Useful BWF software

MarkWWW wrote on 2/10/2009, 2:51 PM
I know that there are a number of people whereabouts who deal with BWFs in Vegas and are disappointed with the read-but-don't-write nature of the way Vegas deals with these files.

For a long time I've been looking for some software that will allow one to take a multi-channel WAV file rendered from Vegas and convert it into a proper BWF, adding various bits of metadata, particularly the timecode, so that it will be accepted by other BWF-ingesting applications. I've looked at a number of applications, both free and paid-for, but none of them have had the combination of features that I've been looking for.

Until now, that is - I've recently come across the best one yet, one that finally does everything I need it to. It's called Wave Agent and is from Sound Devices. It's mainly intended for use in massaging the BWFs produced by Sound Devices' range of location multitrack recorders but is not specific to them - it can cope with all kinds of BWFs up to 12 channels, and allows you to monitor, split and combine channels, view and edit metadata and, most important for me, modify the timecode stamp, including adding a timecode stamp to a file that doesn't have one, e.g. one rendered from Vegas.

It's currently in beta, and is made available (for both Windows and Mac) for free. Whether the final version will still be free isn't clear, but I've found nothing wrong with the beta versions so far. I've found it extremely useful and I'm sure anyone else who works with BWFs would too - I highly recommend anyone who works with BWFs to have a look at it.

Mark

Comments

rraud wrote on 2/10/2009, 3:22 PM
Thanks Mark,
I have been using SD's Wave Agent since the beta available a few months ago in addition to BWF Widget.
That doesn't let SCS off the hook though.
MarkWWWW wrote on 2/11/2009, 5:57 AM
Yes, BWF Widget was probably the one that came nearest out of those that I looked at before I found Wave Agent. But I never much liked the way it worked, and the trial version never seemed entirely stable on my system. That might be tolerable in a piece of free software, but I didn't fancy paying $100 for something that wasn't exactly what I needed. The other one I found useful was Fostex's BWFManager, but Wave Agent does everything that BWFManager did and lots more besides so I shan't be needing it any more.

Mark
musicvid10 wrote on 2/11/2009, 11:32 AM
Never mind, figured it out.