The key point about such a plan hinges on the way paying for upgrades will be handled in the future. The new Pro Tools licensing options are based on what Avid call an All Access plan. Not exactly the line–up of splendours you would associate with a major integer release, especially since Avid wanted to encourage users to start paying for Pro Tools via what the company described as “flexible licensing options”. This meant the only new features in Pro Tools 12.0 were improvements to the I/O Setup window, a new Metadata Inspector window, the ability to purchase plug–ins within Pro Tools, and a new Dashboard window to replace the Quick Start window as the first thing that greets you when you open Pro Tools. However, when Pro Tools 12.0 was released a few months later, only one of these had been implemented - and I’ll give you a clue, it wasn’t cloud collaboration.ĭespite my lampooning of such collaborative features in last April’s Sounding Off, I still find it slightly poor (and slightly amusing) that almost a year later, as I write this, we’re still waiting for the “Avid Cloud Collaboration for Pro Tools” to be available. Can Avid persuade existing users that it’s time to start paying annual fees?Īvid announced Pro Tools 12 at 2014’s Winter NAMM show with a fanfare, promising new features for cloud collaboration, and a new way for users to pay for the product.
The new features promised in Pro Tools 12 are finally starting to arrive.
