Pro Tools consolidates files in aiff-c

[atticmike]

Hello everybody,

Do you have any idea why Pro Tools saves consolidated files in the aiff-c format instead of aiff?

Does it have to do with me opening up an old 5.1 project? Cause all the files in the project are aiff, so why does pro tools save them as aiff-c when consolidating?

Thanks in advance.

[Top Jimmy]

When Macs made the transition from Power-PC to Intel architecture, the endianness of the native file formats changed too. The original AIFF (Power-PC) format is big endian. This changed to little endian and Apple gave it the AIFF-C Sowt designation to distinguish it from the big endian format. So while your old project has true big endian AIFF files, any more work done with it on the Intel platform will generate little endian AIFF-C files.

[atticmike]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

When Macs made the transition from Power-PC to Intel architecture, the endianness of the native file formats changed too. The original AIFF (Power-PC) format is big endian. This changed to little endian and Apple gave it the AIFF-C Sowt designation to distinguish it from the big endian format. So while your old project has true big endian AIFF files, any more work done with it on the Intel platform will generate little endian AIFF-C files.

Should I set the session to .wav instead? Or will this cause file issues? Like setting the session options to .wav so that when I hit consolidate, they end up being rendered that way?

[atticmike]

Can I simply set the project to .wav even though it was originally set to aiff and have it consolidate into the selected format? Or will this cause file / conversion issues?

[Top Jimmy]

If you want to make everything uniform, then start out by using the "Save Session Copy" command in the file menu. Make a copy of the session and include all the media files choosing .wav as the new file format. Once Pro Tools has made the copy, open it and check to make sure everything copied properly. Now, any new files you record will be the same format.

[atticmike]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

If you want to make everything uniform, then start out by using the "Save Session Copy" command in the file menu. Make a copy of the session and include all the media files choosing .wav as the new file format. Once Pro Tools has made the copy, open it and check to make sure everything copied properly. Now, any new files you record will be the same format.

Okay cool, good to know, but could I simply switch the session to .wav hence consolidation will result in .wav, or will this cause issues with the files / bitrate / quality and I have to save the session as instead?

[Top Jimmy]

Yes, Pro Tools now supports multiple audio file formats per session so you can just change to .wav format in the session setup and it will save new files in that format to whatever the sample rate and bit depth are set to in the Pro Tools session.