2010-04-22

PTHD1 vs PTLE + Complete Production Toolkit

Are you deciding if you should buy a PT LE system with complete production toolkit or if to buy a PT HD1 system?

After upgrading my DV Toolkit2 to Complete Production toolkit I have had the chance to work on both systems side by side with the exact same sessions. I have to say that I have been blown away by how easily the sessions can be exchanged between the two systems.

My HD rig is a HD1 running a 96io on a Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 Quad Core (4gig Ram), with my LE system running a 003R from an iMac Intel 2.16Ghz Core 2 duo (2gig Ram).

For my testing I ran two different sessions (1 with pics + 1 with no pics) across both systems for a comparison.

Test 1:
A session using 96 voices of 5.1 tracks with no video.

Result-
PT HD system did play it back well, although had a few "pci" bus errors. I also had to use 3 DSP chips to fix this problem.

PTLE played back with no errors and only with system usage meters only showing 2% usage across all parameters.


Test 2:
A session with 81 voices using mono tracks with 5.1 outputs and running video

Result-
PTHD - All worked well
PTLE- All worked well

Conclusion
Despite being deficient in a few of the features of PTHD, I have to say that the Complete Production Toolkit has blow me away. I do use trim automation and VCA's, and unfortunately these do not come across to an LE session- however knowing this allows the user to factor this into their initial session setups. At a fraction of the price, and with performance as good as (if not better) than PTHD, I would have to say that from now on I will be using an LE system for all of my work. If I was going to be doing large 5.1 mix sessions (greater than 96voice) than I would use a HD2 or HD3, but for the work that I do on a HD1 system, the LE system is a perfect cheaper alternative.

2010-04-19

New ProTools website - wtf?

After recently receiving an advanced email about the unification of all Avid products on one central website, I sighed with relief. My sigh was due to the fact that the (previous) digidesign website was not what you would call, the best as far as it's navigation was concerned. The email, as far as interpreted, explained that the new"Avid" website would fix some of these problems, and thus present the public with a new, easy to navigate site under the avid banner.

Well... today I was trying to install my "Complete Production Toolkit" software, and was greeted by window after window of countless links - and in fact the pages just kept me going around and around in circles... to no avail and still not to a link of the software. It all started when I inserted my PTLE 8 disk to do an install from disk. When I found the folder with the "additional installers" I was greeted by a text document which mentioned that the installation is a link found in my digi account.

The first mission was to go to my digi account. I found the link which said "my Account" and my login and password were accepted. Good start. I was then taken to a new "Avid" login page which wanted a new email login and password. After placing my details in again I was directed to a page - my new "my account".

The problem now is, I have NO software backlog of my previous "my account" digi downloads and thus there is No record of any of my purchases, meaning I have no link to download the "Digi Complete Toolkit". What there is however is a link saying Avid downloads. Clicking on this brings up a list with all the Avid downloads. This enables me to then search the entire Avid website for "Digi Complete Toolkit". The problem is.... the search function doesn't find it. Actually, it doesn't find any thing for "complete" - and the only software it finds for "toolkit" is PT7.4.

OK, so I spent about another half an hour digging around the website. This proved to be slightly fruitful. I did manage to find the new Complete Toolkit product description page. I even found (under More resources) a download like to the file. Unfortunately though, the link seems to be broken...

WOW I am so blown away by this new easy to navigate website. NOT!

2010-04-16

Got some zombies to kill? Aliens to autopsy? Vampires to disembowell?

Tim Prebble from New Zealand releases "Vegetable Violence" - a sound effects library for horror, gore and all things violent.

Check out the trailer!


A promo for a new sound FX library available from
http://hissandaroar.com
please visit to get yourself a free copy of the sound library

2010-04-06