AAF Nightmare

jamesfrankham wrote on 9/2/2007, 10:47 PM

Can someone please spell out how to export an AAF to ProTools?

Here's what I'm doing: Save As without video track > Copy media with handles > gives me a bunch of wavs and a new veg file > Save As AAF. Then I send that lot to the audio post house to open in ProTools and they keep saying it returns an error Renderings Missing. The full error log is below. Is it throwing the error and invalidating the whole lot simply because it can't read a clip gain parameter? That's touchy software.

I'm using HDV footage (*.m2t) / Vegas 7e. He's using HD Protools 7.1. He can see the AAF, but the sound files are nowhere to be seen, substituted for silence.

Any help gratefully received. Going a bit nuts on this one because I've tried every conceivable permutation of aaf formats, embedding etc and it always returns the same message:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Missing renderings
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A1<00:00:00:00-00:03:16:08>no rendering for effect: Audio Gain;substituting silence/video black
A2<00:00:00:00-00:03:16:08>no rendering for effect: Audio Gain;substituting silence/video black
A3<00:00:00:00>no rendering for effect: Audio Gain;substituting silence/video black
A4<00:00:00:00>no rendering for effect: Audio Gain;substituting silence/video black
A5<00:00:00:00>no rendering for effect: Audio Gain;substituting silence/video black

Comments

MarkWWW wrote on 9/3/2007, 11:36 AM

It might be worth trying the "Avid Legacy" flavour of AAF.

Mark

jamesfrankham wrote on 9/3/2007, 1:41 PM

I have, and EPC, and EPC embedded. No luck. Thanks though. Any other takers?

Shergar wrote on 9/3/2007, 2:32 PM

There's a couple of AAF audio settings under general preferences which might be relevant? Particularly...

"AAF Export - Use clip-based audio envelope"
Select this check box if you want to combine track and event gain envelopes and save them as clip-based gain envelopes when exporting AAF files.

When the check box is cleared, track envelopes are saved as track envelopes, and event envelopes are saved as clip envelopes.

Have you tried toggling these?

jamesfrankham wrote on 9/3/2007, 3:18 PM

> Have you tried toggling these?

Yep.

jamesfrankham wrote on 9/3/2007, 3:21 PM

Has anyone actually done PC Vegas to Mac ProTools via AAF?

Or anyone exported to a sound post facility via AAF and care to tell me how they did it?

I'm flummoxed.

GlennChan wrote on 9/3/2007, 6:41 PM

I don't have direct experience here, but in general I find that project/platform interchange can have a huge number of gotchas. Many paths don't work. (e.g. FCP can "import" AAF, ***if*** you buy Automatic Duck.)

That being said, an AAF might work or it may not. I'd have no idea.

2- Some other folks have mentioned this...

http://www.cuibono-soft.com/

2b- (This probably doesn't help you.)
In some professional workflows (mostly film), apparently they conform the sound from an EDL. I have little idea how that works. Presumably if you have your sound on a format with timecode (e.g. timecode DAT), they can re-capture the sound via timecode/deck control.

Export that type of EDL from Vegas via scripting, NOT file-->save as.

3- If you are really really stuck,
then you can export "stems" to Pro Tools.

Basically you manually render out pairs of tracks, organized in some particular manner.

You likely want to pre-edit some of the tracks... e.g. get rid of breaths in narration, since this is easy to do in Vegas.

Sorry if this post is not entirely helpful.

jamesfrankham wrote on 9/3/2007, 6:58 PM

Many thanks Glenn

I didn't figure I needed Automatic Duck or Cuibono as Vegas can output AAFs and ProTools can import them. I'm just miffed if I know how to work around all the issues - some as simple as Vegas putting spaces in filenames when copying media and the Mac flipping out because of 'illegal characters' and not linking to the files, helpfully replacing them instead with silence.

I could export a wave file for each track but then the soundy would be guessing where clips began and finished, and wouldn't have any handles to work with. It's not ideal.

And I have another long form doc coming off the timeline in a few weeks which will have to go through the same workflow so I'd like to get it sorted.

J

kdm wrote on 9/3/2007, 7:29 PM

There have been issues with AAF in general. At some point Digi changed their AAF implementation and it has caused problems to/from some systems. I don't know if this is the issue here.

If you want to test which end this is is most likely an issue, pm/email me offline - I would be happy to check a Vegas 7 AAF into Nuendo for you (just post/ftp a small version; I have Vegas 6 for now, so no AAF export to test) and see if that works, then at least you will know to try other options, or to pursue Sony about a Vegas solution.

Here again, while AAF is great when it works, OMF would be really handy to have in Vegas since it works.

jamesfrankham wrote on 9/3/2007, 9:20 PM

Thanks KDM - I'll shoot something through.

Can anyone explain to me what stems are, and how I go about using that as a workaround?

GlennChan wrote on 9/3/2007, 9:43 PM

I think stems = just exporting tracks individually.
You arrange all your sound sources on the timeline in some logical+useful fashion, like:
Boom mic
wireless
wireless
Room tone
SFX
etc.

You might have like 30+ tracks. Though Pro Tools LE has a maximum # of tracks, so you may need to combine some tracks together. HD can have unlimited tracks, though I'm not sure how many tracks can get real-time effects.

2-Export your tracks with 2-pops that correspond to the reference picture/video of your edit.

I could export a wave file for each track but then the soundy would be guessing where clips began and finished, and wouldn't have any handles to work with. It's not ideal.
I think you kind of nailed it. (This is the disadvantage of stems.)

Though to throw an idea out there... could you not do all the audio other than the mixing yourself? (Or get someone else to do it in Vegas.) When it comes to mixing, you don't really need handles???
(I don't know much about advanced audio editing so I'm not sure if that'll fly.)

3- In other NLEs you would just export an OMF. And then you specify your handle length... which in the case of FCP, your overall OMF can't be bigger than 2GB (so your handles can't be too big).

kdm wrote on 9/3/2007, 10:30 PM

"Though to throw an idea out there... could you not do all the audio other than the mixing yourself? (Or get someone else to do it in Vegas.) When it comes to mixing, you don't really need handles???
(I don't know much about advanced audio editing so I'm not sure if that'll fly.)"

Needing handles really just depends on how much audio editing would need to be done. Inevitably an audio post engineer might hear something the video editor missed, or didn't think to listen for (short cuts on dialogue, creating more natural fades, etc). Handles can also provide a little extra nat sound if there aren't separate nat sound takes to mix into obvious holes or cuts in ambient tone.

My suggestion is to leave as much for post audio to work with as possible, or reasonable given transfer issues, time constraints, etc. Understandably, you have to work with whatever transfer option actually does work; and if you've already covered the editing, then stems are usually fine.

farss wrote on 9/4/2007, 3:52 AM

Why not just render all the stubs out the same length from the start to the end. That way there's no room for confusion. Maybe there's going to be a lot of silence in some of them but so what. A few DVDs will hold a heck of a lot of wav files.

Bob.

GlennChan wrote on 9/4/2007, 9:36 AM

kdm: Thanks for filling in the details.

bob: You would render out each track from start to end. Put 2-pops on the head and tail to ensure that everything syncs up.
Where a 2-pop is a frame of tone, 2 seconds before and after your audio. In the picture/video reference, you'd stick a frame of bars there so you know where the video and audio match up.

kdm wrote on 9/4/2007, 2:33 PM

James - Avid Legacy works here from Vegas 6 to Nuendo. On a larger project, no audio files were visible in the import selection, but it would import fine. With smaller projects, everything shows up as expected both during import selection and after import. EPC and EPC embedded don't work.

Did the post house try letting PT import even though AAF shows no audio tracks?

farss wrote on 9/4/2007, 3:30 PM

Done exactly that several times, even when the stuff stays inhouse for archiving.
The point I was addressing was somewhere along the line the idea of having to sync the clips got into the mix, rendering every track in it's entirety should avoid a lot of problems as would not cutting between clips on the one track.
One other tip, make certain everyone knows the real frame rate. As Glenn has pointed out elsewhere there's a very dangerous tendancy to call 23.976p 24p, this is one time when it can really matter, a lot.

Bob.

jamesfrankham wrote on 9/4/2007, 7:36 PM

Thanks all for some great responses. I guess as a fallback measure we have a workable solution with the stems.

Good that Nuendo can handle an AAF kdm, pity that ProTools spits the dummy. Usually it fails entirely with the error message at the top of this thread. On short projects it simply fails to link to the audio file ... even embedded ones! I think PT simply has an incompatible AAF structure which is regreattble because none of their users will be getting much business from Vegas editors.

I will do the mix myself I think, but I haven't done anything more complicated than basic levelling before and this is a one-hour doc for national broadcast so it really has to sparkle.

Can I just check the details with you guys who know more about sound than me? I will tweak all the levels right through, pop a Wave Hammer on each track (except music) to bring it up to 0dB (roughly -6dB threshold / 6:1 compression / RMS mode / Auto Gain on), forget about Track Compressor and Track Noise gate that are on there by default and tweak the Track EQ - any tips on using this?

I have some wind noise (did a lot of shooting on Sahara dunes and in 4x4s) which is an issue but about all you can do with that is just drop out the bottom end. Any advice on the best way to do this would also be good.

There's a short 5-min webisode online at the moment to give you a clue what the material is like. See http://vidego.multicastmedia.com/player.php?p=mue6a020

farss wrote on 9/4/2007, 8:07 PM

1) A good read of the Vegas manual so you understand busses and routing. There's a lot of hidden power under the hood of Vegas audio wise.

2) You were going to pay for someone else's expertise and tools. Why not just pay for them to supervise you using your tools?

This way you get to learn a lot about the craft. Only thing is you need to be familiar with the tools. However the out of the box tools in Vegas work the same way as all the others or close enough that anyone will figure them out in seconds.

Bob.

kdm wrote on 9/4/2007, 10:33 PM

Not knowing your audio expertise (which of course may be well seasoned), generally I would echo Bob's recommendation on at least getting some input from an audio post engineer on the final, if not earlier - especially since this is for broadcast (getting final levels right, EQ and compression spot on, dealing with location noise, etc).

The web link looked like a fun shoot, esp. if you had a chance to strap on a board and ride a dune or two. :-)

GlennChan wrote on 9/5/2007, 10:18 AM

I will tweak all the levels right through, pop a Wave Hammer on each track (except music) to bring it up to 0dB

That's probably inappropriate for broadcast. Suppose you are delivering on digital betacam... tone should be at -20dBFS (-20 in Vegas). Peaks should not exceed -10dBFS ever... the little numbers at the top of the scale in Vegas will show the highest peak so far. (Or it might be -8 or -12dBFS, I don't really remember.) Um... kdm, help me out here.

2- If it's delivery on betaSP, then levels are slightly different since VU metering behaves differently than PPM (in Vegas). The needle in the VU meter takes some time to respond to transients (assuming you have a real deal VU metter)... so you aim for no more than +4 VU with your peaks and 0 VU for tone.

3- That wind noise sounds like it will be hard to get rid of.

4- I guess this is why people go to professionals who specialize in this stuff.

kdm wrote on 9/5/2007, 12:37 PM

-10dbFS max peak is typical for US broadcast (-20dbFS reference). EBU is -18dbFS ref, and -9dbFS peak. Then of course some countries have varying standards for what they will accept - some will reject any peak over the max, some will dial the mix down - some may reject if peaks are too far below the max - e.g. just what Glenn stated with meter response - most digital meters are sample accurate, so a sample peak of -10dbFS isn't the same as a -10dbFS peak for 10ms, for example.

jamesfrankham wrote on 9/5/2007, 1:50 PM

Thanks all. Look I'd love to go to a sound pro with this, but Vegas has no clean way of getting it out of the box and into ProTools on a Mac, which is industry-standard here in New Zealand. Simple waves of each track is clumsy at best and there isn't a soundy in the country using Vegas. I've spent four days going backwards and forwards with various incarnations of AAF and two just refuse to talk.

I would if I could but I can't so I won't. I'll give it my best shot given my limited experience with sound and get a pro to give it the once-over afterwards.

Few editors are also experienced sound techs at a broadcast level so I'm just astonished that Sony haven't figured out how to make their AAF compatible with the audio industry standard.

farss wrote on 9/5/2007, 2:32 PM

James,
there's a Vegas user here in Sydney who regularly mixes for broadcast. Drop me an email if you're interested and I'll see if I can hook you two guys up. Assuming you don't mind having this done on the mainland :)

Bob.

GlennChan wrote on 9/5/2007, 10:47 PM

Few editors are also experienced sound techs at a broadcast level so I'm just astonished that Sony haven't figured out how to make their AAF compatible with the audio industry standard.

I believe OMF is used the most for transferring audio projects... not AAF.

2- Surely there's someone on this forum that knows whether or not EDL Convert from Cuibono will work.

I think that's what works.

3- You could try Sony technical support... they may or may not be able to help.

jamesfrankham wrote on 9/6/2007, 2:27 AM

When I bought Vegas my first question was whether it could produce an OMF as I had had this issue of trying to transfer both video for onlining and sound for mixing at post facilities with previous project. They said "Nope, but it can do AAF which is EVEN BETTER!" "Great" I said, and bought it.

So an EDL through Cuibono to ProTools is not as good as I was hoping, because while EDLs keep clip positions in the tracks I don't know of an EDL that holds track levels and clip gain info, let alone fades and handles.

I'll contact Sony support and have it up with them. Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread, it's sincerely appreciated.

James