AAF (Advanced Authoring Format file)

[Michael Heavner]

Hey Guys! I am getting more and more request from clients and fellow session players to send/share my projects as AAF. Is the AAF export option something Cakewalk is working on? Or, does Cakewalk have the option and I'm missing something? Thank for everything Cakewalk by Bandlab is doing!

Respectfully,

-Michael Heavner

[msmcleod]

Cakewalk only supports OMF export, which is the format that preceded AAF. 

AAF is ridiculously complex and over-engineered, and unfortunately offers little over OMF for audio projects (it was primarily developed for video).  What's more, every DAW that does support AAF has implemented it differently, so there's no guarantee that an AAF file from one DAW will even import properly in another.

There's currently only 2 ways to get AAF files from a Cakewalk project:

1. Export it as OMF from Cakewalk,  then either import that into another DAW that supports both OMF/AAF and export as AAF from that DAW.
2. Export it as OMF from Cakewalk, then use AATranslator to convert it to AAF.  Note that you need to purchase the enhanced version to support OMF/AAF.

FYI - this has been discussed before... this was my reply:
 

 

[SuiteSpot]

I would never recommend spending $199 to purchase AATranslator if converting OMFs from Cakewalk/Sonar is all you wanted it for.
Given the little amount of detail in those OMFs it would be better to just render stems.
On a brighter note, we have spent a little time developing a function to read native Cakewalk session files but unfortunately, something else more important always seems to drag us away from finishing it - though it is on the (long) list of things to do.
However, in the meantime my recommendation is a great little Reaper script for converting .cwp files to Reaper from azslow3
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=202667&highlight=Sonar
So in the meantime, that and a demo version of Reaper gives you a very detailed RPP file which AATranslator can convert to pretty much any format you like.

[msmcleod]

42 minutes ago, SuiteSpot said:

I would never recommend spending $199 to purchase AATranslator if converting OMFs from Cakewalk/Sonar is all you wanted it for.
Given the little amount of detail in those OMFs it would be better to just render stems.
On a brighter note, we have spent a little time developing a function to read native Cakewalk session files but unfortunately, something else more important always seems to drag us away from finishing it - though it is on the (long) list of things to do.
However, in the meantime my recommendation is a great little Reaper script for converting .cwp files to Reaper from azslow3
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=202667&highlight=Sonar
So in the meantime, that and a demo version of Reaper gives you a very detailed RPP file which AATranslator can convert to pretty much any format you like.

I guess the point is, if the OP's customers are specifically asking for AAF files, then it might be worth the investment... especially if its something he could charge extra for.

Interestingly, the main reason why the enhanced version of AAF is so much more expensive than the standard version, is down to the amount of effort in providing OMF, AAF and ProTools support (and presumably keeping it working).  The developer alludes to this in one of the links I posted.

But I agree, individual track exports/stems & MIDI file export are far more useful, and they'll work with everything.

[Michael Heavner]

Thank you!