OMF – only exporting track 1, but I need all tracks

[Jeremy Allen]

I’ve been exporting OMF’s for a while and hardly ever have problems, but this time I’m stumped. I have about 8 tracks of audio in a sequence and when I export the OMF, it only seems to process track 1. The resulting OMF is only 39MB for a 9+ minute sequence. Past experience says the file should be somewhere around 300-400MB easily.

Just wondering if anyone else has had this problem or if there are any obvious things I need to look for.

I do have a few disabled audio clips in the timeline, but I don’t think that should matter. I also just tested another sequence of roughly the same length and was able to export a full OMF from that. That sequence also had disabled clips..

Any suggestions?

[Chris Borjis]

have you opened the .omf yet to confirm its a problem?

[Jeremy Allen]

Thanks for the response Chris. My post audio guy couldn’t open the file in Pro Tools.

In FCP I could see that it was only processing track 1 and then stopping. Normally you can see it go through track 2,3,4,5 etc..

I just went in and trashed some extraneous tracks, and enabled some clips that were disabled before, and it seemed to export all tracks this time. I’m sending to post audio now. Fingers crossed!

Although it seems to have worked this time, I’d still like to know if there are any good reasons why this might have been a problem to begin with..

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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6

C4D 11.5
AE CS3
FCP 6.0.1

[Patrice Freymond]

Since you own Final Cut Studio you could open the OMF file in Sountrack Pro to check it out…

Patrice

[Jeremy Allen]

Thanks for your time Patrice, and good point. But if my Audio guy can’t open it with his preferred software, then unfortunately it doesn’t really matter what it looks like in Soundtrack, unless I could see some obvious potential problems there?

Thanks again.

———————————————
8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6

C4D 11.5
AE CS3
FCP 6.0.1

[John Pale]

OMF is basically an Avid format (its OLD and no longer updated…Avid has moved on to AAF). If it was not something you could do on an Avid Media Composer in the year 2000 or earlier, it may cause unpredictable and inconsistent behavior.

That means audio speed changes, disabled clips, FCP audio filters, nesting, multiple sample rates or bit depths, compressed audio (mp3, mp4, aac).

[Jeremy Allen]

Thanks for your time John. That’s exactly the type of info I was looking for. There is only a tiny bit of info about OMF’s limitations in the FCP help files.

I usually have to tweak the audio in FCP just so it won’t be too distracting for the edit approval. Once approved, the audio is sent on to sweetening. And of course I use FCP’s filters, levels, disabled clips etc, etc.

So this is great insight for future problems. Thanks again!

———————————————
8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6

C4D 11.5
AE CS3
FCP 6.0.1