Expand to track bug? (10.3.3)

[Frank Kruse]

Hi,

I just did a conform (expand to tracks with match criteria) of 8 tracks of referenced AAF.

I switched all the AAF tracks to be guides. Then selected the folder containing the original poly BWAVs as the "area to search", hit index and save etc.

So all good there. All the meta-data is in shape.

But when I do the expand to tracks PT will lay in all the channels and clips it finds from the AVID Media instead of looking for it in the folder I set in the "areas to search".

Tried it multiple times. It always conforms to the avid media. Is there something broken in 10.3.3?

If not how can I force PT to look ONLY in the folders I've set in the "areas to search" window?

Thanks,

Frank.

[dieffe]

Hi Frank, so when you right click on a clip, does Pro Tools show all the poly wavs in your "area to search folder"?
If not, did you try selecting "Tape name to sound roll" in the metadata options?
I'm on 10.3.2, so maybe something is broken in the new release...
Davide

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by dieffe

Hi Frank, so when you right click on a clip, does Pro Tools show all the poly wavs in your "area to search folder"?
If not, did you try selecting "Tape name to sound roll" in the metadata options?
I'm on 10.3.2, so maybe something is broken in the new release...
Davide

That's the strange thing. It does show both the AVID media alts AND the original poly BWAVs, although I have ONLY the folder containing the original BWAVs in the "areas to search" window. However, PT still looks in the AVID media folder decides to use that when doing the expand to track.

I tried all sorts of settings but the main problem is that PT is not using the folder I want it to look at.

Thing is I never told PT where the AVID media is but it still grabs all the conforms from there.

Apart from that the conform is fine but I want to work with the poly BWAVs not the AVID media.

[dieffe]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

That's the strange thing. It does show both the AVID media alts AND the original poly BWAVs, although I have ONLY the folder containing the original BWAVs in the "areas to search" window. However, PT still looks in the AVID media folder decides to use that when doing the expand to track.

I tried all sorts of settings but the main problem is that PT is not using the folder I want it to look at.

Thing is I never told PT where the AVID media is but it still grabs all the conforms from there.

Apart from that the conform is fine but I want to work with the poly BWAVs not the AVID media.

Very strange. Pro Tools usually show me all the media in the avid media folder that the assistant editor gave me (but only the media that the picture dept have loaded in the AAF) AND the files in the "area to search" folder. But usually if I match with "Tape to sound roll" selected, I can expand only the PolyWAVs.
Are you working with a server? Maybe this is the problem.

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by dieffe

Very strange. Pro Tools usually show me all the media in the avid media folder that the assistant editor gave me (but only the media that the picture dept have loaded in the AAF) AND the files in the "area to search" folder. But usually if I match with "Tape to sound roll" selected, I can expand only the PolyWAVs.
Are you working with a server? Maybe this is the problem.

No server involved. I'll try what you suggested in the morning. Thanks for that.
But even if that worked it seems a bit strange. Why do I need to set the external folder if PT ignores that.
I'll also try it on the other machine that is still on 10.3.2

Will let you know how it went.

Frank.

[dieffe]

Pro tools got better in the conforming workflow, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.
Anyway, protools expand tracks feature, for what I understood, still looks first in the media it has in its media folder, than looks for media in the "area to search" folder. And there is no way to limit this double behavior (or the option is very well hidden). ;-) The different way that the tape metadata is saved (in media composer and the original Bwav) is the only way I found to select which media I want to relink.
Let me know if this helps. And btw, finally I saw cloud atlas (opened last week in Italy): congrats for the awesome sound work!

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by dieffe

Very strange. Pro Tools usually show me all the media in the avid media folder that the assistant editor gave me (but only the media that the picture dept have loaded in the AAF) AND the files in the "area to search" folder. But usually if I match with "Tape to sound roll" selected, I can expand only the PolyWAVs.
Are you working with a server? Maybe this is the problem.

Hi,

good news. What you suggested works! Thanks for that!

I think AVID should really make this more transparent and logical. At the moment it really isn't.

I think PT should generally only look into the folders set in the areas to search window. Otherwise it's almost impossible to narrow down problems like mine.

Also: Thanks for your kind words about CA!

Frank.

[dieffe]

Great to hear that it worked!

You are absolutely right: Pro Tools has a lot of room for improvements, and it still feels strange, after years, that there are still many hiccups in the post workflow. And it's even more strange since Avid owns both Media Composer and Pro Tools, pretty much the standard software used in post in the past 10 years.
Anyway, the field recorder workflow is MUCH improved in PT 10, and I now use only this (instead of other softwares): it works much better and faster and is more reliable (if everybody, sound mixer, assistant editor, works well).

Ciao

Davide

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by dieffe

Great to hear that it worked!

You are absolutely right: Pro Tools has a lot of room for improvements, and it still feels strange, after years, that there are still many hiccups in the post workflow. And it's even more strange since Avid owns both Media Composer and Pro Tools, pretty much the standard software used in post in the past 10 years.
Anyway, the field recorder workflow is MUCH improved in PT 10, and I now use only this (instead of other softwares): it works much better and faster and is more reliable (if everybody, sound mixer, assistant editor, works well).

Ciao

Davide

I think they should simply give us a check box called "don't search clip list" in the match criteria window and the issue is solved. Would help so much more to narrow down errors.

A fellow dialog-editor I know has suggested this exact thing about a year ago (ref #01849181) directly to AVID support so maybe they are working on something. But I'm no fortune teller. Maybe the NAMM show update?

Frank.

[thierryd]

I would like to bump this thread as it contains a feature request I would like to repeat. I'm conforming lots of FCP7 projects at the moment, coming to me via AAF created with Automatic Duck. PT10 does a great job at referencing and expanding the tracks, but the one annoying thing is the fact that you can't exclude the clips from the clip list (the relinked polywavs with one channel active) when launching the FRW search. It should be dead simple to let PT only look and conform the files in the "select areas to search" window, but it stubbornly expands the original AAF linked file too. And to make matters worse PT does this in a random way. In our workflow we recorded a Mix and MixExtra track on a 788T, that was recorded to CF. On the HD the 788T recorded theses tracks plus all the prefade tracks. The picture editor uses the CF 2ch files. When I relink the AAF to the original multitrack files, PT links one channel of those files (the Mix track) to the AAF. For one reason or another PT also copies all the needed soundrushes to its audio folder (even when only "link to selected" was chosen). I guess that's because PT expects to see 2ch files (which the editor used) and now sees multichannel polywavs, but even then I don't see a reason.
After the AAF tracks are relinked PT will include this relinked track in the auto-expand, but sometimes it puts this file on the 1st and sometimes the 2nd track (the Mix track from the original polywav is then the other track). Both files link to different audio, one being in the copied Audio Files folder (a mono file in the clip list) and one in the original soundrushes folder (multichannel file in the clip list). My goal is to throw away all those copied audio files, but PT can't link the 2 different files to the same media. The only solution to have a clean PT project I've found is to close the PT project and rename the Audio Files folder, then re-open PT which will now have all the clips offline, that reference the copied files in the Audio Files folder. Then manually replace all those offline items with their online brethren, so one track contains all the soundrush folder referenced media.
I hope all this makes sense

A couple of suggestions/questions:
- PT should be able to force expand only with selected media from the "select areas to search" FRW
- it would be great if PT could read metadata from offline clips, so relinking first wouldn't be necessary (the way Media Composer can operate)
- PT shouldn't copy all needed soundrushes to its Audio Files folder, when relinking AAF media

I also tried the "tape to soundroll" suggestion from earlier in this thread (which was a great workaround find btw), but it didn't work in this workflow as Media Composer wasn't involved.

All the above was done in PT10.3.6 btw

Greetings,

Thierry