The Pro Tools conveyer keeps on rolling on, v12.7 being the seventh consecutive quarterly Pro Tools release since Avid introduced Avid All Access Plans and Cloud Subscriptions. Its got some good stuff in it, mind.
The highlight is Soundbase, a tag-based search interface that complements the existing Workspace Browser and enables users to browse content using the standard metadata tags employed by an increasing number of sound libraries. This means they can search sound libraries by instrument, genre, tempo, key, time signature and more, and audition the content in sync with their own material. Certainly, it should help people find samples a lot faster.
Even easier to find though is the 2GB high-quality sample library from Loopmasters that Pro Tools 12.7 is shipping with. The library features a newly curated selection of content “created by some of the industry’s leading producers and sound designers,” and is already thoroughly tagged for easy browsing in Soundbase.
Elsewhere, the cloud-based Revision History enables users to create and manage multiple versions of projects, as well as backups, media and descriptive project metadata. Avid is billing this as a powerful collaborative tool, and certainly its ability to make notes and quickly reversion existing projects as well as automatically organise version history etc reads well on paper.
Lots of flexible deployment models and licensing options available for Pro Tools nowadays, including cloud-based subscriptions. Licenses start at $25 a month for the regular Pro Tools, though the cut-down entry-level Pro Tools | First is free (though you are limited to 16 tracks and 4 channels of I/O.