How To Export A Pro Tools Friendly AAF From Avid Media Composer
In this article post-production specialist Damian Kearns shared his advice on the best way to export a Pro Tools friendly AAF from Avid Media Composer. If you have ever had issues with AAFs from video editors, then you will want to share this with them.
Background
Back in early 2006, I was given a gift that has kept on giving to this day: I was trained for 3 days on AVID Media Composer.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had decided that the production for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy was to be a file-based workflow. This meant, rather than ship machines and personnel en masse to Italy for CBC’s broadcast coverage, the offline technicians would instead be situated on the tenth floor of the Toronto broadcast centre. We’d all be working on Media Composer, including me, an audio post-production operator who was seconded due to my comfort level with nonlinear editing stations. I had not, however, used Media Composer prior to the run-up to the Games.
A month of operating Avid’s Media Composer gave me more insight into the editorial process than all the prior years of dealing with editors.
Video Editors are frame-based editors; their systems are performing much more complex calculations than ours; they each have different operational skill levels and ways of working. I can tell you from experience, recording, editing and mixing in Media Composer is NOT a lot like Pro Tools but at least we were all working from the same ISIS servers, using the Interplay software as our portal to each other.
I came away from that experience with enough knowledge to help co-author the CBC’s Workflow Best Practices Manual. This document was used throughout the Canadian national broadcaster and set the template for getting into and out of all the various workstations and servers, to create a cohesive file-based workflow.
How To Export A Pro Tools Friendly AAF From Media Composer
Today, armed with my old trusty screengrab, I’ll break down my typical AAF Export processes. Even though the user interface on the more recent Media Composer incarnations has changed, all the actual export functions and Export Settings window are pretty much the same.
I demoed the most recent version of Media Composer in December so I can say with certainty that this workflow is viable. Most importantly, this brief article will supply you with the language needed to ask for what you need, an AAF that works!
Here we go.
Exporting a ‘sequence’ (known as a session in Media Composer) is typically a ‘right-click’ affair whilst selecting the sequence.
At some point, a window like this appears, though it can look a little different in various versions/skins of Media Composer. However, the basic settings are there in all versions.
The top boxes bear some explaining.
‘Marks’ can be set at in and out points on a sequence. This means if I have that box checked, anything outside the in and out points set by an editor (to make a selection within the timeline) won’t be included. Unless there’s a strong reason you’re only getting part of the timeline, I suggest this box always be turned off so as to include everything in the sequence.
Same with ‘Use Enabled Tracks’. I typically want all the tracks in the sequence and by keeping this box unchecked, I get them all, as long as the lower box ‘Include All Audio Tracks in Sequence’ is selected.
For manageable file sizes and general avoidance of issues, I don’t include video in my AAF exports.
AAF Edit Protocol has to be checked. Why? If this box is unchecked, the AAF (Advanced Authoring Format) file the editor creates may fail if the file size exceeds 2GBs, which was the old file size limit of OMF (Open Media Framework) exports. A lot of exports fail because this box hasn’t been checked.
The advantages of AAF over OMF include the following…
Track names come across
Real-time plugin retention (since AVID makes Media Composer versions of plugins that can be directly ported into Pro Tools),
Clip Gain comes across
Clip Effects (although these come across only into Pro Tools Ultimate)
Volume Automation
Multichannel Track Support - which is useful if the video editor has used surround content with a channel count higher than 2 or even stereo tracks.
Track Effects - If you’re like me, you want all the data you can get. However, if you’re having any issues importing an AAF, ask the editor to remove track effects.
Though I don’t have them checked above, I do usually export with the rendered audio effects. If there’s an issue opening the AAF, I deselect this option.
Handles
Moving on down, I like to set my handles, which is the extra pad at the top and tail of audio files, to at least 120-150 frames. I find if I am working with audience recordings or music, I like these handles at 150. They allow me a lot of crossfading flexibility and I’ve also managed to find sentences, words or consonances that help me clean up dialogue edits.
Consolidate Media
You’ll note that I like to force Media Composer to Consolidate the Media into 48 kHz, 24-bit .wav files. Consolidating means that the audio files in the Media Composer sequence will be copied into my AAF, just the parts that are actually used, plus the handles added that were specified above. I do this for 2 reasons…
The AAF would be huge if I copied all the whole files attached to the sequence, whether the other bits were used or not! Most audio files used in sequences are used in small bits, rather than whole files.
To avoid any issues with incompatible media. Sometimes AAF’s fail because some unsupported audio file type like MP2 is used by the editor. By setting the sample rate, bit depth and file type, I avoid a lot of frustration.
Embedded AAF
Finally, I embed. There are two reasons for this.
It’s much easier to upload one file to a server like Dropbox.
It’s easy to tell if there’s something wrong with the export if the .aaf file generated is only a few kBs or MBs in size.
I’ve never had an issue with embedded AAF’s but I understand some people do. I would point out this is likely to be because of the inclusion of unsupported media in the AAF.
What About The Video?
As I said above, for manageable file sizes and general avoidance of issues, I don’t include video in my AAF exports, so make sure that the ‘Include All Video/Data Tracks In Sequence option is unchecked.
But of course, you will need a separate reference video file. When exporting the video file make sure the following options are selected…
It has a burnt in timecode (BITC) with a transparent or translucent window behind it, usually, a few lines up from the middle of the bottom of the picture works best for me.
It is encoded with either the Avid DNxHD or ProRes Proxy codec. Make sure you or the video editor avoid codecs such as H264 as they are notoriously unreliable in older versions of Pro Tools.
Set the resolution to 1920×1080 unless there’s a specific file size constraint in your system. In that case, I usually go for 720p (1280x720). You can opt for 4k if your system supports it but I generally don’t because of the girth of the 4k file size.
Include the audio mix from Media Composer in the reference video as 48 kHz, 24 bit .wav. This helps to provide an idea of the director’s intentions for the mix, as well as enable us to check sync against the AAF.
In Conclusion
I have exported and imported AAF files to and from Media Composer hundreds of times without issue. I’m very fortunate and grateful to have had superb Media Composer training at a time when audio operators weren’t being trained on video editing stations. Being able to speak the MC language has meant avoiding a lot of unnecessary head-scratching. If you have the opportunity, it’s worth doing some Media Composer training. If not, download this article and save it where you can find it and share it again, as needed. Good luck and happy mixing!
Want To Know More About AAFs And OMFs?
In audio post-production, we often get AAFs or OMFs from the video editor which provide us with the edited audio from the picture edit. In this article, AAF And OMFs - Post Audio Expert Panel On The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, a panel of experts shares their experiences of using AAFs and OMFs in their professional workflows.
Before we turn to our experts, so that everyone is on the same page, we are going to define what AAFs and OMFs are and how they fit into the post-production workflow.
What is the AAF format?
AAF stands for the Advanced Authoring Format. It is a technology designed specifically for digital nonlinear post-production and authoring. You can consider it as a “Super-EDL,” but actually it is also much more.
AAF is Open Source, so it’s available to manufacturers for free to implement into their systems. The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) is an interchange toolkit and exists to get video, audio and metadata from one system to another. It can wrap video, audio, data, and even references to external assets along with instructions on how to render this material into a finished program. For example, a file might contain a 30-minute sequence along with instructions on how to cut it down to 5 minutes … along with an external reference to text reports or still photographs located on a separate system. The AAF format is designed to replace OMFI.
The AAF solution has several components: It supports the complex combination of a piece of content and its associated metadata. This allows the content to be described as a media object. It facilitates the cross-platform interchange of metadata or program content.
It allows users to track the history of pieces of program content from source elements through final production. It allows access to networked content files on remote platforms or storage. It allows the combined project in a selected format to be rendered later in the post process.
It catalogues an extensive list of audio and video effects with a rich set of built-in standard effects. It provides a way to “wrap” elements of a project together for archiving. It encapsulates HTML and XML content, includes translators, and supports HTML/XML output. It provides for application program interfaces (APIs).
What is the difference between the OMF and AAF formats?
Open Media Framework (OMF) or Open Media Framework Interchange (OMFI) is a platform-independent file format intended for transfer of digital media between different software applications.
As we have described above, AAF (and OMF) are used to transfer sequence/timeline information from one application to another. OMF is supported in a number of applications including AVID and Pro Tools.
AAF is the newer format and contains more information than the OMF. OMF loses the volume automation and names of the tracks when exporting and importing from one application to another. AAF retains the volume automation and the track names. Most applications for audio and video support AAF and MXF formats moving forward.
Learn More?
If you want to benefit from the advice of our expert panel then check out our article AAF And OMFs - Post Audio Expert Panel On The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.