. This is where you set the track by track collaboration options.

Global Collaboration Options In Pro Tools 12.5

• Upload all new changes - once you have made changes on a number of tracks this upload button will light up to tell you that you have changes that need uploading to the cloud.
• Download all new changes - when someone else makes changes to any tracks in the project then the Download button will light up to tell you that there are things that need to be downloaded to bring your project up to date.
• Download all shared tracks - This button lights up if someone has shared a new track or tracks with you and then you can click on it to download these newly shared tracks.

The key thing here is you decide when to upload or download, when it suits you, rather than updates being pushed into your project when you are now ready. However if you are happy to receive any changes automatically then under these 3 buttons you can turn on the Auto options and then updates will be automatically updated so your project is always bang up to date.

There are three other button in the global toolbar collaboration options. 

1. Add Collaborator - You can add a collaborator right from the Edit window
2. Artist Chat - clicking on this button will automatically open up the Artist Chat window 
3. Notifications - This will light up to tell you there is some info relating to this project that you need to check out.

Track by Track Collaboration Options In Pro Tools 12.5

Track Shared - This button enables that track to be shared in the cloud. When you click on this button, if you open the Task Manager window you will see that al the media relating to that track being uploaded to the cloud. Once everything on that track has been uploaded it will turn blue showing that everything on that track is in the cloud. Once you make any changes to that track you will see that both the individual track upload button goes green as well as the Global upload button in the toolbar. 

Collaboration Tools in The Mix Window In Pro Tools 12.5

Just as with a range of feature in Pro Tools you can just to view then on the Mix window to. So in the Mix Window Views option you can select the Track Collaboration options and see them in the Mix window of you would prefer.