Field Recorder Workflow & PT 9.0.2

[Tom Graham]

Hey Guys,
Just wanted to drop a line that I recently used Pro Tools 9.0.2 on a movie with files that came from a Deva and a Sound Devices Field recorder which were shot over 4 days and they expanded perfectly into all of the splits from the AAF. I will be posting a video of this process at some point in the future....

I had some problems with previous Pro Tools versions and this movie, but it seems to be perfect now.
Cheers,
Tom

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by Tom Graham

Hey Guys,
Just wanted to drop a line that I recently used Pro Tools 9.0.2 on a movie with files that came from a Deva and a Sound Devices Field recorder which were shot over 4 days and they expanded perfectly into all of the splits from the AAF. I will be posting a video of this process at some point in the future....

I had some problems with previous Pro Tools versions and this movie, but it seems to be perfect now.
Cheers,
Tom

Hi Tom,

that sounds good. Does PT still create a new track for every split leading to 400-track-sessions or is this done a little bit smarter now?
As you know a 4-day-shoot is far away from todays feature productions that can dump as much as 100GBs or more from production sound to editorial.

Thanks,

frank.

[Brent_Sydney]

Frank - did you see in the readme there's also been MXF media speed ups? Have you had a chance to check that out or the field recorder workflows mentioned by Tom?
Any first impressions?

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by Brent_Sydney

Frank - did you see in the readme there's also been MXF media speed ups? Have you had a chance to check that out or the field recorder workflows mentioned by Tom?
Any first impressions?

Brent,

no (and yes, I have followed all the read-mes of the earlier updates with great attention on the field recorder workflow) I´m still on 7.4 (where the field recorder workflow more or less does not work). For this reason I was asking if the new workflow was tested under real-world conditions since it has been improved several times before.
In earlier versions the expand to tracks function created "millions" of tracks for every match so many of my colleagues still preferred a Titan conform.
MXF speed has been improved several times before also under PT8.x but colleagues told me that it was still extremely slow even under 8.x so they convert everything to BWAV. So I was wondering if this has now been addressed so that it´s usable? Maybe someone else knows?

[jglasgow]

Hi Frank,
The new field recorder match criteria dialog allows you to dial in your settings. Choose timecode + ANY of the following criteria for more results, or timecode + ALL of the following to create a smaller set. For MXF, we've optimized session open, save, waveform calculation, and Project browser performance. There's still some work left to do, but its vastly improved. I hope you'll have a chance to check it out soon.
Jordan

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by jglasgow

Hi Frank,
The new field recorder match criteria dialog allows you to dial in your settings. Choose timecode + ANY of the following criteria for more results, or timecode + ALL of the following to create a smaller set. For MXF, we've optimized session open, save, waveform calculation, and Project browser performance. There's still some work left to do, but its vastly improved. I hope you'll have a chance to check it out soon.
Jordan

Jordan,

thanks. How does it handle new track creation? Does it create a new tracks for every alternate item it finds?

In early versions of this PT would create a new track for EVERY alternate clip.

So when you have 8 mono-clips on one track with 8 alternatives each PT would create 8 new tracks for each clip (resulting in 8x8 new tracks from a 1 track source session with only 8 clips resulting in a 65-track session) instead of using the tracks it already created. Titan does this very intelligently.
Has this improved as well?

Thanks!

Frank.

[jglasgow]

We now reuse tracks where possible. The track naming depends on how you expand (by channel name, channel number, channel name & number). If the next region on the track would create a track with the same name, it expands onto that existing track rather than creating a new one.

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by jglasgow

We now reuse tracks where possible. The track naming depends on how you expand (by channel name, channel number, channel name & number). If the next region on the track would create a track with the same name, it expands onto that existing track rather than creating a new one.

That is very good news. Thanks!

[Danny Caccavo]

Thanks, Tom!

I just wanted to thank Avid for getting these important changes into 9.0.2. It's a significant step towards an eventual goal of what was once prematurely described as "seamless interop" (ok, sorry, couldn't resist!).

But seriously, thanks. It's an MXF world out there now (Titan still needs to catch up for "Fix Sync" but if you can remove MXF guide tracks (and any MXF files) when fixing sync on original .wav field recorder files it's, well, a workaround.

Have had no reports of any MXF "performance" issues so far, so that's great!

Keep on flying, Avid. We're all rooting for you!

dc