This IS the Avid L2: [Avid-L2] Re: [Editing-List] Autodetect Broadcast Wave Mono Groups import setting?

Friday, August 5, 2016

[Avid-L2] Re: [Editing-List] Autodetect Broadcast Wave Mono Groups import setting?

Regardless of the settings, if you import WAV files into MC and they have underscore followed by number, MC will assume they belong together by track.

Try naming a file Track_10.WAV and importing. You'll notice it shows up as 1 audio track on A10.

Now if you import something like Track_01.WAV through Track_10.WAV, it will show up as a single clip with A1-A10. This is often bad news for editors trying to load things like VO, where audio engineers might label them this way.

Remove the underscores. Then each file will import to its own clip. This underscore business has been in MC since at least MC v4, and probably goes back further.

The stereo track loading happens because MC thinks it's smart by seeing tracks labeled by the default Pro Tools output setting (.L, .R, .C, .Lfe, .Ls, .Rs). Any combination there will give you a single clip on loading into MC. So your .L and .R tracks load as a single stereo clip. MC isn't smart enough to change the name of the clip to remove the extension though, so the clip name is whichever it saw first.

Your last question is about exporting WAVs from MC? I do not think MC writes out broadcast WAVs in any circumstance. So trying to output WAV with TC is not possible with MC. You can, as you've cited, change TC (or in this case add TC) with Wave Agent or one of Bouke's apps. Curious though - it sounds like you're taking broadcast WAVs with TC into MC and trying to output broadcast WAVs with TC. The original files should work fine in this case, I would think. Unless you're doing some kind of editing to them in MC. What's the purpose for wanting to spit out WAVs after they're in MC? I would suspect that not having broadcast WAV output from MC as a feature is probably due to the fact that not many people need it, so they decided to leave it out. So many weird discrepancies like that between features of Pro Tools and MC.

In Pro Tools, you can easily do what you're after. Import the WAVs, drop them onto the timeline and make any edits necessary. Then consolidate each track into a solid file and export them - these will have the time code of the timeline embedded. The consolidate basically writes a new file and since PT always makes broadcast WAVs, it assumes (correctly) that you'd want the timeline time code as its birthday.

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 8:18 PM, John Moore bigfish@pacbell.net [Editing-List] <Editing-List@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I received what look to by typical mono mix stems .wav files from a Protools mix session. When I go to import a single stem I end up with a stereo track that appears to be to mono stems with the same name as the original mono mix stem. It gets weirder when the tracks for say the full mix which are named the same for both channels with the difference being the suffix.
To be specific when the "Auto Detect Broadcast Wave Mono Groups" is checked on if I import "Santa Rosa ST MIX.L.wav" I end up with a stereo track where both tracks are labeled "Santa Rosa ST Mix.L.wav" If I do the same with the "Santa Rosa ST MIX.R.wav" I end up with a stereo track with both tracks also labeled "Santa Rosa ST Mix.L.wav". Turning off the feature and I get the normal mono tracks I would expect to get. I'm not sure how Avid detects these Broadcast Wave mono groups, is it based on the tracks names and why would both the right and left stems come in as stereo tracks with both tracks labeled Left.

That was the issue I first noticed then today on a different project at work I exported an audio only .mov using direct out of an standard 8 channel 5.1 LtRt mix stems. I ended up with a .mov with 8 discrete tracks that I used QT Pro 7 to change the track assignments from mono to their corresponding proper assignents of L,R,C,Lfe,Ls,Rs,Lt,Rt. Then I ran Videotoolshed's Audio Map program, which I think I called QT Map in a thread earlier this week, and that produced 8 .wav stems each with a suffix of _1 thru _8 which correspond to the individual tracks from the audio only 8 channel QT .mov. When I ama link media to any one of the individual clips I end up with an 8 channel clip. I went and made sure to uncheck the autodetect broadcast wave mono groups in the import settings but that seems to have no effect on ama linking.

As was suggested a few weeks back in order to change the time code on the wav files to match the sequence time code I downloaded the free Wave Agent program. When I changed the time code on the first "_1" file it actually changed the time code on all the individual wav files. When I bring any one of the 8 wav file into wave agent they show the correct modified time code and the Channels Column shows "8(MONO). I'm curious how these wav files are all linked. Is it based on file name or is there something in Audio Map when it strips the 8 discrete channels from the .mov to create 8 .wav files that creates metadata embedded in each of the files that links them together. I haven't had a chance to check much with the resulting files but they do import and link back into Avid with the correct starting time code I modified using Wave Agent so everything is working but I'm curious if Avid has a bug detecting Broadcast Wave Mono Groups and does it base it's imports and linking on just the file names or some other metadata present in the wav files?

When I originally stripped out the wav files using Audio Map the files all show a 10 hour something time code when brought into Wave Agent. That's where I changed the start time code to match the sequence start of 00:59:00:00 24 frame code. I have no idea where the original 10 hour something code came from as the QT 8 channel .mov that was used by Audio Map had matching time code to the sequence.

So many little metadata devils to line up. It would really be nice if Avid would just export direct to .wav with matching timecode to the sequence. It does export but all the .wavs start at zero time code in my experience. Does anybody know of a way to make Avid do what I need?

From the thread a few weeks back here is the link Jim F. posted for Wave Agent:

Mac and Windows. More info, link to app and manual here:
http://www.sounddevices.com/products/accessories/software/wave-agent

John Moore Barking Trout Productions Studio City, CA bigfish@pacbell.net