Share & Share Alike
Dec 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Jason Scott Alexander
AS VARIED AS INDIVIDUAL SENSE OF FASHION, style, musical taste and personal expression are, so, too, are the various music-production tools personalized to the way you work. The more you interact with those around you, it seems, the more you see how individuality in technological preferences can hinder sharing your intellectual creativity with others. Incompatibilities between computer and audio hardware, operating systems, DAW platforms, plug-in formats, software versions, sampler formats and more can all contribute to the isolation.
Inevitably, though, you will need to share your work files with others. And more often than not, these proprietary sessions must be transferred between directly incompatible systems. You know the story: You recorded in Cakewalk Sonar, but the mix studio wants it in Digidesign Pro Tools. Or you compose in Apple Logic Pro, but your distant collaborator uses Steinberg Cubase SX or Nuendo. Thankfully, several practical work-arounds are available.
OMF GAMBLER
When talking of exchanging sessions between systems, you are surely going to hear the same two or three buzzwords over and over. The OMF (Open Media Framework) file format — otherwise known as OMFI (Open Media Framework Interchange) — is the most prevalent of these. Developed by Avid, OMF was created to assist in the exchange of sessions between different types of work-stations and the Pro Tools software platform, and it features something called an edit decision list, or EDL, to do so. By bundling all session audio within a single tidy OMF file, the small accompanying EDL file simply references the time stamp and in and out points of the audio files, much like a road map for reconstructing the session.
Although the file-exchange method of choice for audio-for-video and film work, OMF does have its shortcomings and limitations for music and mix projects. For one, OMF only supports audio data — that is, the audio media and its placement within a song. MIDI and automation data are simply ignored. Second, any effects plug-ins, EQs or other overlaying real-time-processed tweaks that are integral to the sound of your tracks do not get included in OMF files. Even though you and your partners may have completely identical plug-in setups, they're not specified within the OMF, and effects don't get translated at all — your friend is receiving only the unaffected clip. So you'll have to provide manual instructions on what to bring up and where. Even worse, clips that you have applied pitch or time compression or expansion to may “disappear” entirely after OMF conversion if you forget to update the audio media and EDL reference.
Another popular format, the Advanced Authoring Format, or AAF, is also typically used for data exchange with Pro Tools software. Expanding on OMF's functionality, the AAF spec allows for edit data to be bundled along with the audio media — including volume automation and numerical description of a composition's tracks, events, transitions and effects — together with references to source media. Both OMF and AAF are known as project formats, which are intended to re-create sessions. Although OMF and AAF are someday destined to become well-adhered-to standards, currently, they are anything but. No two applications interpret the files the same way (with some performing outright incorrect conversions), and Pro Tools itself requires the expensive DigiTranslator 2.0 Integrated Option to work with OMFI or AAF files at all.
For these reasons and more, many users agree that using media formats, instead, along with a bit of good old fashioned DIY elbow grease, is the way to go. Based on conventional WAV audio files, the Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) carries an embedded time stamp that precisely locates it within a project. Naturally, the beauty of this is that an entire folder of BWF files can be imported onto a track, and the files will automatically line themselves up based on their independent time stamps, without the need to refer to a separate edit decision list. Although using BWF as your export file type at all times (unless required or specifically instructed otherwise) is highly advised and makes good sense, the downside to transferring complex sessions using individual BWFs is that it's easy to lose or misplace a file, which in turn leads to missing events within the session.
CONSOLIDATED LOANS
Track consolidation is the absolute foolproof method of ensuring that your session's audio opens in any foreign DAW and that the receiver gets it exactly the way you're intending. During the normal course of edit operations, your tracks may eventually (and likely will) contain many regions. After slaving for days on end to achieve sample-accurate event placement — whether separated, butt-spliced, layered or faded throughout the timeline of a song — you won't want to leave up to chance how another DAW will handle event placement during the import and translation of your session file or OMF in a crucial session exchange.
Consolidation is not the same as bouncing tracks (more on that later) — the fader levels, real-time plug-in processing and underlying automation data do not get consolidated into the audio. Also, be aware that different DAWs use different terminology, sometimes interchangeably. For instance, Consolidate Project Audio in Sonar simply collects all used audio snippets and places them into a single project folder for tidiness and convenience. This is not what you're after. Rather, you need to “consolidate” audio in the manner in which Digidesign uses the term in Pro Tools: The aim is to create a new audio file that encompasses all series of audio events in the selection range, including any blank space. In other words, when exporting an entire song, you're looking to consolidate tracks into single contiguous WAV files, each of precisely equal length.
Reassembly of the session on another DAW is a breeze: Simply import each resulting WAV file to its own track, being careful to snap them to all start on exactly the same point, and everything will be time-aligned with sample accuracy. Unwanted silent sections of the tracks (created by consolidation) may be trimmed out by the recipient if desired. I find consolidation to be the best way to export a highly complex session for mixing or remixing, as it contains no effects or EQ and gives the mix engineer or producer a clean palette of tracks and sound to work on. Wet versions (using bounce) may be supplied as alternates for consideration by the mix engineer.
STEMMED OUT
You're no doubt familiar with bouncing tracks within a working session, but you're perhaps not as familiar with its powers as an export utility for creating customized versions of sessions for transfer between systems. To bounce simply means that you're writing to disk completely new audio tracks that capture any real-time processing affecting the tracks. Unlike consolidation, bounce captures the results of any active plug-ins, EQ, mix automation and so forth.
This makes bounce absolutely ideal for transferring stems (or submixes) for overdub sessions, as the stems include effects and fader moves that will benefit the performers. Because it commits this CPU-intense information to disk, bouncing is also handy in creating slimmed-down versions of a session for recipients working on leaner systems.
FILE-TRANSFER PROTOCOL
Finally, turn your attention to organizational skills. Granted, if you're handing off a single 24-track song and you've consolidated your tracks to 24 contiguous discrete files, you don't have a whole lot of organization to worry about. But supposing you're lucky enough to be sharing your native sessions with a compatible studio or presenting a lot of BWF files as stems for overdubs on various songs, things can get messy. Remember that nobody thinks quite the way you do. Handing over your hard drive or DVD-R with session files and audio clips scattered here, there and everywhere is akin to you walking into a stranger's house and looking for his or her car keys.
The orderly discipline starts at the very beginning of every project. You should adopt a standard by which you name and append subsequent versions of each session file so that you are always clear and others can tell the difference between a master, a slave, a source recording and a mix session file. Likewise, consistency in track naming helps an outsider decipher a mix landscape much more quickly.
Folders are your friends, so don't be afraid to use them. Create a folder for each song, and place the song's session file and respective consolidated audio files and session audio folders within it. If you're cooperating on production with someone who will need full access, potential session audio folders may include those for source recordings, process and edit files, fade files and so on. Otherwise, don't turn over any more than you need to. When transferring a master for final mixdown, for example, don't include old production and edit sessions or files with identical names and content but differing date and time stamps, as they only confuse matters. Pick only the ones for the engineer to work with, and that's it.
OMF EXPORT OPTIONS
Typically, the OMF Export dialog in most DAWs will provide you with options to customize your transfer specifically for your receiver's setup. The export dialog in Logic Pro 7 (File > Export > Export Song as OMF File), for instance, allows you to select whether to export as files compatible with OMF version 1 or version 2 (you will usually choose version 2, as version 1 is only useful for backward compatibility with older software). The dialog also has a box to select whether all exported audio files will be integrated into the OMF file itself (otherwise, file references only are written to the OMF file, and you must ensure that all actual audio files reside on the destination system). Other Export-dialog options include the ability to interleave or split stereo files (useful when exporting to Pro Tools, which uses split files only), conversion of 24-bit files to 16-bit and more.
ALL PARTS EQUAL
To consolidate tracks, select all regions in a track (triple-clicking on a track in Pro Tools achieves this), being particularly careful to set the start and end points for each track equally. If this is properly executed, a new single region should be created for each track that replaces the previously selected regions, including any blank space. You may have no level at the beginning (for tracks that had no recorded regions until later in the song), but it will be a full region from start to finish. Note that any muted regions are treated as silence in the consolidation process.
BOUNCE
Assemble your stems by designating tracks to buses and then perform a bounce for each stem. Some DAWs (such as Nuendo) are capable of performing faster-than-real-time bounces whereas others make you sit through them. Regardless, they all typically provide the same suite of options for selecting bounce source (outputs or buses), file type, resolution, bit rate and so forth. Again, if your goal is to export your entire session, create contiguous tracks of equal length for easy import on a target DAW; be careful to bounce each track using the same selection range.
ONE FOR THE VAULT: SESSION ARCHIVING
Whether you intend to exchange your sessions with others, it's always good practice to create a universal archival master of your finalized projects immediately after completion. Archiving is like an insurance policy against obsolete equipment and discontinued software. Merely burning backup copies of your DAW's native session files and audio pool won't be much help, for instance, if you're ever asked to revisit a project after moving to a different DAW or selling off the hardware synths and samplers needed to feed your MIDI tracks and outboard effects required to make the mix work. The sure-fire solution is to render everything to audio.
It may sound like overkill, but what I like to do is create three archival backups: one consisting of all tracks completely dry, un-EQ'd, unmixed and unautomated; another with all EQ and dynamics in, with individual effects returns (100 percent wet) captured on their own tracks; and, finally, a pass with everything as is, including appropriate inserts, stereo effects blends captured on their own tracks and automation running. The purpose of each, respectively, is to provide an unadulterated master track version ready for a complete remix of levels, EQ, effects and so on; an EQ'd version with dynamics and processing options available in a flexible manner; and a full-on, universally portable clone of your studio equipment and automated session (minus panning and master and stereo bus controls, of course). Depending on the track types in your particular approach, archiving a session can involve a combination of consolidating and bouncing techniques and, in the case of outboard gear, the recording and committing to disk of analog signals. Essentially, every track and outboard sonic element gets recorded as its own contiguous file for the entire length of the song.
Remember, this is meant to be a universal backup solution with the intention of complementing your native session backup. The session backup should contain all original from-the-source tracks, edit files and fade files. This is indeed a lot of work, and after completing a lengthy project, the last thing you typically want to do is spend even more time surrounded by it. But if worse comes to worst — and you can no longer access your native session files down the road — you'll surely be glad that you invested the time.
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