Hey everyone!  First time poster, long time reader and supportee!

I've been using Avid for a long time and I've run into a problem I cannot resolve.  I think it's just too proprietary to my situation for a specific answer on the forums.

I have Media Composer 5.0.  I am on a PC.  I am trying to output all audio from my 90 minute project in Avid MC5 on PC to Pro Tools 5.1 LE on Mac.

So what I've come to understand are a few things.  DigiTranslator is needed for Pro Tools 6 (I think) and up.  The audio engineer has 5.1 LE and DigiTranslator but an older version.

I have exported in straight WAV format and everything imports in Pro Tools fine but the ideal outcome is to output with AAF (the new OMF method) so that the audio engineer has 100% of my audio and can mix all he needs to.  I've exported a total of about 17gb and that sounds about right for ALL the audio used in the film.  But importing seems to be the problem.  Pro Tools appears to not understand the file or file type on the Mac and we're stuck.

My questions are:

Can you export PC AAF audio to Mac Pro Tools?

Can you export MC5 audio to Pro Tools 5.1 LE in this manner?

Is there a special way to do it that I've overlooked (having never exported this way)?

Are there any other things I need to know about MC5 to PT5.1LE that are tricky or needed to make work?

 

I hate when people say this but... thanks in advance.

kornhead13:

Can you export PC AAF audio to Mac Pro Tools?

Yes!  (I have done so ever since AAF was introduced and OMF's before that)

kornhead13:

Can you export MC5 audio to Pro Tools 5.1 LE in this manner?

Dont know, 5.1 LE is really back in the days when Noah was still predicting rain.    From memory 5.3 was the best of the version 5"s on Mac (my experience was to Protools TDM /HD not LE)

kornhead13:

Is there a special way to do it that I've overlooked (having never exported this way)?

For 5.1 on Mac I would probably export the audio as aif not wav.

WOW 17GB's is huge. For that sort of workflow I would consolidate my audio to a drive with no Avid media on it (using horrendously long handles)  Export the AAF with link to media. give the LE sound designer the whole Avid MediaFiles folder created when you consolidated. 

Not that I have ever tried sending all Avid audio to a Protools session but I dont believe the Audio person will be able to see any audio that is not in the timeline. So any audio not in the timeline would have to be imported from the Avid Media folder and good luck to anyone trying to make sense of the Avid clip naming system.

 

Thanks for the quick reply!

WAV works but it's condensed down to whatever I have in my avid timeline (making 1 file only which worked).  He has nothing else to pull from to extend.

What outputting to AAF does is exports all the timeline but includes the entire tracks that they are pulled from (17gb).  Like you said, with the link to media, it exports everything as a copy into the folder with a leader or index file at the root (I used WAV OMF).  It's importing that index file that's giving us issues but it's the actual AAF file that Pro Tools can't import.  The engineer believes it's due to a PC file but I'm thinking the version he has doesn't understand what an AAF file is or what it contains.

I can see if he can apply updates to his verison (for free you'd think) but I don't think it's going to help.

Short of uninstalling MC5 and reinstalling MC3 (hoping the project won't corrupt) to export to OMF that 5.1LE will understand I'm not sure what to do.

On another note, why did Avid make the DigiTranslator plugin cost extra?  It should be a part of Pro Tools since they own Digidesign.  wtf?  Talk about a monopoly.  Do not pass go!  Lose $500.

I think the problem may involve 2GB file size limits that older versions of Protools had.

Job ter Burg one of the moderators here has used a workflow like yours for some time and may have better answers than I do. It is almost breakfast time in Holland now

kornhead13:

why did Avid make the DigiTranslator plugin cost extra?  It should be a part of Pro Tools since they own Digidesign.  wtf?  Talk about a monopoly.  Do not pass go!  Lose $500.

,Not sure they owned DigiDesign when DigiTranslator first came out. DigiTranslator replaced a free OMF tool that Digi Design had. It was a standalone program only of interest to the Post Production market and I guess Digi did not want to upset their music (main) market with a price rise for a program that was useless to them. Originally it cost far more than today but the convienience of ot paid for itself with the first couple of jobs and that was nearly a decade ago.

kornhead13:

I can see if he can apply updates to his verison (for free you'd think) but I don't think it's going to help.

Find out what his LE to PT9 upgrade price is.  Just for you Digitranslator is built into PT9 and will handle your files with ease.  You can now pass go AND save yourself $500   It also runs on middle of the road Mac laptops and does not require Digi IO boxes.

Got it to work.  Had to install Pro Tools 9 and load all the AAF information in (from PC to MAC without an issue).  It went in, loaded in all the data from Avid (thank you Avid).

I saved the project as 5.1 and also as 9 just in case of some compatibility issues.

Thanks for all the help guys.  I needed a shove in that direction and it worked flawlessly.

Solved!

Good to hear that you got it to work