To help you get ready for Pro Tools 12.5 and cloud collaboration we are collating and creating a range of content to guide you through this new workflow to be introduced in Pro Tools 12.5. In the last two videos from Avid featuring Tom Graham and Gil Cowing, they look at the Artist Chat window and some examples of collaboration workflows.

In the first of these two videos Tom and Gil discuss how to use the Artist Chat Window and in the last video from Avid on Pro Tools 12.5 and Cloud Collaboration they some some examples of collaboration workflows in action.

The Artist Chat Window In Pro Tools 12.5

this window is really key in the collaboration workflow in Pro Tools 12.5.  This is where you find people to collaborate with and also where you chat with them. You can bring up the Artist Chat window from the Window menu or from the button in the Global Collaboration tool model in the toolbar in the Edit window in Pro Tools 12.5.

Contacts Tab In Artist Chat In Pro Tools 12.5

There are a number of tabs in this window.

My Contacts - These are people I have already made contact with and may have used on other project already and you can see their screen name and some basic location info which will show you where int he world they are.

Add Contacts - This tab is where you can search for and add new contacts. You can search by name or email address, but don’t forget it will be the email address they use for their Avid Master account so it may not be the email address that you use regularly to email them with.

Once you have found who you are looking for you can add them as a collaborator and type a message to go with contact invitation to that potential collaborator. Then they can decide whether they want to link up with you rather that Skype or Linked In works.

Notifications, Projects & Chat In Artist Chat In Pro Tools 12.5

Below the Contacts section in the left hand column, you have Notifications, then below that you can see and access all the Projects that you are involved with and below that there is the Chat option where you will have listed all the people you have linked up with.

You Can Chat Without Leaving Pro Tools 12.5

In the Chat section you can select the person you want to chat with and you can have a text based chat conversation just like a number of social media platforms. The key thing here is that you are doing this from within Pro Tools 12.5. You are not having to leave Pro Tools, to go to another platform to have a chat with a collaborator. Note that the Chat section is intended for general chat. If you want to have a chat regarding a specific project then use the Projects section of the Chat window.
 

For Project Specific Chat Use the Projects section Of The Artist Chat in Pro Tools 12.5

When you select a project from the project section you will get a window open and in the title bar for that project you will have a person icon with a + sign and this is where you can invite collaborators to a project. Once you click on that icon, a pop up window opens with a list of all your contacts and you can choose who you want to collaborate with on this project. Again this is an offer and accept process and once your collaborator has accepted your invitation then your project will be added to the Projects section of their Artist Chat window. Also once they have accepted in the Projects tab on their Dashboard in Pro Tools 12.5 they will find your project is available to them.

What If I Get An Empty Session When someone Shares A session With Me in Pro tools 12.5?

When your collaborator clicks on your project in their Artist Chat window, Pro Tools 12.5 will start to open your project on their system. However there is a fair chance that when they open your project on their system it will appear like an empty session with no tracks not other than some rulers. You as the project owner, need to choose what tracks you want to share with your collaborator and only those track will show up in their project on their system.

Use Track Commit Or Track Freeze To Simplify Collaboration Workflows In Pro Tools 12.5

You can choose to share the raw tracks but if may make sense to share just some stems and so if you have some sub group aux tracks for the various sections then you share those sub group stems and even though they are not audio tracks using the new Track Commit feature that came out in Pro Tools 12.3 or the Track Freeze feature that Avid released in Pro Tools 12.4 you can, for example, freeze your aux track stems and create audio versions of those aux stem tracks. Once Pro Tools 12.5 has finished processing those stems then you can use the track collaboration tools to share those stems with your collaborator. Your tracks are uploaded into the cloud and then they can be downloaded onto your collaborator’s system. Note that the upload and download process can be done in the background but be aware that the time it takes will depend on the speed and bandwidth of your internet connections.

Once your collaborator’s system has downloaded all the tracks (they can check the progress of that from the Task Manager window) they can click on the Download all Tracks option in the collaboration toolbar module and they will see all the tracks that you have shared with them.  They can now go ahead and add their parts and when they are happy they can click on the Share Track button on their tracks and then those tracks will be uploaded to the cloud and will be available to you to download and integrate into your session.

We hope these articles will help you to get an overview of the new collaboration features coming in Pro Tools 12.5. We plan to demonstrate this ourselves with a collaboration project amongst some of the team here at Pro Tools Expert. We will bring you as soon as we can.