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Automatic Duck FCP Export question – time sensitive…
Hello Cow community,
I’m hoping someone can help with a quick but urgent question.
At the last minute, I’ve been asked to deliver an FCP project into Avid on a PC. I’ve got the Automatic Duck Pro Export FCP 4.0 plugin, and I’m using it to export an .aaf and create .mxf files for all the media.
My problem is, the drive with the new media needs to be picked up early tomorrow to be taken to the online, and I’m not sure Automatic Duck will be done in time! Last minute, I know…
So my question is: if it isn’t finished (or crashes), can you click Abort and still have an .aaf file which can link to the .mxf files it has managed to create, even if it’s only a few? And if yes, what media does it convert first – does it go from beginning of sequence to end, do V1 first then V2, or alphabetically by clip name?
I just need to know asap so if I get a panicked call tomorrow I can say whether they should abort and take the media they have, or wait and delay the online…
Any help would be very much appreciated!
David
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4 Replies
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The only guy that would know doesn’t do tech support for the Duck anymore…Wes Plate. He moved on to Adobe…and made the Duck available for free…under the condition that you get no support.
I’ve used it a lot, but I have no clue what it does first, by layers, or by timeline sequence time. If it does video or audio first. I’m guessing it goes top to bottom…layer by layer. I recall him mentioning that…I think. But again, I’m not positive. That was a conversation I had with him 10 years ago.
Shane
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Hi Shane,
Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly – much appreciated!
I reckon any of those orders will be fine, it should be 95% done, so plenty of media – but in your experience, is the .aaf created first – and will it relink to the .mxf media it’s already done if aborted? If the .aaf is not created first, do you think we could abort and then export a new .aaf through Automatic Duck that’s set to not create new .mxf media, and then connect that in Avid to the .mxf files from the export I have going now (or even an EDL from FCP)?
I don’t know much about how Avid links to media (AMA and all that) so not sure if it’s as easy to reconnect to media as it would be in FCP.
Thanks again for your help,
David
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An aaf composition needs to refere to the media, so I imagine the composition file is written after the files have been converted so that the absolute file names and location info is stamped into the aaf composition file.
In other words, I don’t expect the composition file to written first but last so if you abort, it is likely that there will be a corrupt composition file.
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Hi Michael and Shane,
Thanks so much for this, I really appreciate it.
We waited for it to finished, which fortunately was in good time.
I’ve now had chance to do testing, and can confirm in case anyone else has a similar situation that you were right: Aborting makes AD delete the .aaf file, leaving just the .mxf media. And it creates the media left-to-right on V1, then V2 etc.
Thank again for taking the time to reply!
Best wishes,
David
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