Export AAF from mixed frame rate project

Avid Media Composer

Export AAF from mixed frame rate project

Posted by Maria Wardian on December 2, 2010 at 12:30 am

We are having issues exporting a working AAF from our mixed frame rate project edited in Avid Media Composer 5 (on Mac OS X v. 10.6.2) to be used/sweetened in Pro Tools 8.

We are working with lots of acquired news footage given to us in different digital compressions and tapes. We originally began editing projects in a 23.98/1080p timeline. In this format (and while using media composer 4) we never had issues with the AAFs working with Pro Tools.

Now that we’ve switched to media composer 5 along with switching the projects over to 59.94/1080i (to resolve some video issues), our AAFs will not work with Pro Tools. When the AAF is imported, there are no handles due to a “Motion Effect” on all the files even though we’ve deleted all video layers, effects, fades, automation (Key frames), plugins, and cleared renders.

We then switched the project back to 23.98 and most the files worked despite mixed frame rates. The only files that had the “motion effect” issue was all our V.O. tracks.

I’m just hoping to understand what the best way to export a mixed frame project AAF from MC5 for Pro Tools without this “motion effect” issue.

Below was our latest step by step process we tried which resulted in most audio working except for the V.O.s

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1. Open Avid project with settings: 720p/23.976 and remove all video tracks in timeline

2.In timeline, delete all keyframes (automation), effects/fades, plugins.

3. Right click on timeline, clear render in/out

4. Consolidate Audio: Right Click on this audio only sequence from Bin. Go to SEND TO > ProTools > Quicktime – Consolidate Audio (SEE image below).

NOTE: I think by doing it this way, audio is consolidated using QT technology rather than Avid’s. You can also see on the right click that you can Export directly out of Avid – is this better?

5.This brings you to this window of which setting we use below:

6.From Here, when you click on Export Settings 1 OPTIONS, we used the below settings:

10. After pressing “Save” and “Ok,” this should export as one single file (without OMFI media file folder as we’ve previously done)

Questions:

We’ve never dealt with changing any panning in this process. Is this something we should worry about in cleaning up the files before creating the AAFs?

Is there any other way of removing renders that we aren’t doing here

In the Send to QT Export settings, we’re not sure why some settings are grayed out here when they aren’t when you do a plain export directly out of Avid – Below is a photo of other possible export settings like checking “AAF edit Protocol” which may have something to do with Pro Tools? Also selecting which specific audio sample rate and bit depth might make a difference? These are things I don’t think we’ve tried – see sample photo below

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