Henry,
The problem with ProTools is that creating deliverable material happens in
real-time, not faster than real-time. On a large project it doubles the
amount of time required to do the transfer. Protools is a very sharp tool
for 3 minute pop song production, but for long form work or work requiring
processing or mixdown of large amounts of material it is really a non
starter. When you are working against the clock to be productive, faster
than real-time processing is your friend.
We normally quote transfer jobs based on hours of finished material. If it
takes you twice as long to make the finished product, you make half as
much. All you have to do is look at the folks that deal with the large
sound collections at LOC, Smithsonian, Harvard...... None of them use
Protools.
To be honest, before v10, I would have said that it was not a very good
tool for acquisition, but with the addition of n-channel interleave at the
acquisition stage, it makes it a far more attractive option. WIth ProTools
Native 10 (Not LE) having most of the tools requires to do real production
work up to 32 tracks at a cost of $600 (+hardware), it's not a bad deal.
But at the end of the day, the real-time bounce thing is the Achilles Heel
of the system.
On the other hand, the creation of deliverable materials in multiple
formats with metadata is one of the places where Pyramis really shines.
with a single button push I can create WAV/BWAV, FLAC, AIFF, and 4
different kinds of MP3's at different sample rates and bit rates all with
metadata encoded. I did a project this summer that required delivery of
WAV, FLAC, MP3-320k and MP3-128k in both complete running time and for
individual tracks for 75 programs ranging in length form 30 min to 4 hours.
(Average was just under 1.5 hours each). The total number of delivered
files with Metadata was just over 1000 with a running time of 410 hours.
If I was using ProTools, it would have added 8 WEEKS of bouncing of time
to the project.
As always, YMMV,
All the best,
Mark Donahue
Soundmirror, Inc.
Boston, MA
On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Henry Borchers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I would completely disagree with you on this point. Pro Tools is very
> useful for archival transfers. It's just very quirky if you have never used
> a DAW before. It is, on the other hand, the most transparent DAW on the
> market if you know what you are doing. It doesn't have real time bouncing
> for mixing but all FX can be bounced in real time if done right.
>
> Pro Tools has been around forever and it has a lot of legacy baggage with
> it but if you spend enough time with it and learn the keyboard shortcuts,
> nothing moves faster.
>
> Henry Borchers
> University of Maryland
>
|