editing Question about audio export format.

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harmonica44

I have been helping editing my friend's movie. After I edit the audio all together and sync it up, I then send off the tracks to an audio engineer who cleans it up, and does all the crossfading, and creates surround sound out of it, etc.

But she's having a lot of trouble because once I export a track to H.264, which I was told to do, the track cannot be changed. All the tracks are stereo, with the left track full, and the right track empty, since that's what the field recorder was only able to do, was stereo. Some of the tracks in the editing have the right channel filled as well, and have been 'nested'. So some tracks have both channels filled and some only one. When it comes to surround sound as well, some of the tracks, need to have the noise come out on the right channel instead of the left, but the channels cannot be swapped, once exported.

So once I export the editing, put it on a datacard and send it off to her, she cannot make the tracks with sound on both channels, match the tracks with the sound on only one channel. Once the tracks are exported out of Premiere Pro, they cannot be changed. Is there any format I can export them on, or give them to her where you can still fill channels, empty channels, and swap channels afterward?
 
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harmonica44 said:
Okay thanks, but so far, Premiere Pro will only let me make an AAF or OMF out of everything.
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Create a new "everything" then. Make a copy of your project and delete everything apart from say 20 seconds, use this copy to test AAF compatibility. It might take you a bit of time to create this cut down copy but it will save a great deal more time in creating AAF test versions and exchanging them with the audio post person.

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I can't cut it down. Premiere Pro will only let me put the whole movie in am AAF container, then export it. But after it's exported, I cannot open it. My computer will either freeze, or it will say it cannot open the file. So I cannot shave it down 20 seconds. I'll just have to give the whole files to her.
 
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That's what I'm saying. Copy your Premiere Pro project, cut your new Premiere Pro copy down to 20 secs then create your AAF. The chances are that if Premiere Pro won't open the AAF you created, that ProTools won't either. But there's no way to know that for sure until your audio post person tries. As I said before, you might need to give it quite a few tries before you get it right, that's why I suggest only working with 20 secs, until you find the right settings.

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Oh I see, thanks. Well there are only two AAF settings though it seems. Legacy and embedded. Once I click one of the options, it then makes the container. So I guess there are only two formats for her to try then. Hopefully one will work!
 
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harmonica44 said:
Well there are only two AAF settings though it seems. Legacy and embedded. Once I click one of the options, it then makes the container. So I guess there are only two formats for her to try then. Hopefully one will work!
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There may only be two settings for the AAF itself but remember that AAF is only a container format, so you also have to consider the settings of the audio which the AAF contains! You've already mentioned a "milliseconds" and "samples" setting, then there are wav of aiff (both of which are supported by ProTools), bit depth, stereo or mono channels, the format of the audio in your Premiere sequence (rather than your AAF export) might cause problems. It's also possible there is/are some other more obscure settings or techniques required to get a working AAF out of Premiere. Once you have found the right settings make careful notes of those settings, so you don't have to go through the whole process again for future projects.

I would also advise that you have a close look at any errors (items it can't export, etc.) Premiere is displaying when creating the AAF. Eliminating those errors would be the first and most obvious step in creating a usable AAF.

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It showed a few things it cannot export but I do not know how to fix those. It did not ask me about audio samples or milliseconds when exporting either. When I first created the movie format at the start, Premiere Pro asked me that, but not when exporting at all. I don't know how to fix the errors at all. I am off to give them to the audio engineer, hopefully they will work, as we are already a week behind and counting. I hope the files are in there and can be read, since my computer will not open them.
 
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Well the audio engineer got back to me, and all the OMF and AAF files we gave her turned out to be blank. We could not tell since we cannot open them on our computer. So what now? I could just export the audio tracks in a media format. Like export all of track 1, then track 2. And she can edit the audio within the tracks, and get rid of all the popping sounds, and all that. But will it work if all one character's dialogue is on the same track? Like if someone says Shut up, for example, and there is a popping sound, between shut and up. Can she get rid of the pop, if both words on the same track, and she has no separate cuts to work with? Cause I can't think of any other idea since putting the cuts in containers, keeps showing up blank.
 
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harmonica44 said:
Well the audio engineer got back to me, and all the OMF and AAF files we gave her turned out to be blank. We could not tell since we cannot open them on our computer. So what now?
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Maybe your AAF links to the audio files but you are not sending the audio files, maybe you are trying to embed the audio files in the AAF but are choosing the wrong options to allow that to happen, maybe there is a bug in your software or some other fault occurring. You'll have to do some research and find out how to create AAFs with your software which can be opened and you'll probably have to try a few more times before you get it right.

You could just supply all the individual tracks as wav files as you suggested but that will take a great deal of time to sort out and also probably greatly limit the options of your audio post person. My advice is to sort out getting a readable AAF. I might take you a while to figure it out but once you do, you will have that knowledge for all your future projects.

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