Conforming a multitrack to an edited timeline

[Peter Baird]

From time to time when remixing live music for broadcast I find it more productive to conform the unmixed multitrack to the editor's timeline and finesse each edit across all the tracks before mixing. It makes hiding edits easier by having some tracks move to the new sync before the edit, and some after. It also means you can attack the mix as a whole instead of having to break down each song and reassemble it later.

The problem is I've never come up with a satisfactory way to conform several hundred edits across 64 tracks. It's aggravating having to do each edit by hand, but I'm not conversant enough with reconform software to know if it can be automated.

My present workflow is below, it works as long as Edit Keyboard Focus is on. I’m certain it can be done faster, chime in if you have ideas.

1. Reveal Original Time Stamp in clips
2. Spot entire performance multitrack to original timecode in timeline (that brilliant idea was from Scott Moore at United Recording)
3. Group aaf and multitrack tracks separately
4. Select entire aaf clip you want to conform
5. Separate Timeline and Edit Selection (Shift + /)
6. Press / on numeric keypad 3x to highlight Edit Length field, copy (C).
7. Press / again to highlight Edit Start field, enter original Start number from aaf
8. Press / twice to move to Edit Length, paste (V).
9. Center Edit Start (left arrow key) and move Edit Selection up or down so cursor is in multitrack area
10. Copy (C)
11. Press Play and Stop to get back to Timeline selection
12. Press Edit Selection to Timeline Selection (0 on keyboard)
13. Copy (V).

It’s clunky, but it works and doesn’t require any mousing. Ideas?

Peter

[mfranken]

Hi Peter,

If the live music record is a set of WAVs that can simply be spotted in the timeline you should be able to to the PT HD/Ultimate Field Recorder function 'Expand Channels To New Tracks > By Timecode Only'. I would have thought selecting this on one of your AAF tracks would find all WAVs in the session that have matching TCs for each AAF clip and place them on new tracks.

Alternatively, if you have made edits to the live music recordings before it was sent to editorial, or the above doesn't work, you can use EdiLoad to automate this. EdiLoad can import the edit info from one or more AAF tracks (or from audio EDLs) and you can then apply these edits to your music tracks using the EdiLoad re-conform function.

I created a video in the following blog post that details how to re-version mixes, not exactly what you're looking to do, but the second half of the process which uses the EdiLoad re-conform function is what you could use to automate this process:

Reversioning Pro Tools mixes with Ediload

Regards,

Mark

[Peter Baird]

I actually tried the Field Recorder Workflow, but Pro Tools was unable to find any matches despite having the correct pathways entered. I suspect the fact that the aaf I got did not have the media embedded and was just the EDL metadata may have something to do with it. Pro Tools has no problem finding matches for actual files on the timeline, but it seems to be unable to do so for a "phantom" clip that just has timecode data.

If anyone has a way to confirm or deny this I would be interested.

Peter