FCP to PT, reconform of cantar files?
 

Ok guys, this question pops up every now and then, even myself has already asked it on this forum, and I remember getting a "you're out of luck" reply. Maybe things have changed with PT10? It's a thing I still can't wrap my head around.
So here's the situation:

- location sound did record on cantar 8 track
- editorial hand synced only mixdown (track 8) to picture and started editing. No XML pro used in the process.

How can I conform the 8 original cantar tracks to the guide? Does PT10's improved field recorder functionality help in any way? I was thinking that, if they export using Automatic Duck, creating a referenced file rather than an embedded OMF, meta data is preserved, which would make conforming a breeze, but I may be wrong,
I also do have Titan, not sure if it's of any help.

Re: FCP to PT, reconform of cantar files?
 

If you can get a referenced OMF/AAF from FCP in some way, PT can find the missing tracks.
If not you need to go Titan.

Embedded OMFs from FCP won't work.

Re: FCP to PT, reconform of cantar files?
 

I haven't experimented with the Automatic Duck route from FCP yet. It might work if you can get a referenced OMF/AAF going. It would be an interesting test.

On the last film project I did, picture was edited on a Lightworks. The referenced OMFs were a problem on the Lightworks side and embedded OMFs had the same problem as ever in PT: the TC of the clips couldn't be read and they all ended up at TC 00:00:00:00.
As a test I also loaded the embedded Lightworks OMFs in an Avid Media Composer and the MC could read the clip TCs.
I always thought that the limitation of embedded OMFs were in the embedded format, but from that last test I would think that the limitation is on the ProTools side (which would be a shame, as PT10 now has a decent implementation for field recorder workflows). I never had time to really dig in deep, but someone from Avid might shine some light on this.

Greetings,

Thierry

Re: FCP to PT, reconform of cantar files?
 

Holy crap, it actually worked! Caveat: It was a relatively small test session, and I had to manually re-link all the location sound files - that's gonne be fun with 9000+ location sound files. Plus: It only works with multi mono .wav, not poly. Then again, most location sound mixer know about PT's limitation not being able to handle poly wavs.

Re: FCP to PT, reconform of cantar files?
 

polywavs should work as well now with PT10, although I've had weird things with channel orders in multichannel interleaved wavs.

Re: FCP to PT, reconform of cantar files?
 

Ah, good to know. Tested it with PT9 on my laptop (we're on 10 in the studio), and it wouldn't work with polys.

Re: FCP to PT, reconform of cantar files?
 

Thanks, Frank!

Re: FCP to PT, reconform of cantar files?
 

Hey guys,

I've managed to get FCP7 to work with PT10 using Automatic Duck, and poly files.

Export via Automatic Duck Pro Export FCP as 'OMF for Digital Audio Workstations' with externally linked files. FCP makes an OMF with a folder of referenced media, which when opened in Pro Tools 10 has the correct source timecode.

Using match criteria, I can link this back to the original rushes - I match TC and 'Tape to Sound Roll' and then expand to all tracks using Channel number for ordering.

Seems to be working pretty well!

Yush

Re: FCP to PT, reconform of cantar files?
 

PT 10 can use poly directly just fine.

Re: FCP to PT, reconform of cantar files?
 

When trying to open an AAF from FCP, I get an "Pro Tools does not support import of AAF/OMF references to multi-channel audio files" error, even with PT10.