At NAMM 2023, Avid was showing a tech preview of some new features of Pro Tools. As a tech preview, it should be said that these are features which are in the early stages of development. They are likely to appear in a future version of Pro Tools but not necessarily soon, and they might look or function differently from what was shown. That said, what we saw was very cool.
The new features were improvements to the way markers work, an expansion to the track and bus widths available and a revision of the layout of the Event Operations window.
Marker Improvements
Expansion to the marker features in Pro Tools has been long requested, and what we saw was very cool. Rather than simply adding additional marker rulers, Avid have gone further and added two types of track-based marker.
Three types of marker are available in the build of Pro Tools, which previews these marker improvements. The regular marker ruler markers we have always had are complemented by two types of track markers - Folder markers and Track markers. These both function in the same way but show up as different types of marker in the markers window.
These track markers can be added to specific tracks. They are viewed by showing a marker view from the track header. To create markers on a specific track you either click a newly added ‘+’ button in the track header or target the track using the new target button in the track header and then use the Enter key on the keyboard, as you would to create a normal marker.
There is a third button in the track header, which is used to prioritise names or comments in the track. This is useful, as being able to see marker comments on the track rather than the marker name can offer more information, particularly as the comments text wraps with changes in zoom settings rather than getting truncated.
These new target buttons aren’t only in the track headers, there is also a target button on the markers ruler, so exactly where a marker is created when using Enter can be managed using these new target buttons.
The create markers window offers some new options. The colours offered in the window are notable as they are the same as those used in Media Composer, which isn’t a coincidence.
The new marker features will benefit everyone. For Post users, there is new interoperability between Media Composer and Pro Tools offered by the new marker features, as track markers can be imported from Media Composer into Pro Tools. Hence the consistency between the marker colours mentioned earlier.
For Music users, the use of individual track marker comments makes it possible for them to be used to add visual cues about the content of tracks, an obvious use case being adding lyrics as comments. The Prioritise Name or Comment button in the track header makes these comments more visible, and text wrapping helps keep them readable at different zoom settings.
New Track Widths
As already reported on this site, Avid also showed track widths up to 7.1.4 in Pro Tools Studio and 9.1.6 in Pro Tools Ultimate, with new Ambisonics formats up to 7th order also added to Pro Tools Ultimate. To find out more, check out our article Avid Tech Preview At NAMM Shows Extended Track Widths Coming To Pro Tools Soon.
Updated Event Operations Window
The Event Operations window remains functionally identical to that found in current versions of Pro Tools but the UI has been updated from the tabbed style window to a version with disclosure triangles opening and closing sections of a unified window like those found in other areas of Pro Tools.
What We Think
Having seen the tech preview features in use, we can confirm they are both useful and elegant in operation. While we’ve been waiting a long time for both wider track widths and new marker features, the new options we’ve seen go further than we expected.
That said, we’ll reiterate that these new features are in Alpha and are shown as a preview, so whilst anticipated, these new features are not guaranteed and might look different when and if they make it into an official release of Pro Tools.