Mixed framerate media export to OMF/AAF

[Maskeeper]

Just a question to see if anyone has found a better work around for this situation:

NLE video timeline allows mixed framerates for material. On export to OMF (and I believe AAF, although someone correct me if I'm wrong) the NLE will force a resample of this audio that doesn't match the target framerate (OMF in 29.97? Some clips in timeline 23.98? Those will be rendered before OMF output).

This rendering process eliminates the handles and also renders any audiosuite or other signal processing present. In addition, traditionally I'd imported OMFs using the 'ignore rendered effects' selection as it always replaced any effect region with the previous un-effected audio. However, when selecting 'ignore rendered effects' with files that were rendered due to framerate incompatibility, these files are completely OMITTED from the PT timeline.


I've found two workarounds for this problem:

a) Open OMFs without selecting 'ignore rendered effects' (or opening one copy each way). This gets you all the media, but the rendered media is still without handles. Also, unless you open one of each, you risk getting audiosuite processed audio.

b) Ask the client to output multiple OMFs - one for each frame rate of the project media... This way you'll have one omf at each framerate, hopefully allowing one omf to contain handles on any clips that were omitted from the other...


Just curious if there is any other known way to deal with this situation. Also is mixed framerates in a sequence a new option of Avid or FCP? It seems I saw this problem once in the last 5 years, and now I'm seeing it weekly.

Thanks

[Sonsey]

The only downstream solution we found in this scenario was option b). Fortunately because of the way the framerate change ended up happening (during Automatic Duck import from FCP to AVID), there were very clear divisions between the 23.98 stuff and the 29.97 stuff, so it was pretty simple - if the timeline is helter-skelter it could be "fun". Obviously having everything at the same frame rate from production is the best solution, but we all know how well THAT can work...

It's a relatively new thing to AVID having multiple framerates on the timeline. FCP has done it for a few years - it does allow handles on mixed framerates - but then again it had so many other issues with OMF export that handles would have been the least of our worries.

[paranerd]

What version of Pro Tools are you using when opening the OMF/AAF? Is the OMF/AAF exported from FCP or Media Composer 5?

I don't know about FCP as I haven't had to open many OMF/AAFs from it, but for MC5 you need Pro Tools 9 to fix this bug. Here's a more detailed thread on this issue:

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?p=1691708

If you're using Pro Tools 8 or under, option b) is the best solution I've found.

Just curious, when you say the clips are completely omitted from the PT timeline, do you mean that you have empty clips which need to be relinked or are that the clips are completely absent?

[Maskeeper]

Interesting, I saw in some release notes PT9 'fixed' this problem, however I always assumed (like others) the issue was what was embedded in the AAF on export, not what PT was opening on import... so I couldn't figure out how a PT9 update could 'fix' the problem.

I have a couple PT9 test stations currently so I guess I'll do some experimenting.

\\V