Davinci Protools workflow

[Marc Wielage]

[Ray Argall] “We tried Marc’s workflow with XML and using Conformalizer but haven’t been able to get that to work. We have a complete set of the source files copied, but PT is not reading the XML. Perhaps there are some options in export we’re not getting right? We exported the XML from the Edit page not the Deliver page.”
Did you ask the Conformalizer people for support? I guarantee you they’ll have an answer.

[Ray Argall]

Thanks Marc, I’ll definitely get in touch with them and report back. The sound editor I’m working with has been using Conformalizer to reconform edit changes from EDLs but it sounds like the software will do a lot more.
Cheers,
Ray

Piccolo Films
Sydney Australia

[Ray Argall]

Hi All,

Further update, I took Marc’s advise and contacted Justin at Conformalizer. He responded quickly but unfortunately did not have good news and said a roundtrip workflow between PT and Resolve was a fantasy, and that getting a decent sound export from any platform other than MC was really difficult – and even that had it’s own problems. He echoed others in this thread that say the editors level and pan info is not much use and they’d rather start from scratch with pan, level and FX.

Fair enough, and on projects with decent budgets and resources that makes sense, but I’m a bit stunned that in 2017 there is not an effective NLE roundtrip between Editors and Sound editors work. Gee, sprockets was slow and hard work but we spoke the same language…

The challenge I’m facing here is that it’s best to link to a dupe copy of the source audio, rather than a new set of audio files in .mxf that contain only the cut audio and don’t link back to the source audio. Handles are a help but I would rather be able to link back through the original audio file. In this project there are quite a lot of speed changes in audio and when they don’t read through to PT it becomes very messy, effectively meaning you have to manually re-synch and restore speed, pan and volume settings to all those audio clips in the timeline again. If you can only link to newly created audio files you lose all reference to not only the pan and volume info but also the speed adjustments that were made. It’s almost tempting to sound edit in FCP 7, as that appears to be the only workable roundtrip to keep track of all those adjustments that were made!

I look forward to hearing someone else has cracked it! Otherwise will report back here when we have…

Ray

Piccolo Films
Sydney Australia

[Marc Wielage]

Thanks for the update, Ray. The only alternative I can think of is to re-import the XML into Avid, then export an AAF from there into Pro Tools.

One real issue is the ALE (Avid Log Exchange) file, which contains all the metadata on the sound reels, dates, video file names, timecodes, and so on. Keeping that straight is a huge task, and it’s a big part of why Avid works as well as it does.

I can tell you that I’ve been part of projects where the sound editors have been able to just rebuild the project over time, and (assuming the project is locked) it’s doable manually if you have somebody fast and experienced. It’s absolutely true that most sound editors & mixers throw out the picture editor’s pan & level decisions, but they do retain a source file to give them the gist of what was mixed in the offline.

I have no advice on how to improve the inter-operability with Resolve except to check in during NAB and see what happens with the next Resolve release.

[Randy Larcombe]

Thanks Ray for doing all that work. At least I know now it’s not just me. I have found a work around until the issue is fixed by using Final Cut Pro X. Resolve does talk very nicely with FCPX so if I export an XML for FCPX, import that XML into FCPX I can then export another XML and import that into an application I use to hand off the AAF to my sound guy called X2Pro Audio Convert. https://x2pro.net With that application you can add handles as long as you want. I’ve just done a test just now with 20 second handles and he said it opened perfectly. It’s not perfect but it does work and it’s not nearly as complicated as it sounds.