AAF package contains complete media files

Craig,

I have converted your FCPXML and opened it on Pro Tools and I get the correct number of tracks in Pro Tools when I compare it to FCP X. Obviously any panning was lost, but X2Pro warned you about this when it finished the conversion.

I have attached two screenshots of the same section in FCP X and in Pro Tools. In the first 7 clips in the Pro Tools screenshot you can see:
- There is a gap at the beginning because of the title in FCP X
- There is a single channel of audio from the clip called "2014-02-14 08:13:42" which had ONLY A2 enabled in FCP X
- There is a single channel of audio from the clip called "DroughtVOs" which had 1 mono channel in FCP X
- There are two channels of audio from the clip called "Newborn" which had 1 stereo channel in FCP X
- There is a single channel of audio from the clip called "2014-02-14 08:13:07" which had ONLY A2 enabled in FCP X
- There is a single channel of audio from the clip called "2014-02-14 08:13:12" which had ONLY A2 enabled in FCP X
- There is a single channel of audio from the clip called "2014-02-14 08:13:12" which had ONLY A2 enabled in FCP X
- There is a single channel of audio from the clip called "2014-02-14 08:13:12" which had ONLY A2 enabled in FCP X

All of this looks correct to me. Perhaps I have misunderstood something?

X2Pro does embed the audio from the disabled tracks in the AAF, but I doesn't put it in the sequence. This is embedding of disabled tracks is "by design" and should not affect how the sequence in Pro Tools looks/sounds. It is included so that the audio engineer has access to all the other channels, should they need them.

I wasn't operating Pro Tools, a colleague was, and I don't know much about it, but there were four tracks where there should have been one for each clip. e.g. if the talent grab was on channel one as standard, channels 2,3, and 4 were also imported into the Pro Tools sequence.

Craig,

Are you saying that in the sequence in Pro Tools there were all 4 tracks where there should have been 1, or that all 4 were included in the AAF but 1 was used in the sequence?

Are you able to attach your FCPXML to a forum post so that I can see it for myself?

Thanks Graeme.
My first test with X2ProLE was a 2 minute sequence of Panasonic P2 clips. Each original clip had four channels, but in each case 3 channels were disabled and only one was active. In the resulting AAF file though, when imported into Pro Tools, all four channels of each clip were present, which is not really what you want for sound post.

Craig,

I will let the product manager know that you think that this should be made clearer on the product description page.

In both versions of X2Pro (LE and Pro/Full) disabled clips should not be included in the AAF if the "Discard disabled clips" option is turned on in X2Pro. Having said this; there is a bug which we are working on fixing where disabled compound clips and multicam clips are included in the AAF. Until we have a fix for this, the issue can be worked around by disabling the used angles in the multicam clips, or disabling the clips within the compound clips.

Hmmm. Yes I see those words too. I now even understand what they mean, but of course it's not quite the same as admitting that "all audio media in all clips will be exported and CANNOT be trimmed". I can see how you've covered yourselves on that point though.
Am I correct in assuming that all audio tracks in a clip, including disabled ones, are also exported in the AAF? If so you need to change your interface because that is in fact a selectable option in LE which doesn't appear to work.

Craig,

This feature is explained on the the app store for X2ProLE Audio Convert. The description section on the app store contains the text:

This is the LE version of X2Pro. An in app purchase (not available in Snow Leopard 10.6) allows the user to upgrade to the professional version which includes:
• Embedded media can be trimmed

I can't comment on why Apple did not include OMF/AAF exports in FCP X, but we at Marquis Broadcast did work closely with Apple when developing X2Pro.

I would have thought that fact should be made obvious up front since it's unlikely anyone is going to want to create a thumpingly huge AAF file. I'm new to this and so created a test file from a simple multi-track 2-minute edit in FCPX. The resulting AAF was 644MB in size and I was staggered because OMF exports from FCP7 a very small by comparison. Now having read this post I understand why it's so big. Did you make it clear in your app sale that ALL audio from source clips? If so, where? I don't think so. Now I have to decide whether to double my spend to buy the Pro version.

The other question of course is for Mr Apple - Why not make OMF exports a part of FCPX as it always was in FCP7?

Hi Christer,

If using X2Pro LE, the AAF will contain all the audio from your source clips, and the correct section of the audio should be used on the sequence.

With the "full/pro" version, you can choose to only embed the sections of clips that were used in the AAF (with configurable handles) which normally gives you a much smaller AAF.

AAF package seems to contain complete media files not just the parts in the clips used. Is that correct behavior for X2Pro Lite?