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Old 03-12-2015, 04:51 AM   #1
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Default Reaper for film sound editing / audio post production

I've started a page about why I choose Reaper for film sound editing.

It also has some short video tips for creating custom workflows suited to film sound editing instead of music production.

More video tips for audio post production will be posted whenever I get the chance.

http://vordio.net/reaper/

Have fun,
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Old 03-12-2015, 06:11 AM   #2
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Heyup John, something you may be interested in: Thread for BWF metadata tool.


I'm about halfway through a revision to make it only display basic Project/Tape/Scene/Take info (extended info -click [+]), to search & show related file-set files and their channels, to set snap-offset to auto-slate position, and to write take names from metadata using wildcards.

Do you use metadata in your audio for video? Any use to you? Hopefully uploading betas again next week.



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Old 03-12-2015, 06:16 AM   #3
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Heyup John, something you may be interested in: Thread for BWF metadata tool.>
That looks really interesting. I don't use so much metadata myself but my clients might.

Does it interfere with Reaper item notes or does it leave them alone?

My 'reconform Reaper project to later edit' feature relies on item note information not being touched as Vordio hides reconform metadata there when it does a conversion. Without that reconform will break.

http://vordio.net/reconform/
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Old 03-12-2015, 08:47 AM   #4
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That looks really interesting. I don't use so much metadata myself but my clients might.

Does it interfere with Reaper item notes or does it leave them alone?

My 'reconform Reaper project to later edit' feature relies on item note information not being touched as Vordio hides reconform metadata there when it does a conversion. Without that reconform will break.

http://vordio.net/reconform/

Nope, I've considered writing Project name, etc to the item notes as an optional alternative to the take name, but it would be just that -optional and an alternative. It's not finalised yet, so it's susceptible to user requests

I think metadata comes into its own, the bigger the project is. If you need those track-counts and speed of workflow, it makes sense to spent those amounts on the recorders that do it for you. Some of the audio I've been given for testing has even got the slate clapper position saved automatically in the metadata.

Beats my old HD-P2 into the dust



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Old 03-12-2015, 09:10 AM   #5
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Nope, I've considered writing Project name, etc to the item notes as an optional alternative to the take name, but it would be just that -optional and an alternative. It's not finalised yet, so it's susceptible to user requests

I think metadata comes into its own, the bigger the project is. If you need those track-counts and speed of workflow, it makes sense to spent those amounts on the recorders that do it for you. Some of the audio I've been given for testing has even got the slate clapper position saved automatically in the metadata.

Beats my old HD-P2 into the dust

>
Phew about not touching item notes!

Yes my sound devices recorder and software that goes with it will handle plenty of metadata.

In fact the metadata editor software is free if you want to use it to edit metadata in WAVs.

http://www.sounddevices.com/support/...ads/wave-agent
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Old 03-12-2015, 05:32 PM   #6
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Phew about not touching item notes!

Yes my sound devices recorder and software that goes with it will handle plenty of metadata.

In fact the metadata editor software is free if you want to use it to edit metadata in WAVs.

http://www.sounddevices.com/support/...ads/wave-agent

I use it extensively to help test my scripts, but unfortunately it doesn't let you edit everything -quite a few parameters are display only. Useful util though.



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Old 03-12-2015, 08:10 PM   #7
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nice start on your tips site... went to have a look... checked out the preview item under mouse.... right

nice set of actions SWS has there... and so many varieties, eh?

I find the most useful one for me the toggle preview item under mouse at mouse cursor position...

but rather than assign a key to it, I put into the mouse modifiers for track items.... I'm on a pc so it the modifier Control+Win for me but of course it could be whatever you like... this way I just hold that combo and left clk and the preview starts... left clk again and it stops... works for me.
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Old 03-13-2015, 03:32 AM   #8
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nice start on your tips site... went to have a look... checked out the preview item under mouse.... right

nice set of actions SWS has there... and so many varieties, eh?

I find the most useful one for me the toggle preview item under mouse at mouse cursor position...

but rather than assign a key to it, I put into the mouse modifiers for track items.... I'm on a pc so it the modifier Control+Win for me but of course it could be whatever you like... this way I just hold that combo and left clk and the preview starts... left clk again and it stops... works for me.
What I would really like is just click and hold down to start preview and stop preview when lift mouse again. How do you get an action to stop when mouse up?
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Old 03-13-2015, 04:15 AM   #9
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I just added a third tip to the page.

"How to align multiple audio items to the first item"

http://vordio.net/reaper/
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Old 03-24-2015, 05:57 AM   #10
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I use it extensively to help test my scripts, but unfortunately it doesn't let you edit everything -quite a few parameters are display only. Useful util though.>
I have just thought of an awesome feature to add to your script.

You mentioned someone sent you some wav files with clap points in.

What about bringing in all alternative takes from same scene & slate as extra item takes? Synchronize them using the clap points.

In sound editing there is frequently a need to go searching for word replacements from an alternative take from same slate. This would be much easier if they were already there to hand as takes.

You could then just slip and comp them together.

What do you think?
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Old 03-24-2015, 02:06 PM   #11
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I have just thought of an awesome feature to add to your script.

You mentioned someone sent you some wav files with clap points in.

What about bringing in all alternative takes from same scene & slate as extra item takes? Synchronize them using the clap points.

In sound editing there is frequently a need to go searching for word replacements from an alternative take from same slate. This would be much easier if they were already there to hand as takes.

You could then just slip and comp them together.

What do you think?

Good idea. It's one of the things on my list: either move the snap-offsets to the slate syncpoint to make it easy to manually line up (by snap), or get it to be placed automatically.

Another is to split poly files into mono, writing the metadata to the mono renders appropriately so that the splits are named, etc.

All depends on being able to search the project media folders and/or project bay for files, but might have to wait for me to get up to speed on a slightly more capable language than EEL. I wish I could spend more time on it rather than grab half-hours here and there (It's taken me several hours to respond to this post).


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Old 03-25-2015, 04:49 AM   #12
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Another is to split poly files into mono, writing the metadata to the mono renders appropriately so that the splits are named, etc.

All depends on being able to search the project media folders and/or project bay for files, but might have to wait for me to get up to speed on a slightly more capable language than EEL. I wish I could spend more time on it rather than grab half-hours here and there (It's taken me several hours to respond to this post).
>
I am not sure you need to split and render to new files. You can use item take channel modes. I do that in the first tutorial video on the page below to split dual mono files. The same approach can be used for any configuration you like such as split 6 channels into 1 stereo (1+2), 2 mono(3/4), 1 stereo(5+6).

http://vordio.net/reaper/

As far as coding goes, I can help with any additions and also know python if that has more options.
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Old 03-26-2015, 09:47 AM   #13
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I forgot about this. Downside is the item doesn't annunciate that it is (eg) track interleave 3 of 4 once the channel mode is set away from normal, but I could interrogate the take's channel mode and offer it as a labelling wildcard.


Hmm. I can interpret channel modes and display them as normal, rev-stereo, downmix, or any mono track interleave, but not as a stereo pair from the poly file -that returns 0 as if it was normal.




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Old 03-26-2015, 09:57 AM   #14
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I forgot about this. Downside is the item doesn't annunciate that it is (eg) track interleave 3 of 4 once the channel mode is set away from normal, but I could interrogate the take's channel mode and offer it as a labelling wildcard.


Hmm. I can interpret channel modes and display them as normal, rev-stereo, downmix, or any mono track interleave, but not as a stereo pair from the poly file -that returns 0 as if it was normal.

>
I am not sure I understand. You can set an item take channel mode to say stereo taken from 5&6 of a 6 channel file. I do it in Vordio when I convert FCPX audio configs to Reaper items.

Below is a 6 channel file configured in FCPX as 2/1/1/2 then the translated result in Reaper where each item has same 6 channel source file but I set the take channel modes differently.



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Old 03-26-2015, 10:37 AM   #15
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You can set it, but I couldn't detect it via ReaScript...

...mostly because I didn't press apply in the item properties, it seems


Got it recognised now, it just adds the first track interleave number of the stereo pair to 64, so easy to interpret.



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Old 03-26-2015, 10:44 AM   #16
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You can set it, but I couldn't detect it via ReaScript......mostly because I didn't press apply in the item properties, it seems

Got it recognised now, it just adds the first track interleave number of the stereo pair to 64, so easy to interpret.
>
Good work. If it helps these are the channel modes I ended up supporting in Vordio.

CHANMODE_NORMAL = 0;
CHANMODE_STEREO_REVERSED = 1;
CHANMODE_DUALMONO_MIXED = 2;
CHANMODE_DUALMONO_LEFT = 3;
CHANMODE_DUALMONO_RIGHT = 4;
CHANMODE_MONO_SELECT_3 = 5; // 3 = ch1, 4 = ch2, 5 = ch3, etc...
CHANMODE_STEREO_SELECT_12 = 67;
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Old 03-27-2015, 08:17 AM   #17
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Vordio 4.2.x now supports Premiere, Lightworks & Final Cut 7.

Also I enhanced the reconform workflow with a new concept 'audio locking' which is colour coded purple.

http://vordio.net/vordio-4-2-release/
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Old 08-13-2017, 01:17 PM   #18
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Vordio 4.2.x now supports Premiere, Lightworks & Final Cut 7.

Also I enhanced the reconform workflow with a new concept 'audio locking' which is colour coded purple.

http://vordio.net/vordio-4-2-release/
Hi,

Could you pls support reconfirm reaper project from EDL ( mainly to collaborate with avid media composer editors..
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Old 08-13-2017, 01:55 PM   #19
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Hi,

Could you pls support reconform reaper project from EDL ( mainly to collaborate with avid media composer editors..
This is actually coming pretty soon but for EDLs it has to use a more traditional region-based approach rather the than the more fine grained item-based approach that Vordio currently uses.

It will be a lot more brutal and destructive. But that is still better than nothing.

The problem with moving only block regions rather than individual items is that you inevitably destroy overlaps/edge work at the region boundaries. This means you will have more stuff to repair than when using the item-based approach.

The item-based approach is 99% non-destructive because it can cope with complex overlaps between items. Boundaries don't matter so much when individual items can be targeted precisely.

Here's a preview of the reworked reconform tool coming soon. Basically you can compare two EDLs (example below uses two XMLs but same principle) and have it dump a change list report. This list of actions with timecodes can then be fed into a script.

It will also be slightly more painful in terms of injecting new material that didn't exist in the previous draft. My current thinking is that you'd have old project on 1st tab, new project on 2nd tab, and then the script source/destination edits material from the 1st & 2nd tabs onto the 3rd tab.

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Old 08-14-2017, 03:46 PM   #20
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This is actually coming pretty soon but for EDLs it has to use a more traditional region-based approach rather the than the more fine grained item-based approach that Vordio currently uses.

It will be a lot more brutal and destructive. But that is still better than nothing.

The problem with moving only block regions rather than individual items is that you inevitably destroy overlaps/edge work at the region boundaries. This means you will have more stuff to repair than when using the item-based approach.

The item-based approach is 99% non-destructive because it can cope with complex overlaps between items. Boundaries don't matter so much when individual items can be targeted precisely.

Here's a preview of the reworked reconform tool coming soon. Basically you can compare two EDLs (example below uses two XMLs but same principle) and have it dump a change list report. This list of actions with timecodes can then be fed into a script.

It will also be slightly more painful in terms of injecting new material that didn't exist in the previous draft. My current thinking is that you'd have old project on 1st tab, new project on 2nd tab, and then the script source/destination edits material from the 1st & 2nd tabs onto the 3rd tab.

Awesome. Is there any way of doing item based reconform with media composer? That would be very handy...
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Old 08-14-2017, 04:40 PM   #21
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Awesome. Is there any way of doing item based reconform with media composer? That would be very handy...
Item based reconform relies on tracking metadata injected into reaper items. This is why it can only be done if first converted with vordio. Also why it can't be done with other DAWs (you need item notes or similar DAW feature to inject metadata into each item).

If you look at the CID header in the item notes here, that is so reconform can use this data later if the edit changes.



So if I supported AAF conversions then this would be possible too. I could inject extra metadata. However, this is not going to happen before next year.

AAF is a pretty nightmare standard. I hate it. Avid change things whenever they feel like, and all the different apps have their own quirky interpretations of the 'standard' too to make matters worse. So even if I do add it later, it will take a long time to debug.

To give you some other examples.. I checked AAFs from Nuendo, Logic & Digital Performer and all were non compliant.

Even Protools omits item automation from an AAF (which AAF can support), which is crazy because AAF is their baby really. They don't even properly support their own standard, let alone support more sensible standards like XML & AES31.

The reason I started vordio initially was because I also shoot and edit video, mostly live multicam where sound is important too. I edit with FCPX because the multicam stuff is really well thought out & really fast. FCPX also doesn't export AAF, so I went with FCPX XML initially because I discovered REAPER around the same time & noticed that the features fully support the way FCPX does audio item configuration (in reaper these are item channel modes) & roles metadata (requires tracks that are nestable & not fussy about media types). So a completely lossless translation is possible. FCPX & REAPER go very well together. A happy accident really. I later added Premiere XML support too.

Another reason I hate AAF is because they went to great lengths to make it extensible, which in itself is admirable, but also makes it very complicated. BUT they also made some very basic assumptions which are just wrong for many apps. This means you can't represent a lot of projects in it well at all. It's really an avid standard (that works for MC/PT), nothing more. You can't represent an FCPX project in it because it assumes tracks are a thing (FCPX doesn't have tracks - it is child-parent object relations & metadata for organisation instead) or different type items on same track or on top of each other (REAPER can do this but PT can't).

So yes, I will add AAF eventually but it is not my main priority. Maybe V6 next year. Usually I do a major version about each year adding something big like a new format.

Most of the updates since 5.1 have been improving reconform massively based on feedback from large projects. But these were mostly based on experiences with Premiere users & they have XML.

Even so. Even if not as precise as an item-based approach, a region-based reconform method is better than nothing. It will be just as good as some more expensive tools out there for PT. Still saves you some work, just not as much.

But a non-destructive item-based approach is definitely the future. I get lovely emails when people are suprised how well that method works.

Quote:
I've been using Vordio about once a week since I bought it, converting Premiere and FCPX xmls to reaper. It works great, every time.

However, yesterday was the first time I had a chance to try the Reconform feature on two seperate commercial videos. And let me say, you are amazing. Not only was my previous work intact (and in sync), I knew at a glance, EXACTLY what changed and where to spend my time working. It was a life saver!

Plus, it was a rushed job; I was not even sure I could deliver in time for the client. Instead, I only took 2 hrs to deliver a mix that I thought was going to take 6 - saving my client a good chunk of money and making my day a lot less stressful.

Thanks for such an amazing utility!
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Old 08-14-2017, 06:17 PM   #22
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This is actually coming pretty soon but for EDLs it has to use a more traditional region-based approach rather the than the more fine grained item-based approach that Vordio currently uses.

It will be a lot more brutal and destructive. But that is still better than nothing.

The problem with moving only block regions rather than individual items is that you inevitably destroy overlaps/edge work at the region boundaries. This means you will have more stuff to repair than when using the item-based approach.

The item-based approach is 99% non-destructive because it can cope with complex overlaps between items. Boundaries don't matter so much when individual items can be targeted precisely.

Here's a preview of the reworked reconform tool coming soon. Basically you can compare two EDLs (example below uses two XMLs but same principle) and have it dump a change list report. This list of actions with timecodes can then be fed into a script.

It will also be slightly more painful in terms of injecting new material that didn't exist in the previous draft. My current thinking is that you'd have old project on 1st tab, new project on 2nd tab, and then the script source/destination edits material from the 1st & 2nd tabs onto the 3rd tab.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mrlimbic View Post
Item based reconform relies on tracking metadata injected into reaper items. This is why it can only be done if first converted with vordio. Also why it can't be done with other DAWs (you need item notes or similar DAW feature to inject metadata into each item).

If you look at the CID header in the item notes here, that is so reconform can use this data later if the edit changes.



So if I supported AAF conversions then this would be possible too. I could inject extra metadata. However, this is not going to happen before next year.

AAF is a pretty nightmare standard. I hate it. Avid change things whenever they feel like, and all the different apps have their own quirky interpretations of the 'standard' too to make matters worse. So even if I do add it later, it will take a long time to debug.

To give you some other examples.. I checked AAFs from Nuendo, Logic & Digital Performer and all were non compliant.

Even Protools omits item automation from an AAF (which AAF can support), which is crazy because AAF is their baby really. They don't even properly support their own standard, let alone support more sensible standards like XML & AES31.

The reason I started vordio initially was because I also shoot and edit video, mostly live multicam where sound is important too. I edit with FCPX because the multicam stuff is really well thought out & really fast. FCPX also doesn't export AAF, so I went with FCPX XML initially because I discovered REAPER around the same time & noticed that the features fully support the way FCPX does audio item configuration (in reaper these are item channel modes) & roles metadata (requires tracks that are nestable & not fussy about media types). So a completely lossless translation is possible. FCPX & REAPER go very well together. A happy accident really. I later added Premiere XML support too.

Another reason I hate AAF is because they went to great lengths to make it extensible, which in itself is admirable, but also makes it very complicated. BUT they also made some very basic assumptions which are just wrong for many apps. This means you can't represent a lot of projects in it well at all. It's really an avid standard (that works for MC/PT), nothing more. You can't represent an FCPX project in it because it assumes tracks are a thing (FCPX doesn't have tracks - it is child-parent object relations & metadata for organisation instead) or different type items on same track or on top of each other (REAPER can do this but PT can't).

So yes, I will add AAF eventually but it is not my main priority. Maybe V6 next year. Usually I do a major version about each year adding something big like a new format.

Most of the updates since 5.1 have been improving reconform massively based on feedback from large projects. But these were mostly based on experiences with Premiere users & they have XML.

Even so. Even if not as precise as an item-based approach, a region-based reconform method is better than nothing. It will be just as good as some more expensive tools out there for PT. Still saves you some work, just not as much.

But a non-destructive item-based approach is definitely the future. I get lovely emails when people are suprised how well that method works.

Thank you so much for all the information. I work mostly in protools until recently. I switched to reaper and I am very impressed with the feature set. For protools I use ediload and conformalizer. But when I read about vordio and its features I was very impressed. Could you pls put a tutorial video on this workflow pls? Also can you pls tell me when the avid edl compare and recut features will be available? Almost 99.9% of the film projects that I work on is edited in avid and mixed in protools. I am using reaper to edit sound fx but in the end I use AATranslator and export as protools session and premix in protools and deliver. Right now when there is a picture change i export to PTX from reaper using AATranslator and then recut using ediload and then I stay inside protools which I don't like anymore. I would love to stay in reaper till the very end and I would like to take my session finally to protools just to premix. So Vordio will be of great help if it supports some kind of avid media composer workflow. I understand what you said. So I am not expecting it to be as clean as an XML workflow. But an edl workflow would do just fine... I would really like to see the tutorial video. Hope to hear from you soon.
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Old 08-14-2017, 06:47 PM   #23
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So Vordio will be of great help if it supports some kind of avid media composer workflow. I understand what you said. So I am not expecting it to be as clean as an XML workflow. But an edl workflow would do just fine... I would really like to see the tutorial video. Hope to hear from you soon.
I am probably only a few weeks away from a new release which will include the block region based report dump approach. Which is similar to those tools you've used with PT. I've nearly finished another job so can do a chunk more work on vordio very soon.

After that a reascript to interpret that changelist dump shouldn't take very long to write (and could be done by someone else). But in the mean time, you could even copy and paste the timecodes manually from the changelist. I did a little experiment with such a thing on StudioOne recently but using keystroke macro to do fast typing & it worked fine.
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Old 08-14-2017, 10:05 PM   #24
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I am probably only a few weeks away from a new release which will include the block region based report dump approach. Which is similar to those tools you've used with PT. I've nearly finished another job so can do a chunk more work on vordio very soon.

After that a reascript to interpret that changelist dump shouldn't take very long to write (and could be done by someone else). But in the mean time, you could even copy and paste the timecodes manually from the changelist. I did a little experiment with such a thing on StudioOne recently but using keystroke macro to do fast typing & it worked fine.
Wow.. Great.. thx. Can you please give me your email address for tech support?
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Old 08-15-2017, 05:12 AM   #25
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Wow.. Great.. thx. Can you please give me your email address for tech support?
Send a DM with my vordio email.
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Old 08-15-2017, 07:12 AM   #26
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This is great! Right now we are being forced to use ProTools at Uni to do our post-production work (with threat of failing our courses if we use anything else). I have even gone as far as to show the shortcomings of ProTools to our teacher and he refuses to accept it, probably because his overlords at Avid would make him disappear if he did
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Old 08-15-2017, 07:49 AM   #27
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This is great! Right now we are being forced to use ProTools at Uni to do our post-production work (with threat of failing our courses if we use anything else). I have even gone as far as to show the shortcomings of ProTools to our teacher and he refuses to accept it, probably because his overlords at Avid would make him disappear if he did
A few universities have bought vordio licenses. So some teachers must be more open minded. One even wrote to me telling me he thought teaching lock-in to a single product was a really bad idea future-wise. So they decided to expand teaching to cover 3 DAWs, and chose Protools, Nuendo & REAPER. There's another doing tests at the moment considering doing the same.

Also with Resolve recently buying Fairlight audio who make great consoles & good software, they are clearly trying to give Protools a kicking. So the future is probably going to be spread out more thinly.

I've even had one customer request better support for StudioOne because S1 integrated with their hardware so well (S1 can import OpenTL format which Vordio can create). So they are now doing their post in S1.

Ironically this new feature I am adding also means my reconform system could now work with other DAWs (even Protools & Audition), which is good for me obviously. I actually tested it first on StudioOne out of curiosity.

This situation might also be amusing because it might lead some to get more curious about REAPER. Especially as the reconform is better (due to some unique reaper features it is just much easier to do precisely for reaper than other DAWs). Although an Audition developer contacted me and we found there may be a way to get it to work with Audition well.

Also Premiere has picked up a lot recently as the NLE for some really big projects. Deadpool was edited in Premiere for example. Some of the recent reconform enhancements came from request of people working on indie features edited in Premiere too.
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Old 08-15-2017, 09:57 AM   #28
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This is actually coming pretty soon but for EDLs it has to use a more traditional region-based approach rather the than the more fine grained item-based approach that Vordio currently uses.

It will be a lot more brutal and destructive. But that is still better than nothing.

The problem with moving only block regions rather than individual items is that you inevitably destroy overlaps/edge work at the region boundaries. This means you will have more stuff to repair than when using the item-based approach.

The item-based approach is 99% non-destructive because it can cope with complex overlaps between items. Boundaries don't matter so much when individual items can be targeted precisely.

Here's a preview of the reworked reconform tool coming soon. Basically you can compare two EDLs (example below uses two XMLs but same principle) and have it dump a change list report. This list of actions with timecodes can then be fed into a script.

It will also be slightly more painful in terms of injecting new material that didn't exist in the previous draft. My current thinking is that you'd have old project on 1st tab, new project on 2nd tab, and then the script source/destination edits material from the 1st & 2nd tabs onto the 3rd tab.

This is great news! I've used Vordio's reconform feature a bunch lately to do some pretty gnarly reconforms on feature length projects, and while your item based method great a lot of the time, I have run into many instances where it falls short and a more "traditional" region based approach would be better. Really glad we'll have the option for both soon.

Will we also be able to do the initial project conversions using an EDL or will they only be good for reconforms?
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Old 08-15-2017, 10:28 AM   #29
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This is great news! I've used Vordio's reconform feature a bunch lately to do some pretty gnarly reconforms on feature length projects, and while your item based method great a lot of the time, I have run into many instances where it falls short and a more "traditional" region based approach would be better. Really glad we'll have the option for both soon.

Will we also be able to do the initial project conversions using an EDL or will they only be good for reconforms?
The region based approach uses the same comparison engine under the hood as the item based approach does. The only difference is the way changes are applied after analysis is complete.

If it is making mistakes sometimes, it is more likely you have hit a bug, or some info in the project has got lost, or it is lacking a feature that could be added.

For instance there is no way yet to match source file names that have changed (which could happen with shots that have been swapped out for a different version, i.e. for adding VFX). Another possibility is repetitive copy & pasted temp SFX in the edit can confuse it (there are two ways of dealing with this already such as use 'first' strategy or shuffle function). There are a few ways to fine tune other things such as merging holes, altering the overlap of affected item tolerance, but these may not be obvious.

If you report problems, then I can see if it's a bug, or needs a new feature to cope with some new edge case.

You will also be able to be convert EDLs, but in practice they are pretty limited for audio purposes. Some NLEs only allow 4 mono audio tracks in an EDL. EDLs are a weird format that was originally for splicing two tapes together (with only stereo audio on each tape) to record them onto a third.
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Old 08-16-2017, 04:13 PM   #30
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Awesome thread!

When I think REAPER & FILM I think "how the hell do you get AAFs in there?"

AATranslator delivers some weird results sometimes but that's not it's fault, it's the AAF creator software which does weird things sometimes.

So what's your workflow to get AAFs into REAPER properly? Thanks!
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Old 08-16-2017, 05:08 PM   #31
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Awesome thread!

When I think REAPER & FILM I think "how the hell do you get AAFs in there?"

AATranslator delivers some weird results sometimes but that's not it's fault, it's the AAF creator software which does weird things sometimes.

So what's your workflow to get AAFs into REAPER properly? Thanks!
Funnily enough I also use AAT sometimes too when I need. I avoid using OMF/AAFs as much as possible these days but I admit that I also have the luxury of mostly dealing with Premiere & Final Cut Pro edits, so XML is pretty much fine for me mostly. I mostly started vordio because I edit video, as well as audio & also like FCPX but there was simply no option at the time (FCPX doesn't export OMF/AAF, just XML - with good reason - you can't properly represent an FCPX project in AAF anyway). Nothing worked then. Now there is the X2Pro app (converts FCPX XML to AAF) which actually works well now but at the time it really didn't. Even now those AAFs still don't open in anything except Protools. So not very standard.

Media Composer is the odd man out these days. They don't want to support any other standards from outside their own ecosystem. They are hardcore AAF only because that is their baby. AAF does actually make a lot of sense if you are only using only avid apps, because they constantly tweak it to fit their own needs (breaking other people's needs in the process).

Pretty much same attitude as apple completely fucking me over going from FCPXML 1.5 - 1.6 over night - they basically changed everything audio-wise in the XML and nothing worked any more. But at least they don't pretend it's a some kind of industry 'standard'. It is what it is. Some export format from a particular app.

My ideal situation would be people stop thinking of OMF/AAF as some kind of standard. It's really not. It's an avid thing. Which is fine if you use avid.

I came across a funny old quote from Tascam about why they didn't like OMF at the time. Same old story with AAF just a few years later.

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Old 08-17-2017, 12:20 AM   #32
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FCP X is not currently a priority for us so if we get a potential customer who is mainly using FCP X and wants to convert to Reaper then we have no hesitation in recommending Vordio.


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Media Composer is the odd man out these days. They don't want to support any other standards from outside their own ecosystem. They are hardcore AAF only because that is their baby. AAF does actually make a lot of sense if you are only using only avid apps, because they constantly tweak it to fit their own needs (breaking other people's needs in the process).
We have been devoting a large number of resources to counter these 'weird' AAFs - even the latest PT, MC and PPro ones. It is certainly one way to chew up resources that is for sure ;-)

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My ideal situation would be people stop thinking of OMF/AAF as some kind of standard. It's really not. It's an avid thing. Which is fine if you use avid.
Couldn't agree more which is why we spent over 6 months adding PTX (and a couple of other formats) which really negates OMF and AAF when going to PT.


Anyway, keep up the good work mrlimbic
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Old 08-17-2017, 01:37 AM   #33
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And we're all happy you guys are providing these tools.

Avid stuff is hard to ditch. The folks I work with are looking at replacing PT with Reaper(or anything else) for recording ADR, but it's hard to replace all the interlocking systems for ADR they have.

Two years ago I worked on a series that was editing on Premiere, but mixing and editing in Protools. During preproduction I could now consider using Reaper, Vordio and AATranslator for such a Premiere/FCPX setup. Two years go I couldn't. The OMF/AAF workflow was a clusterfuck for meta data, but it worked well enough.

Thanks to all these new tools, their makes and their users(even I managed to be a scripting monkey), I feel way less locked in to Avids sweaty, bug-infested hell tools to be a little dramatic.
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Old 08-17-2017, 09:28 AM   #34
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The region based approach uses the same comparison engine under the hood as the item based approach does. The only difference is the way changes are applied after analysis is complete.

If it is making mistakes sometimes, it is more likely you have hit a bug, or some info in the project has got lost, or it is lacking a feature that could be added.

If you report problems, then I can see if it's a bug, or needs a new feature to cope with some new edge case.
Gotcha. I am knee deep in a few projects right now, but once I have some breathing room I'll send you an email with some of the problems I'm seeing. One quick and rather extreme example from yesterday:

I needed to do reconform where the only change was a single 55 frame shot was removed about an hour into the movie. Everything before that was the same and all that needed to happen was for all the material after that shot to move 55 frames earlier. I ended up doing the reconform manually when I saw how simple it was but I through it into Vordio afterwards just to see how it would do. Vordio made over 300 changes, including deleting (muting) some material that was in the first hour before the deleted shot and some very strange edge edits. It also added back in a ton of unneeded clips that I had deleted from the project (this has been a problem every time I've done a reconform with a Vordio). Really seems like in a situation like this a more "traditional" region based approach would have been a lot cleaner
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