Trying to understand the workflow here:
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Sound sync on set was not done correctly, source is a poly wav.
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Sound was synced in silverstack by hand.
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Silverstack wrote proxy files for avid MC with audio, each audio track is its own file and a ALE with all the metadata.
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editor put clips on a timeline, did his thing, delete unused audio tracks from timeline, to keep the edit neat.
Now it needs to get into protools:
editor exports AAF that links to the sound files for Protools or write a AAF with embedded audio.
Linked AAF does not link against original polywav files in ProTools, is this supposed to work ? Is there supposed to be metadata from the source wav in the ALE for this?
Embedded AAF throws away all unused audiotracks, i always assumed it would somehow keep the source track count and all but apparently it doesnt.
So it sounds like you either have to sync sound in avid from a polywav and then protools should be able to link against those files as they have the same name and TC as whats in MC?
Or you have to go through the edit and just add back all the deleted sound tracks in your MC project. (a AE told me this is how he does this usually and it takes him about a day for a 120min feature…)
ProTools has a ‘Field Recorder Workflow’ which is used to load audio originals that weren’t in the edit. When it works, it’s beautiful. But it relies on the metadata being intact so it can identify the matching files.
All of this is a common scenario. I wrote an article on that a few years ago, slightly different scenario, but same overall issue. The surviving metadata needs to link the tapename of the original video with the sound filename for all of this to work.
Embedded vs. linked matters more whether the audio has handles or not. Linked is better in that sense. But it still will only be the proxy audio, not the original files. By the time you make proxies with audio and edit of those rather than syncing audio in MC, you sign up for this type of workflow.
The other option is, make the proxies from the mixer L/R track as reference, then load all the original sound files in (not that big) and use autosync to put things together in MC. Then you’re working off the original audio files. If you mute stuff you’re not using instead of deleting it, and do a linked AAF, then you have everything.
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anazing!! just to clarify
The surviving metadata needs to link the tapename of the original video with the sound filename for all of this to work.
so that means that the metadata in the aaf has to have 1) the original name of the original polywav audio file used and 2) has to have the timecode of that polywav.
and I unberstand correctly that that metadata wont get passed from silverstack when sycing sound there?
That’s correct. Otherwise ProTools doesn’t know for which audio file to search for a given video file.
I’ve never used SilverStack. When I did this back then, it was with Scratch for the proxies.
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Looks like ProTools may be able to find neighboring audio files w/o the video file if the right metadata still exists. I haven’t been in ProTools in a few years, using Nuendo instead.
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