BWF and iXML metadata - location sound

Hi Brent, , we are working on this feature right now and would appreciate a little feedback. Could you email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.? Thanks!

HI Dawar, we are working on this feature right now and would appreciate a little feedback. Could you email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.? Thanks!

Thanks Dawar, we'll look at this again in a week or so when our next round of dev starts. Keen to make it "a better audio export tool with X2Pro than we ever had in FCP7"!

Good point from Brent. If we could preserve BWF metadata, we would have a better audio export tool with X2Pro than we ever had in FCP7, which also exported embedded (OMF).

Thanks for the feedback Brent, we plan a version with referenced media soon.

A Referenced/"linked" AAF is preferred, good choice. Media Composer does this reliably. Check out their export options.
www.singularsoftware.com/help/pluraleyes_mc/_images/aaf_export2.png

Whether this workflow is successful is up to the video editor, as they will need to use consistent audio media in their FCP project, ie all BWFs/AIFFs not mixing with other MP3s or AACs or CAFs or other compressed file types that are not supported in ProTools. That said, its generally only the source music or temp spot FX they are importing for the director and the sound editor will replace them down the line so if that media is missing its not the end of the world, as long as the location sound comes across reliably then the dialogue editor can get to work.

Happy to talk to your developers about any of this stuff or put you in contact with specialists in your area - have you reached out to the Avid workflow folks, the presales team? They want reliable formats coming into ProTools as well and would have a vested interest in your solution working.

Brent
www.protoolsprofessional.com
www.mediaprofessional.com.au

Brent, this is a great suggestion. We've looked at it and think that it would be difficult unless we use AAF with references back to the original audio file.
Do you know of apps that do this successfully right now? If so we'd like to understand which they are and what the AAFs that they produce look like.

We have created AAF files of over 20GB here with no problems. Are they trying to create the AAF on a drive formatted with a file size limitation (e.g. FAT32 so that they can open the AAF on a windows machine)? If this is the case, then they could try formatting the drive as ExFAT which is also supported on OS X and Windows, but doesn't suffer the file size limitation.

Thanks - given that your putting the whole audio clip into the AAF, what file size limitation would you be hitting? I have a client who bought your product today and his export is aborting halfway through with no error messages or clues. It's a 1 hour audio heavy doco, I'm guessing there may be more than 4gbs of audio which may be hitting the AAF file size limit and throwing your app? Is that possible? (many thanks for the answers tonight!)

We are just getting timecode information from the fcpxml and raw audio data from the QuickTime API, so at present in v1.00, anything in the BWF is ignored and not put into the AAF. Copying over audio metadata sounds like a valid feature request.

The handles cannot be configured. The whole source clip is added to the AAF. This is another feature that we are considering.

Thanks for the response - do you have any experience with iXML metadata? If it exists in the BWF being referenced by FCPX will your software parse the metadata into the new media you are embedding? ie copy all the original files header into the embedded media for extraction later? a BWF has about 14 pages of metadata in the file header that is useful for audio post, and many video editing applications throw it away when embedded, they dont copy it across which breaks the film workflow.

Also - how do you set handle sizes for the AAF?

Hi Brent,

X2Pro embeds the audio in the AAF (option a). It uses the QuickTime API to extract the raw audio and writes it to a new audio clips in the AAF.

I'm not sure what you mean by "outlining timecode", but the start/end timecodes (and in/out timecodes) of the audio clips that we create in the AAF have the same timecodes as the files that were used in the FCP X project.

Referencing the audio (option b) is a feature that we are considering, but at present we only embed.

Hi guys,

I couldn't find any information to indicate if you are either a) embedding the audio media into the AAF you create or b) referencing the original media and creating a finder level copy?

The b) method is preferred for long form production so location audio files retain their original metadata (outlining timecode, scene, take, roll, channel name etc). If you embed the audio into the AAF, it's tidier, but it makes new audio files and unless your code looks to, reads the BWF header perfectly and duplicates that information in the embedded media then in audio post we can't relink to alternate takes in Protools, which is often required by the dialogue editor.

This request is a moot point if you are in fact using the referenced AAF structure, but if you are embedding, please consider the alternative for long form workflow.
If you want to talk through this stuff drop me a line - ex Avid presales/product specialist. Happy to skype up some time.
Workflow demo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz9e9LuIdXU