Final Cut to Soundtrack OMF bug: A workaround

Spent most of the afternoon trying to chase down a Final Cut Studio bug.

Today's task was to generate an audio-only OMF version of my movie for the sound editor. I wanted to check the OMF included the handles and keyframes that I had specified. As Soundtrack can import OMFs, I tried that.

My audio OMFs exported from Final Cut Pro 7 weren?t importing into Soundtrack Pro 3. There was no error reported, the command just did nothing.

After some trial and error, I discovered that OMFs won?t import if they have any clips created using the Bars and Tone generator.

Ironically you are more likely to use bars and tone generators in timelines you export as OMF, as sound editors like pops at the start and finish of sequences on all tracks to make sure everything stays in sync.

The workaround is to make a QuickTime pop by exporting your Bars and Tone frame as a single frame movie, import it and replace the generated tone on all your audio tracks.

___________________________________________________
Alexandre Gollner,
Editor, Zone 2-North West, London

alex4d on twitter, facebook, .wordpress.com + .com

Very interesting...did you inform Apple? This seems like an annoying thing, especially since it's such a small error wreaking havoc on the whole OMF. I'm willing to bet most of us would have exported the thing in small sections or individual mono AIFFs/WAVs before suspecting the tone generator. No good reason I can think of that they shouldn't fix this for us.

Can anybody else do some tests to confirm that this bug is prevalent across many systems? (I can't test this because my home system is FCP5) If so, I think this belongs in the FAQ.


www.derekmok.com

Did you try assigning a reel name to the B&T clip? A lot of issues in FCP arise from clips that have no reel number or clip timecode assigned.
Just a shot in the dark.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Bug reported at [www.apple.com]



Doesn't happen between FCP 6.06 and Soundtrack Pro 2.02 - Generated tone clips are OK.

Doesn't happen between FCP 6.06 and Soundtrack Pro 3.01 - Generated tone clips are OK.

Doesn't happen between FCP 7.01 and Soundtrack Pro 2.02 - Generated tone clips are OK.

___________________________________________________
Alexandre Gollner,
Editor, Zone 2-North West, London

alex4d on twitter, facebook, .wordpress.com + .com

Good catch Alex. I'll be doing some OMFs this week, and you may have saved me some trouble.

- Justin Barham -

Giving the generated clip a reel name doesn't help. Soundtrack Pro 3.01 won't import an OMF with generated tone.

I think the OMF generation software doesn't expect content with no source path. This kind of content is labelled as a clip of type 'Still' and the source is labelled as 'Offline'

___________________________________________________
Alexandre Gollner,
Editor, Zone 2-North West, London

alex4d on twitter, facebook, .wordpress.com + .com

> I think the OMF generation software doesn't expect content with no source path.

That makes a lot of sense to me. I don't know if anybody else feels the same, but I think Soundtrack Pro's asset management sucks. I was just adding some light Channel EQ and Compression to a music-rehearsal MP3 and:

a) The waveforms keep disappearing and having to be redrawn;
b) When I saved the STP project and relaunched it, the MP3 file went offline despite no changes being made to the file, name or content. And it wouldn't reconnect after that. I had to convert it to AIFF and then continue.


www.derekmok.com

I just tried it here on FCP 7.0.1 out to Soundtrack 3.0.1 and it worked fine. Possible differences are that I'm in PAL, and used a PAL bars and tone, and that it's a music video, so only has two tracks of audio right now.

But it opened and played right away using the 'import OMF' command in the menu.

A while ago on one of the earlier FCP 6 updates, I tried opening up omfs in Soundtrack Pro to check. They were broken up into 10-12 minute segments, and some imported, some just didn't open up, but the audio guy opened it up fine. i think he was on Logic. I never found the cause of it.



www.strypesinpost.com

Maybe the 2GB limit? Maybe Logic can stitch them or something? Just speculation of course.

Nope, not that. They're all slightly over a gig each, and all exported without any error messages.



www.strypesinpost.com