Pro Tools: Importing Session Data

The new Import Session Data window. The interface has been streamlined, the window is resizable, and the filtering options take full advantage of the newly updated PTX file format.

Updates to the Pro Tools Session file format have made the Import Session Data window even more powerful.

One source of frustration among Pro Tools users is the fact that you can only have one Pro Tools Session open at a time. It’s standard practice when working in almost all other applications to have multiple projects, documents or whatever open at once, and to be able to copy and paste, or drag and drop content from one to another. This isn’t possible in Pro Tools, but that isn’t to say that you can’t transfer content from one Session to another, and the place you go to access the contents of a Pro Tools Session other than the one you’re in is the Import Session Data window.

It’s fair to say this window has had too much squeezed into too little space for quite some time. It’s been ripe for an overhaul, and in Pro Tools 2024.6 that is exactly what it received. The changes are more than superficial; there has been a serious amount of work done. In this workshop, we’ll have a look at some of the things that have changed.

Data Crunching

Many pros rely on this powerful window, which can be used to import anything from plug‑in settings, audio clips and automation data to markers, memory locations and window configurations. There are alternative ways of sharing some of these attributes between sessions; if for example you regularly use the same plug‑in settings, they can be saved as plug‑in presets. Or if you reuse plug‑in chains or even entire tracks or groups of tracks complete with media, you can do so by saving them as track presets or in template sessions. However, the Import Session Data window offers the ability to access and reuse almost anything from another session, with some handy time‑saving features such as Match Tracks, which imports to tracks of the same name between sessions.

In use, however, the window could feel cramped, like wallpapering the hall through the proverbial letterbox, and the Import Session Data window was an intimidating place for newbies. What the overhaul has set out to achieve is to update the UI, make it more usable, and add some under‑the‑bonnet work on the Pro Tools Session file format to allow comprehensive filtering, so that the more streamlined interface can display a customised set of data on which to work. Here are some of the highlights.

One of the biggest improvements over the old, cramped window is that it is resizable, meaning you can now expand it horizontally to display longer track names and vertically to accommodate more tracks. The old central ‘letterbox’ window for displaying tracks, and inevitable scrolling of the list, has been moved over to the right, with the tab for markers also...