Even though Avid undertakes its annual ACA survey and now has the New Features Lounge in the Avid Link app, we thought it was time to explore some of the new features we would like to see Avid add to Pro Tools and give you the opportunity to make your own suggestions too.

Note that the topics are in no particular order.

Support For ARA Technology (Audio Random Access) Allowing Increased Communication Of Key Information Between The Pro Tools Timeline And Specific Plug-Ins

ARA, short for Audio Random Access is a very clever exchange technology that enables standalone software such as Melodyne, Antares Auto-Tune, & Revoice Pro to communicate directly to a DAW environment for a seamless end-user experience.

ARA is a development by Celemony, the makers of the popular pitch & time correction software Melodyne. PreSonus was then the first DAW maker to integrate Melodyne tightly into the timeline to offer seamless pitch and time correction using ARA.

Since its release, ARA has been adopted and integrated into other DAWs such as SONAR, Logic Pro X, Cubase, Nuendo and Reaper.

In 2018 the second generation of ARA (conveniently named ARA2) was announced, boasting an even quicker and slicker workflow. Check our article… Celemony Announces ARA 2 - Plug-ins And DAWs To Work Even Closer

ARA2 has received a generally positive response although to date the integration of ARA into Apple’s Logic Pro X has proved somewhat troublesome, which seems to have been down to Apple rather than third party developers trying to write software to support it.

The Elephant In The Room

The notable exception amongst DAWs supporting ARA is Pro Tools, even though ARA has for quite some time been one of the more popular feature requests for Pro Tools.

That might change because Avid included ARA in the 2019 ACA Vote in the Pro Tools Software / Hardware section. The fact that ARA is on Avid’s development radar is a promising start. For so many years Pro Tools users could see ARA being integrated into other DAWs but there seemed to be no indication from Avid that it was ever going to be on their roadmap until the 2019 ACA Survey and Vote.

If Pro Tools was to get the ARA 2 treatment it could look a little something like this concept image we have mocked up using Melodyne as an example. Take another look… can you imagine your Pro Tools workflow benefiting from ARA? We can!

What About Post-Production?

While the benefits of having ARA in Pro Tools for music production are clear, we suspect Pro Tools won’t receive ARA until the benefits can also be enjoyed by post production engineers as well. There is a growing number of ARA compatible software including:

• Melodyne

• Antares Auto-Tune

• Synchro Arts VocALign

• Synchro Arts ReVoice Pro

At AES 2018, Sound Radix announced that the upcoming update to Auto-Align Post would be available in ARA versions for VST and AU equipped DAWs. Check out our article Sound Radix Announce Auto-Align Post 1.1 Update With VST-ARA2 And AU-ARA2 Support - Coming Soon.

What About iZotope RX?

Imagine what you could do with RX using the ARA2 workflow? The audio restoration software’s processing could be ready and active, but still editable, on the Pro Tools timeline, maybe it could look like this…

Would you like ARA in Pro Tools? If so, what applications would you like to get the ARA treatment? Do share your thoughts in the comments below…

Avid ScriptSync and PhraseFind Features In Pro Tools

There are still two threads on the old Pro Tools Ideascale, one for PhraseFind and one for ScriptSync, that were both started back in March 2011, over 8 years ago!!

In the comments, an anonymous Ideascale community member says...

“I cannot express my deepest and utmost support for this idea. Avid, if you are listening.... I have been lobbying for this feature for a few years now. Here is the reality... dialogue editors, supervising sound editors, (some) Re-recording mixers, major studios, smaller studios, and just about every assistant editor at every studio will spend hundreds on this product if you create it. This is, quite possibly, one of the most forward-thinking products and game changers for Pro Tools that Avid can invest in. I have been in talks with some higher ups at Avid and, again, I am 100% certain that ROI on this product goes without saying. I am THAT confident. EVERYONE will buy it in the moving picture business... even down to smaller multimedia projects. This product is an absolute no brainer. PLEASE IMPLEMENT!”

Another comment says...

“Good god, I can't believe this software exists...and is NOT part of ProTools! Surely they know they're sitting on a goldmine there.”

And another comment...

“I share the same sentiment from the moment I heard of this for MC. Boy would it seriously help speed up my dialogue workflow. Digging into dailies has always been a time-consuming process, even more so in situations where the dailies were not named properly and the only way to find the right daily is by auditioning it. If I could vote +10 on this I surely would!”

There is also a request on the Pro Tools Feature Request Lounge in the Avid Link app including…

“PhraseFind - Totally embarrassing working with Media Composer editors and not having PhraseFind in Pro Tools.” (posted December 4th 2019)

If you are not aware of these products then check out these two videos…

ScriptSync is designed to speed up script-based editing for film, TV, and documentaries to help quickly match every take to your script to find the best ones. ScriptSync phonetically indexes all text and audible dialog in your project automatically and then syncs each source clip to its associated line in the script. Once synced, you can quickly locate all relevant clips in seconds based on a scene number, page number, or word or phrase search, enabling you to compare performances in the context of your story.

Avid Media Composer ScriptSync Option Features

• Match all clips to your script faster than before with the more powerful phonetic indexing engine

• Undo and redo tasks, add notes, and view clips in their native frame format, including 4x3 and 16x9

• Edit text in the script to match what was actually said in the synced clip

• Index and sync all text and dialog in your project—no matter where the clips are stored

• Audition each take from your search results in context with the scene to find the best one

• Edit dialog together from different sources to create that perfect performance

• Support for a variety of languages, including English, Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and more

PhraseFind is designed to save hours and accelerate editing with powerful dialog search to help you find the right clips quickly by simply typing a word or phrase. PhraseFind automatically analyses all clips in your project and phonetically indexes all audible dialog, so you can spend less time searching for the right media.

Avid Media Composer PhraseFind Option Features

• Catalog volumes of dialog-driven clips and get search results faster than ever before

• Get more accurate results and better indexing of unclear audio with support for shorter phoneme phrases

• Eliminate the need to review, log, and triage hundreds of hours of footage to find what you’re looking for

• Search project material stored across local and shared storage—no need to know where the media is housed

• Support for a variety of languages, including English, Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and more

Mike cannot believe it is just a handful of users, like him, that would like to see these features available in Pro Tools. Granted working in radio these tools would be so much more useful because all the editing is done in Pro Tools, whereas in film and TV the bulk of the editing of the narrative is done in an NLE like Media Composer. But the pricing of these options is not stupid either, especially for an Avid video product.

Surely since Avid bought the company that created this technology why cannot they also offer this to Pro Tools? Or are we back to the limitations that come from Pro Tools backwards compatibility and legacy code, or is the code in Media Composer completely different making it impossible to implement in Pro Tools?

Marker Improvements

Markers don’t follow edits. Unlike automation, which can either retain its position on the timeline or follow the clip with which it is associated, markers remain stubbornly fixed to their timeline position. Not helpful.

There is also only one markers ruler. we would like to be able to have separate marker rulers for marking out sections of a project and for notes, marking mistakes or for areas which need cleaning up or fixing. The potential uses for timeline markers are endless, yet at present, we have to squeeze all of this on to a single ruler.

Comments on this topic include…

“Film mixing workflows would be vastly improved for many mixers if we could utilize multiple marker tracks for different elements. Marker tracks should have the same depth of features as other kinds of tracks.”

“Please add to this a simple “Show Marker Number” Checkbox ... it would simplify workflows a lot”

“Name and Comments Window needs to be bigger. Or should be able to slide to the right for a larger view of the comments window.”

If you are a heavy user of markers you will definitely be recalling the markers from the numeric keypad using the “period-marker number-period” shortcuts. Those marker numbers are important and many of us use our own standard sets of marker numbers for different uses. Renumbering those markers can be hard work, so powerful as they are, there is definitely room for improvement in the Pro Tools system of markers.

There is an elegant solution already in place in another Avid product - Media Composer. Media Composer offers multiple marker rulers for marking points on the timeline, with multiple marker groups identified by colour and the possibility of placing markers in clips instead of on the timeline ruler. While I’d love to see improvements like this to Pro Tools, in their absence there are some easy workarounds which can help, though if you want to access markers by the number you're stuck with a single markers ruler for the foreseeable future.

As well as multiple marker rulers in the Edit window, it would also be great to be able to set custom colours for certain markers. Also, in the marker list, to be able to re-sort alphabetically and renumber sequentially after re-sorting would be so helpful. This would allow users to be able to set ADR markers, foley markers, music markers, dialog markers, etc..

How would you like to see multiple markers implemented in Pro Tools? Do share your thoughts in the comments below…

“Smart Solo Feature" Including Improved Bus Interrogation, Automated Solo Safe And GUI Visibility Of Signal Path

How could this work? At the moment if your audio path from a track goes through a number of subgroups and even record tracks unless every single one of these has been solo-safed when you press Solo on the source track you won’t hear anything.

Wouldn’t it be good if Pro Tools could look through the audio routing and automatically enable Solo Safe on all the tracks in the signal path so you don’t need to worry about having to manually Solo Safe everything? This should also include signal paths routed via aux sends too. In the process it would be great if Pro Tools identified the path, by highlighting each of track’s Solo button, making it easy to see the actual audio path through complex routing.

Then there was the suggestion for bus soloing that was the 4th most popular unimplemented feature request from the old Pro Tools Ideascale at one point. The original post said “Bus Soloing Feature - We could use the ability to solo a bus instead of having to select all the individual tracks in order to hear the mix. It's not so bad when there are 2 tracks but with big sessions this gets complicated. There are two blank spots next to "Mute" and "Solo." These could be used for intelligent buttons that solo all the tracks being routed to that specific bus/aux track. This would require very simple programming and would make everyone's workflow a lot more efficient”.

A Split View In The Pro Tools Edit Window

On the DUC there has been a thread about asking Avid for a new feature in Pro Tools similar to what Microsoft offers in Excel where you can lock a track or combination of tracks so that when you scroll vertically those tracks stay visible in the Edit window.

This was also mentioned on the old Pro Tools Ideascale...

Similar to freezing rows or columns in a spreadsheet program, I've often thought it would be great to be able to lock specific tracks at the top of your edit window so that they were constantly visible while being able to vertically scroll through the rest of your session. For example, keeping picture editorial guide tracks locked at the top of your edit window so they would be constantly visible/available for reference. A picture is worth 1000 words, so I've created a quick mock up just utilizing the space available in the universe area of the edit window to give you an idea of what I'm thinking.

There is also a second posting on the old Pro Tools Ideascale that requests a similar feature.

One of the comments on the Idescale said… “Excellent idea. I am constantly juggling views to try to accomplish this and it is literally impossible to do.”

Another said… “Yes, yes, yes, Avid, please! As a foley editor, I miss this feature so much! I need to edit steps and props in sync with the production soundtracks which serves as a guide. So I need to keep an eye on the waveform of the guide track from the set every time! Please, Avid, do it! Also, we need separate vertical scrolls for these two parts of the Edit window so we can scroll both groups of tracks independently! Also, resize the height of these groups, delete or add them, etc...”

Someone suggested… “Make sure to allow for any type of track to be always visible. I could imagine this being useful for VCA tracks to mute and solo groups wherever you are located in the session.”

Mike would like this feature. “So often I am lining up clips on different tracks, yes I can re-order the tracks to put them next to each other but then I need to put the order back afterwards. I would much rather lock my reference track and then be able to scroll up and down on the other tracks.”

Folders In Clip List

Back in the days of the Pro Tools Ideascale. Folders in the Clip List was the most popular feature request from users. The Ideascale post said… “Folders in the Region List - For better region management I would like to see folders in the region list. It would be great if you could assign one or multiple tracks to a folder in the region list and all the recordings and edits of the track(s) end up in the designated folder in the region list. This folder could then also be created in the Audio Files folder for even better file management”. Note that you can see how old this one is, it still refers to regions. Remember that Regions became clips with Pro Tools 11!

There was no mention of folders in the clip list in the 2018 ACA vote so we were especially pleased to see that Avid brought back in the 2019 ACA Vote.

More recently there has been a comment in the Pro Tools Feature Request Lounge in the Avid Link…

“Folders in Clip List - We need folders in Clip List!!!” (Posted December 4th 2019)

It would be great to have folders in the clip list and to have folders for dialogue, FXs, Foley, Music and so on as in the mock-up to the right.

At the moment you can only use prefixes to then be able to use the clip list alphanumeric search to narrow down your search.

Another solution could be Media Bins, which are used by Avid in Media Composer. Media Composer is very strong is in its asset management. If Avid already have such powerful tools already in house why not bring some of that experience over to Pro Tools? 

A bin is a logical container for media. All the data (i.e the files on the hard disc) are managed by Media Composer but references to those media can reside in any bin or bins (an alias to a clip can exist in as many bins as you like). You can create as many bins as suits your workflow and nesting bins within bins is possible. You can organise your media in any way you see fit. The search tools are powerful and finding and organising your media is easy.

What we like about this system is that it is logical - in that you are organising references to media rather than the media themselves. While we want folders in the clips list we don’t want it to reflect or affect the organisation of my media on the drive.

Integration Of 3rd Party Video Engines

This was one of the suggestions, that came out of the 2019 ACA Vote but wasn’t particularly well defined Looking back, with the release of Pro Tools 11, Avid brought the video engine from Media Composer, which was supposed to banish video problems from the Pro Tools workflow. Instead, we seem to have some users who are able to run video on their Pro Tools rigs without any issues, whilst others have all kinds of issues.

What does Avid mean by 3rd party video engine? Could it mean, that Avid would allow you to use another manufacturer’s video engine? For example what if you could replace the Avid Video Engine with the Non-Lethal Applications’ Video Slave Pro 4?

How would you respond to having a choice of video engine? Would that help you in your workflow? If you had a choice, which video engine would you choose? Do share your thought in the comments below…

Improved Data Interchange Between Sessions (Better Import Session Data Functionality, Multiple Sessions Open At The Same Time With Drag & Drop)

This was first suggested in the Pro Tools Ideascale 10 years ago, with the suggestion that there should be “the ability to open 2 sessions at the same time with only one session being active - the other one inactive (active/inactive switch). You then could compare two sessions and copy/paste instantly regions/region groups etc. without having to import/export whole tracks”.

One of the comments added, “Even just the ability to open the edit window of another session in order to copy/paste out of it into your current one would be very helpful”.

Another suggested tabs “Almost exactly like tabbed browsers like Firefox, Safari, or IE, we should have the ability to open new sessions in a TAB. Would be an awesome convenience to switch quickly from other sessions”. Perhaps like the mockup above?

This then appeared in the 2017 ACA Vote and was listed in the top 10 as ‘New Post workflows offering folder tracks, multiple sessions open at one time’. This is long overdue and is one of the options that has been on the previous 2 ACA surveys in 2017 and 2018.

In 2018, this feature was the 6th most popular feature request on the Pro Tools Ideascale yet to be implemented.

It would be great to be able to drag and drop clips, tracks, plug-ins etc from one Pro Tools session to another by having them both open at the same time. Although the Export Track option is a significant improvement by enabling you to work in the source session, choosing the elements you needed and then exporting them from that session into the destination session, improving the ability to move a wide variety of content from one session to other, especially with drag and drop, would be very welcome.

What do you think of the Tabs idea? How would you like to see this Multiple-Sessions feature implemented?

Preserve Tracks When Opening Large Pro Tools Ultimate Sessions In Pro Tools Native  

The Problem…

If a Pro Tools Ultimate user creates a session with more than 128 audio tracks and then that session is opened with Pro Tools, Pro Tools displays a window saying that Audio Tracks 129+ will be deleted. If the user clicks OK, saves the session, closes it, then when the session is reopened in Pro Tools Ultimate, Audio tracks 129+ have been deleted.

Similarly, if a Pro Tools Ultimate user creates a session with more than 128 Aux tracks and then that session with Pro Tools Standard, Pro Tools displays a window saying that Aux tracks 129+ will be deleted. In this case, they are not actually deleted. They are hidden. If the user clicks OK, saves the session, closes it, then when the session is reopened in Pro Tools Ultimate, all of the Aux tracks are still present.

Track behaviour when going between Pro Tools Ultimate and Pro Tools Standard needs to be consistent.

A Solution…

One solution would be to set the tracks that exceed the maximum supported by Pro Tools Standard to Inactive and not delete them.

Setting audio tracks to Inactive would be a non-destructive solution unlike deleting. It perhaps would be even better for the extra tracks go to 'inactive voice' (blue background) rather than 'inactive track' (greyed out), so that when the session is opened on Pro Tools Ultimate they are automatically made active again, providing the user hasn't changed the track's active/inactive state while working on it in PT 'standard'. This would allow the session to be sent back to an Ultimate system with everything still intact.

Pro Tools Expert contributor and Rerecording Mixer Alan Sallabank adds… “One feature I've long asked for, which could help with this issue, is for Pro Tools Ultimate Standalone or with HD Native hardware to have the same voice count display on the System Usage meters, as Pro Tools Ultimate on an HDX system has.

At least some way of getting a definitive path/aux/bus/voice total, when you take a session from Native to DSP. Or perhaps some form of compatibility-check when saving your session - you input the spec of the destination system and Pro Tools will tell you whether the destination system will support it.”

Alan would also request that when you ‘Hide and deactivate’ a track or path if there are active clips on that path, it comes up with the same message as if you were going to delete that track.

MPE Support - Are Pro Tools Users Missing Out On The Future Of MIDI?

There are a couple of posts on the Pro Tools Ideascale from back in 2015 relating to adding MPE support into Pro Tools

MPE support (seaboard, linnstrument etc) 

“Now that alternative midi controllers are coming of age, it would be great to see support for MPE (multidimensional polyphonic expression). Bitwig's implementation is pretty good, AVID could more or less do the same, and maybe add some sort of snap/quantize to note editing.”

Allow Midi Omni as Midi Output (MPE Roli Linnstrument Compatibility)  

“The reason I am suggesting this feature is primarily to allow much easier integration with new multi-channel (MPE) midi controllers such as the Roli Seaboard Rise and LinnStrument. This feature could also be very useful with multi-channel sequencers, drum machines and electronic drum sets as well.”

Also on the Avid Link Pro Tools Feature Request Lounge, there is a request for MPE support posted in February 2019…

“MPE - so we can use controllers like Roli Seaboard. All other daws are using MPE. Pro Tools should include this in the next update.”

What Is MPE Support?

In case you are not aware of MPE Support, it is a relatively new MIDI protocol that has been dubbed Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression or MPE for short and has been co-developed by a consortium of industry heavy hitters including Apple, Bitwig, Moog Music, Roger Linn Design and ROLI amongst others. MPE is described as a method of using MIDI which enables multidimensional devices like the ROLI Seaboard to control multiple parameters of every note within MPE-compatible software.

In traditional MIDI, channel-wide messages (such as pitch bend or modulation) are applied to all notes being played on a single channel. In MPE, each note or instrument voice is assigned its own MIDI channel so that those messages can be applied to each note individually allowing for ‘never before seen’ levels of expression within purely virtual instruments. The MPE consortium of developers publicly says that...

“We've taken a pragmatic approach where we kept the best of what is already in practical use today and structured it in so that adding support for MPE would be the least possible effort, while providing the most possible benefit.”

Although we don’t think that MPE can still be described or dismissed as ‘bleeding edge’ technology owing to the full support it receives from major DAWs such as Logic X, Mainstage, Bitwig, Reaper, Garageband and Cubase and even selected third-party virtual instruments such as Spectrasonics Omnisphere & Trillian, UVI Falcon, Softube Modular and EastWest Play 5.

How soon will it be before musicians turn up with their expressive MIDI instruments to our studios and we as Pro Tools engineers and producers can’t service them without tedious setup and editing time, if at all?

Are Pro Tools Users Missing Out… Again?

So, the question for the Pro Tools sound design, music creation and facilitation community is, firstly have you experienced any form of this new wave of expressive MIDI yet and secondly do you think Avid should get on the case and include this feature in a future Pro Tools release?

Routing Automation In Pro Tools

Todd Grace posted this interesting request on the DUC recently. Todd asked…

"Why isn't everyone in the post community making noise about the single biggest omission in Pro Tools mixing for the post community?

Routing and Pre/Post fader switch automation are important parts of everyday post mixing ... I'm aware that there are workarounds, but workarounds do not a complete toolset make. Am I the only one who thinks this way? Does everyone else here just drag audio to other tracks when they need a reassign? Or does everyone just use pre-fader sends and mute between where they want to send material? It is very useful to be able to pop between various reassigns without having to physically move the audio to a different track. (Speed and efficiency). For example, I might want to set up 3 or four different reassigns for various situations .. A/B dialog, Futz, flashback dialog, etc. I also often like to switch between reassigned dialog and panned dialog. Routing automation would solve this easily. While there are already work-arounds that I use, it would be great to not have to use a work-around. Music ... Pre/Post fader automation ... I think it's self-explanatory... especially for source music. Varied Stem routing for M&E's ... PFX ... I could go on ... not to mention Predubbing! Looking forward to your ideas."

There are also two related posts on the old Pro Tools Ideascale. Both were posted back in 2013…

Turn drop-down i/o track menu into matrix router…

“When setting up post-sessions with tons of busses and double-routing (control-click into output-menu of the track) it becomes quite cumbersome to see at a glance what goes where and also takes forever to un-route double bussings.

I'd like a matrix-view with check-marks similar to a matrix router on a film-console where you can check and uncheck multiple connections in the same window without having to re-open the output-dropdown menu again and again for every patch you want to make or disconnect.

Ultimately a central track-routing window for ALL tracks in a session would be best with track and bus outs on one axis and track inputs on the other where you simply check the patch points. That way you can see and set up the entire routing setup of your session in a single window without going through hundreds of track I/O drop-down menus. Would save hours when setting up a session.”

Automate routing changes

“I'd like to be able to automate the output of an audio track so halfway through a mix it's going one place then it's automated to go elsewhere.”

This got us thinking, surely the new feature added in Pro Tools 12.8 when Dolby Atmos workflows were made native so that you can automate the routing of a track from a stem to an Object and back, mean that a lot of the development work has already been done?

Pro Tools Expert contributor and Rerecording Mixer Alan Sallabank told us… "Ever since sitting down in a pub in Burnley with a developer from AMS Neve in the late nineties, to work out (literally on the back of a beer mat) the best way to use automated routing on the AMS Neve DFC, I've known just how important this feature is. The company I was a director of then, hedged their bets with console choice and chose to buy one DFC and one Harrison Series 12.

The S12 also had automated routing, but it wasn't quite as clever as the AMS Neve, in that it wasn't aware of the pan designations of the output stems, so couldn't automatically assign the correct panner. In that period of history, what was supremely important was an efficient use of processing, whether it be analogue or digital. It makes no sense to double up on outboard or in-built processing if it is not being used simultaneously by two different types of stem - music and effects for example.

We also had a limited amount of dialogue noise reduction available, so it had to be able to be dynamically assigned to any combination of the dialogue tracks. Even in these days of incredibly powerful processing, now that we have huge speaker counts - the 128 channels that Dolby Atmos uses, for example, efficient use of processing has come to the fore again. The only way to achieve this is to implement proper automated routing."

4K Monitor Support

Although Pro Tools 2019.10 brought support for 4K video files for the Avid Video Engine, we still do not have official support for 4K monitor screens with Pro Tools.

There have been a number of requests in the Pro Tools Feature Request lounge in the Avid Link app…

“4K Monitors Support - Please add support for 4K Monitors at both 3840 x 2160 and 4096 x 2160 px resolutions.” (Posted on August 31st 2018)

“Bigger cursor in MIDI Editor - Cursor in MIDI Editor needs to be bigger/bolder! At least on Retina and 4k displays. I always lose it and can’t see where it is on the screen, it’s frustrating.” (Posted on September 9th, 2019)

“4k display cursor too small - On my 4k display the cursor is too small (selector tool etc...)  I did a ticket with avid and they said to post here as a feature request.” (Posted on November 5th 2019)

They all highlight an issue with monitor screens because as screen resolutions get bigger, it means that elements of the Pro Tools GUI get progressively smaller. For example, if you have a 21” screen that is at 1280x720, the Play button will be bigger on the screen than a 21” screen set at 1920x1080 resolution. Something needs to be done to resolve how the Pro Tools GUI looks on high-resolution screens especially now we have 4K screens as if Avid do nothing that Play button is going to be minute.

One option is bigger screens, as that will have the impact of fewer pixels per inch, but it isn’t always possible to have large screens as there isn’t space where they are needed.

Experiences using unsupported 4K resolution screens have been mixed with some users reporting no problems and others having to manually adjust the screen resolution away from the screen’s native resolution to get a workable solution.

When it comes to Windows there is a known issue with 4K screens. In an Avid Pro Tools and 4K Resolution Monitors on Windows Knowledge Base article Avid say…

“At the moment, the user interface of Pro Tools is not supported in ultra high-definition monitors (specifically on 4K and above). The highest screen resolution where the user interface is not distorted is in 1920 x 1080. If an ultra-high display resolution is desired, then the display scaling needs to be manually adjusted.”

to the question “why is the Pro Tools user interface appear distorted in a 4K or 5K screen resolution?”

The Knowledge Base article then goes on to explain the current workaround to get rid of the Pro Tools GUI distortion of ultra high-res screens.

Do you want 4K support for Pro Tools? How would you want Avid to present the GUI on 4K monitor screens?

Other Requested Pro Tools Features

• MacBook Pro Touch Bar Support - Would be excellent to add some useful key commands to the touch bar, maybe a keyboard that could be locked to a particular key.

• Phase switch on every track in the mix window - Would make life so much easier, especially when recording with multiple mics.

• Shortcut for making two mono audio tracks into one stereo - This is kind of the opposite of Split Stereo Track into 2 Mono Tracks.

• Undo Deleted Tracks - Users have been asking for this for a long time. Other software has it and I don't understand why Pro Tools doesn't have it yet.

• Sum To Mono Option On Master Fader - To check mixes in mono. It's kind of self-explanatory.

What About You?

These are some of the suggestions that we would like to see Avid take up and add to Pro Tools, some of which have been on the list for a very long time. But these are our suggestions, what about you? Do you agree with ideas laid out here, or do you have your own ideas, if so what new features would you like added to Pro Tools?

Please do share your thought in the comments below, all we ask is that your suggestions are positive, constructive feedback and feature requests. All moaning and negativity will be deleted, both here and across our social media channels, as that doesn't help anyone.

But it would be great to hear what you would like added to Pro Tools, we know that key Avid personnel do read this blog, so you have an opportunity to make suggestions, knowing that Avid are likely to read them.

Your other route to providing Avid suggestions or new features is the Pro Tools Feature Request Lounge n the Avid Link app.