AAF from DP to PT, any tips?

[FrankM]

I'm working on a project that's gonna be mixed by someone else; he uses PT. It's a live show by a band I work with and my job is to fix things - tune vocals, correct bad notes, move some things around, etc. The mixer's time is short so the more I get things ready for him the better. I have the one-month free trial of Pro Tools Ultimate and it runs out in a few days. I've tried to do an AAF export from DP but many of the soundbites ("clips" in PT) wind up at the wrong spot in the PT timeline. I've troubleshot this quite a bit now without success. Quickly: both apps are set to the same sample rate, SMPTE frame rate, both projects start at 1:00:00:00. Contiguous tracks that start at the beginning stay in sync, smaller soundbites that appear later in the track(s) are not in the right place. Sometimes off by a few beats, sometimes by many minutes. I have seen some posts (not on this forum) that clain DP is known for problematic AAF exports. Of course I know I can bounce each track to a single file and import; that's my plan if I can't get the AAF transfer to work but I'd really like to avoid that.

I'm wondering if anyone has discovered a secret sauce combo of settings in the AAF export dialog, or other practices in preparing a DP sequence that offer a greater chance of success with this. Thanks in advance!

[FrankD]

Haven't tried an AAF export in a while. I had other problems, but you might try applying "set user timestamp from sequence" (audio menu) to the misguided soundbites before exporting. I'm thinking they may have been moved at some point, and are reverting to their original positions in space and time...

[HCMarkus]

If on Apple Silicon, try running DP in Rosetta Mode as you do the export.

[FrankM]

you might try applying "set user timestamp from sequence" (audio menu) to the misguided soundbites before exporting.

Thanks, I did try that - actually I selected everything then invoked that command. Didn't make a difference. I admit to being somewhat confused with timestamping. I assumed the AAF export tells the importing app where to put the soundbites based on their timestamps. I think I'm wrong about this though. I just did some testing – creating, duplicating and moving soundbites around the timeline, and their both their original timestamps and user timestamps never changed.

If on Apple Silicon, try running DP in Rosetta Mode as you do the export.

This I did not try - so thanks, I'll give it a shot!

[EMRR]

I’m finding if i pass BWF from DP to PT and back the timestamps are wrong at each step. I don’t get it. BUT any group of files should end up at the right relative wrong place.

If you have a trial version of PT you can open both DP and PT and stream from one to the other in real time with something like Blackhole (free). In theory you can use PT Audio Bridge but I’ve never been able to get it to work without glitches. All of that unfortunately requires learning enough about PT to get it configured.

[FrankM]

If you have a trial version of PT you can open both DP and PT and stream from one to the other in real time with something like Blackhole (free)

Thanks. I have Blackhole and have used it but I think if it comes down to that, I'll just merge all my soundbites and create single audio files of each track to import. It's about 2 hours of audio with over 20 tracks.

[Killahurts]

Quickly: both apps are set to the same sample rate, SMPTE frame rate, both projects start at 1:00:00:00.

Are the tempo settings in Pro Tools and DP the same also? Just in case it could make a difference..

I've been taking stems out of DP and into Pro Tools for Atmos mixing. I just do a zero-bounce/merge of each track, because I know it will work every time. Not only that, but when I export the stems out of DP, I convert them to Core Audio Wave files. In my experience, Broadcast waves tend to have translation problems between DP and PT that are similar to yours, even without AAF.

[EMRR]

Well if they managed to break what BWF is supposed to do…..(unrepeatable obscenities and insults)

[EMRR]

If you have a trial version of PT you can open both DP and PT and stream from one to the other in real time with something like Blackhole (free)

Thanks. I have Blackhole and have used it but I think if it comes down to that, I'll just merge all my soundbites and create single audio files of each track to import. It's about 2 hours of audio with over 20 tracks.

If the goal is to get it into PT for the guy, do whichever’s fastest for you.

[FrankM]

Quickly: both apps are set to the same sample rate, SMPTE frame rate, both projects start at 1:00:00:00.

Are the tempo settings in Pro Tools and DP the same also? Just in case it could make a difference..

Yes, both at 120bpm however I noticed that since I had the pref set to examine files for beats & tempo, all my soundbites did get assigned tempos, and they were not 120 bpm. I don't think that has a bearing on AAF transfers though. I am doing no real-time time-stretching or tempo manipulations - that I know of anyway!

I've been taking stems out of DP and into Pro Tools for Atmos mixing. I just do a zero-bounce/merge of each track, because I know it will work every time. Not only that, but when I export the stems out of DP, I convert them to Core Audio Wave files. In my experience, Broadcast waves tend to have translation problems between DP and PT that are similar to yours, even without AAF.

That's interesting to hear about BWF files because I remember sending a track I did in DP to someone with a Windows DAW (forget which one), a WAV file, and it played back in his system with artifacts or at the wrong tempo. BWF WAVs have tempo information embedded in them, right? I think that may have been the issue.

As I said, I know I could do stems (and I very well may wind up doing that), but I have more work to do on these tracks before delivering to the PT guy – work I think will be a little easier for me to do in PT (well, I hope it will be easier!), so it would help me to preserve the clip/soundbite-based structure rather than one large continuous file per track. I think it would also help him mix since some tracks have parts than need different processing, and having the clips on a screen in front of him makes finding those parts faster.

[Killahurts]

but I have more work to do on these tracks before delivering to the PT guy – work I think will be a little easier for me to do in PT (well, I hope it will be easier!), so it would help me to preserve the clip/soundbite-based structure rather than one large continuous file per track. I think it would also help him mix since some tracks have parts than need different processing, and having the clips on a screen in front of him makes finding those parts faster.

You can always create the long, contiguous stems and import them into PT, where you can use the 'strip silence' tool to make them back into soundbites. That tool has in and out padding as well, so you can leave yourself some number of ms on either side for safety.

The downside would be the enormous size of your project, but there might be ways to consolidate it in PT once you create the segments, I'm not sure.

[FrankM]

Thanks very much for that suggestion, I wasn't aware of the "strip silence" tool in PT - not a shocker since I don't use Pro Tools! I have plenty of disk space so that's not an issue. This could be the ticket. It's not a perfect solution as I have adjacent soundbites not separated by silence, but this might help in a few of the tracks

It still kinda bugs me that AAF transfers are this problematic. I know I'm not the only one who's had issues. All I need is the track layout with the names of the tracks, and the soundbites placed where they should be – nothing else! A blank slate for the mix engineer to do his thing with.

My posts tend to be long (I'm proving that now, lol) so I didn't mention that I was intrigued enough by Melodyne's integration with PT that I was thinking of taking the risk and tuning some of the vocals in PT (that was one of the reasons I wanted to see the soundbites instead of one long track). I tried DP's own tools and also Melodyne inside DP. DP worked on maybe 50% of what I needed to tune - other times, notes were not recognized. Melodyne in DP was a bear - I had to first direct the channel's output to an unused mono bus, ensure the fader was at 0, disable all plugins, then bounce each time I wanted to commit the retuned notes to a file. This may be pilot error or just poorly recorded vocal tracks but I spent probably 40 minutes reading Celemony's user guide attempting to find out how to commit the tuned notes to disk - and couldn't find anything - so I guessed that bouncing was the only way. I guess it's normally a real-time effect but I wanted it saved into the file for the PT guy.

[HCMarkus]

how to commit the tuned notes to disk

Merge. Took me awhile, too.

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... di-options

[FrankM]

That article is much more help than DP's user guide, thanks! I may have been doing it wrong but I remember trying to use Melodyne in ARA and every time I went to save my DP project I'd get a beachball for a good 10 seconds or so. I turned ARA off and saving got back to almost instantaneous. I'll re-read the instructions in that article and hope that it was pilot error the first time – I would so much rather work in DP than try to get going as a total newbie using Pro Tools - I just remember a youtube video showcasing how Melodyne was integrated into PT and it looked like they really streamlined the workflow - it's a drop-down away in every track header.

And the sugg to bounce soundbites? I feel like an idiot but that makes total sense. Really appreciate these tips, thanks again!

[HCMarkus]

That article is much more help than DP's user guide, thanks! I may have been doing it wrong but I remember trying to use Melodyne in ARA and every time I went to save my DP project I'd get a beachball for a good 10 seconds or so. I turned ARA off and saving got back to almost instantaneous. I'll re-read the instructions in that article and hope that it was pilot error the first time – I would so much rather work in DP than try to get going as a total newbie using Pro Tools - I just remember a youtube video showcasing how Melodyne was integrated into PT and it looked like they really streamlined the workflow - it's a drop-down away in every track header.

And the sugg to bounce soundbites? I feel like an idiot but that makes total sense. Really appreciate these tips, thanks again!

Merge, not Bounce. Control Shift M