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

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Comments

MarkWWWW wrote on 9/6/2007, 6:09 AM

If you are using EDLConvert, make sure you use the "Vegas Scripting" (XML) import/export method rather than the simpler "Text EDL" method.

The scripting method transfers volume and pan envelopes (plus a number of other things) that are not transferred using the simplistic Text EDL method. See here for details.

Mark

kdm wrote on 9/6/2007, 2:42 PM

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

It is. AAF is supposed to supercede OMF, and it offers a little more than OMF but has had issues (i.e. Vegas may only partly be to blame for AAF not working).

So far in my experience, Vegas' script XML to EDL Convert is less than reliable - missing clips on transfer, etc. Could be the source project or files (though I've sorted that through pretty thoroughly removing the known AAF incompatibilities, which are also a workflow obstacle), but regardless, it's less than encouraging.

Obviously this thread has run it's course for the original intent, but my final general thoughts on the compatibility issues that have been raised here:

Hopefully Vegas 8's AAF implementation has significantly improved from not working to working well, otherwise it will be a problem going to post for a lot more Vegas users (and for post houses receiving - we can work around it, but without OMF or working AAF, there isn't an efficient, reliable method).

In general, the industry actually needs a more powerful and flexible method than OMF or even AAF (and developers need to get their collective acts together to ensure cross-app compatibility, though it's doubtful Avid and Digidesign are really interested, or trying very hard there).

Just my .02.