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Hi,
I just joined this forum. I'm doing 5.1 sound editing for the Southpark Studios and am running ProTools 7.4.2 HD Accel at work on quad Intel Macs running Leopard, and I run an 002 LE system at home via XP HP 8400.
We've created some templates to ease 5.1 conversion of our 200+ episodes of Southpark from a stereo mix to 5.1 mix for DVD release. I'm working backwards through the archived sessions and things were going well until I hit sessions that no longer will load into a modern cut of ProTools. We have a couple ProTools HD rooms but we run multiple shifts in our rooms so the thought of trying to downgrade a quad Intel Mac to much older versions of software isn't really an option nor is simply importing the raw audio tracks of each episode and completely remixing them. ( I need the tracks with automation and hopefully the plugins to come up in PT 7.4).
I already tried creating a new blank session and importing all or even a single track from the old session but that gives me the same error "DOCUMENT COULD NOT BE OPENED BECAUSE IT WAS CREATED WITH AN OLDER VERSION OF PRO TOOLS". I've only been working here a short time but I believe the backlog of session is likely to span 8-10 years and might span PT versions as early as 5.

My only thoughts were:
1) post about my dilema and see if there were any suggestions
2) contact Digidesign and other forums to see if any converters or conversion helper tools exist to help such challenges (I'm willing to pay for a conversion tool if one exists)
3) see if there are any other consultants with experience in such areas.
4) search the net to see if there are any API's available that would allow a SW developer to read and potentially construct such a translator.
5) Is there a magic cookie or something in the top header of a binary pro tools file that would at least help me understand what version of PT it was written from? (assuming I had a dump program I could see it in)


Anyone have ideas or suggestions for me about this?

Thanks tons,
-Jay-