Nuendo/Pro Tools compatability?

L

littledog

New member
I just got a call from a client who wants to know if she can do overdubs on her nuendo session in my pro tools studio.

Can nuendo create files in a time-stamped sound designer format? That way, i figure, if she bounces a rough mix of her existing files to a stereo track with the same time stamp as the original files, I can import it into a pro tools session, and then give her sound designer files to take back home to use with her nuendo, and all the tracks will be in the right place.

Is sound designer the only time stamped format? Or do other formats like AIFF and WAV have time stamping now too?
 
I'm not familiar witrh OMF. I think the only options in Pro Tools 5.3 are SDII, AIFF, and BWF(.WAV).
I could be wrong, though...
 
BWF is Broadcast Wave right? That has time stamping. OMF is a bit more detailed and can actually contain edit info. I'm not a nuendo user so I can't say for sure but I would think it could do BWF. I'm pretty sure digi won't be supporting OMF anytime soon because they don't like to play nice.
 
I'm pretty sure digi won't be supporting OMF anytime soon because they don't like to play nice.
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That's the funniest thing I've read all day. You do realize that Avid invented OMF, right? And that Avid has owned Digidesign since 1995?
 
The P.I.T.A. way...

if she doesn't mind "getting her hands dirty"... & if Nuendo is anything like Cubase... have her:

set the left marker point at the opening bar (1.1.1.0, or whatever) the right marker point at the end of each part, SOLO each track one at a time, and EXPORT AUDIO.

Each audio track will line up (when imported), but you'll undoubtedly have major silence to snip out.

Might be the easiest way--unless you can convince her to bring her computer to your place... sans monitor (?) - and you could do it there (switching between your monitor and hers)...

A place in town here makes SVGA switches that allow you two switch one monitor between two computers. Surely you could find something similar in Boston.

Some ideas.


Chad
 
charger said:
That's the funniest thing I've read all day. You do realize that Avid invented OMF, right? And that Avid has owned Digidesign since 1995?
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Then why doesn't PT directly support OMF? It's usually not in the best interest for market leaders to strive too hard for compatability.
 
Pro Tools doesn't directly support OMF because they make a ton of money by selling a tool to do it. Oddly enough, that's the same reason all of their competitors DO support OMF natively, because they make money if they can interoperate with Pro Tools and Avid systems.

No one does anything in the audio business out of the goodness of their hearts, Tex.

But saying they don't support OMF because they charge $495 for the product is like saying they don't support reverb because reverb plugins cost extra.
 
still kind of a P.I.T.A.

Just occurred to me that you really don't have to export jack s*** if you have both computers at your place. (you've probably already thought of it)

Find the audio directory (where the Nuendo audio pool is stored) and burn a copy to CD-R.

Highlight each part in the open Nuendo session, to find out the position.

Import same part into new PT session, and line up accordingly.

Still a P.I.T.A. :rolleyes:
 
Go ask around here:
http://forum.nuendo.com/cgi-bin/nuendo.com/Ultimate.cgi
or do a search.
I'm pretty sure there's a reasonable way to do it.
I could e-mail you an OMF file (or any file format for that matter) from Nuendo if you just want to try it out before your client comes in.
The s/w you speak of is for Pro-tools to EXPORT to OMF, I think you should be able to IMPORT an OMF without the s/w.
 
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DigiTranslator enables Pro Tools to import and export OMF natively. There's no importing or exporting OMF to/from PT without it. When you install it, it becomes a part of the application, and there's also a standalone version included.

Another solution is to have your client burn wave files from the session, starting them all at the same spot, and continuing through the end of each track's audio, or burning wave files of each track with names that describe their start points. If the music from Nuendo is synced to a grid or particular tempo, a short text file would easily describe the entire session. I've traded sessions back and forth with Cubase users, by lining up the start points. A lot of audio space is wasted, but in the grand scheme of things maybe the session is 1 gig instead of 600 megs... it's not as terrible as it seems.

But there is nothing "easier" than OMF import and export...
 
"Another solution is to have your client burn wave files from the session, starting them all at the same spot, and continuing through the end of each track's audio,"

thats probably the safest way. OMF I/O doesnt always work so well, in either direction, especially cross platform. Even running DP and PT on the same mac you have trouble with OMF sometimes
 
I have done what charger just stated before. It seems to work fine and unless there are tracks with little audio on them it doesn't waste much storage space. I just bounce my Nuendo tracks from the start to the end of each track (that makes them BWF's by default) then copy them to CDR and import to any other system. They will line up fine. I am not sure but if you just copy the audio pool the tracks will need Nuendo to keep the edits intact. If the Nuendo audio pool has intact tracks (edits already bounced) you should be able to convert the pool to BWF's and copy.

I don't know if I explained ok or not.

Kirk
 
Thanks for all your help.

I'm finding through further research that it seems you all are correct - without Digitranslator I've got to use crude brute force methods.

no biggie.. "crude" and "brute force" are practically my middle names! :p

(I'll be damned if I'm forking out $400 for Digitranslator!)
 
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