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AAF support


John

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Cakewalk needs to support AAF. 

The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) is a multimedia file format that allows you to exchange
digital media and metadata between different systems and applications across multiple
platforms. Metadata include fades, automation, and processing information.

Cubase supports it so does Studio One. Please support it.

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OMFI (Open Media Framework Interchange), or OMF for short, and AAF (Advanced Authoring Format) are both professional file formats intended to interchange session information between various audio and video applications.

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3 hours ago, midist said:

It may be similar to XML file in StudioOne and Steinberg.

Unfortunately it's nothing like XML. It's more like a complete file system within a file, with various object types stored inside.

The specs for the container system is here: https://www.amwa.tv/downloads/specifications/aafcontainerspec-v1.0.1.pdf

All the other specs are here:

https://www.amwa.tv/projects/amwa_projects.shtml

Given its complexity, I'm not surprised that not many DAWs support it.

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That is good in theory, from http://www.aatranslator.com.au/

Quote

Huge variations in implementation between AAF files means many NLEs/DAWs are unable to read each other's files.

So at the moment reasonable results can be achieved using:

Cakewalk -> OMF -> (AATranslator) -> AAF (or target program own format)

or

Cakewalk -> CWP -> (REAPER) -> RPP -> (AATranslator) ->AAF (or target program own format)

The second approach can preserve more information.

REAPER has free demo and AATranslator provides test conversion service. So anyone can try how good or bad that works.

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7 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

as i understand it, aaf is more aimed at video post production? (of course that includes audio, who watches silent movies these days?)

i'd be surprised but impressed, considering the huge effort it would take, and considering the current video capabilities (somewhat lacking), if it gets added to cakewalk...

The only thing the DAW needs to do is play back video.  That's about it.  You render out a low resolution reference video to load in the DAW for timing, but the AAF is used for moving the Audio Timeline between DAWs, NLEs, etc.  Cakewalk plays back the video fine ?

Adding AAF support has literally nothing to do with the video capabilities, because the current video capabilities are more than sufficient and - therefore - non-factor in regards to film post production.

The problem is that it's impossible to get the Audio Timeline from most NLEs to Cakewalk because it has no AAF support, and NLE developers aren't going to waste resources implementing OMF support - as it's a practically dead interchange format.   That's why AAF is needed... because OMF simply isn't usable for most people.  The only NLE that seems to work well with OMF is Premiere Pro CC, and most of those users will just use Audition (unless they're working on something higher budget, where Pro Tools is fairly de facto).

Outside of that, the need to round trip to a DAW is lessening as more NLEs are incorporating the functionality needed for Audio Post.

VEGAS Pro was way ahead of the curve, by virtue of its heritage.  Resolve 14 added Fairlight to that DAW.  MAGIX's NLEs are also pretty good with Audio, in addition to round-tripping natively with their DAWs (i.e. Video Pro X <-> Samplitude Pro).

AAF is necessary, otherwise the time you waste trying to move things around manually is going to cost more than the retail price of a DAW that actually does support AAF; and you'll eventually start losing money doing it "the hard way."

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  • 1 year later...

You don't need to go from Resolve Studio to a DAW for Audio Post.  You actually give up a lot of useful tools doing that.  Better to just keep that stuff in there.

I think AAF needs to be licensed, anyways.

I can see going from something like HitFilm Pro to Cakewalk for Audio Post, though, since that NLE is so bad for Audio ? 

But not Resolve Studio...

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I can understand professional mixers that want to use Cakewalk by BandLab desiring AAF compatibility.  Wikipedia has a concise overview description of the AAF file format +++HERE +++.  From this article it appears that AAF and OMF are becoming the two premier file formats to exchange files between DAWs while retaining  project data.

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I suggest looking over the docs for AAF, in particular:
- aafcontainerspec-v1.0.1.pdf
- aafobjectspec-v1.1.pdf
- aafstoredformatspec-v1.0.1.pdf

Maybe you'll get some idea of how ridiculously complex & over-engineered it is.

Couple that with no real support for MIDI tracks (the best you'll get is a single SMF file at the end), and the fact that all DAW's implement it slightly differently... it's difficult to claim this as any real improvement over OMF.
 

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OMF and AAF were designed primarily for the post production industry.  They don't support MIDI by design.

Sharing audio between DAWs is a relatively simple use case for these technologies.  It's definitely going to seem overengineered, from that standpoint.

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  • 2 months later...

It's becoming more common to only have AAF support film work. In the past, I have requested and received OMF, but I just received a project in AAF and it looks like this is how it's going to be from here on out. 

If there is a way to implement this in Cakewalk, that'd be great. I'm looking at other tools in this thread to do the conversion. It looks like I'm going to have to go that route for now. But the tool is $200. Not cheap. 

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On 3/28/2021 at 11:27 AM, Josh Wolfer said:

It's becoming more common to only have AAF support film work. In the past, I have requested and received OMF, but I just received a project in AAF and it looks like this is how it's going to be from here on out. 

If there is a way to implement this in Cakewalk, that'd be great. I'm looking at other tools in this thread to do the conversion. It looks like I'm going to have to go that route for now. But the tool is $200. Not cheap. 

Other DAWs and NLEs are dropping OMF support as it's been deprecated and considered a legacy interchange format for years.

Newer software that never had OMF when it was actually de facto is not going to add it, so lacking AAF support will become increasingly more of a handicap, especially if you [also] work in the film post industry.

Edited by Maestro
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is AAF primarily used because of dialog timing being preserved while the video is edited and sync'd to the external audio processor? or does it have a place for the background music sync'ing as well?

which to me would be less useful as most soundtrack composers tend to write/perform with the latest and greatest major edits so the music transitions are closely matched to the onscreen activities and director cues - versus being cut up and likely discontinuous a a result whereas dialog would be "tight" to the acting and less impacted across edits... my 2¢ as i don't do a lot of video on-the-fly composing/performing.

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