What to do with OMF files

[alphadelta80]

I used Nuendo to record an instrumental for a friend. He's going to take it somewhere else to record vocals over it. The place he's going to record the vocals is a newbie's home studio and he uses Pro Tools.

I saved the instrumental as an OMF file and gave it to the artist on a CD. I know the CD is fine because I was able to import the OMF files on another computer using a newer version of Nuendo.

How do we import the OMF files into a ProTools Session?

 

[Farview]

I could be wrong, but you might need to have a higher version of protools to open an OMF file. Either that, or there is some package that you need to buy to get that ability.

The easiest, most universal thing to do would be to export all the tracks individually, starting at the beginning of the session.

If you select all tracks and export->selected tracks, it will give you a folder with everything all starting at the same point.

Then they can take the wav files and import them into protools.

It's even easier if you just send them a stereo mix of the backing track. Then they can record the vocals and export all the vocal tracks as wav files and you can import them into Nuendo.

If they want more control, you can send them a couple stems (stereo drums, bass, stereo guitars, solo, etc...) to give them some control without having to give them 36 tracks to try to mix.

 

[dgatwood]

Typically, an OMF file does not contain any audio data; it just contains a bunch of source MOBs that reference the original files along with information about how to splice those pieces together. Without the original files, it isn't useful. You can (at least in theory—whether your software supports it or not is another question) put a raw audio blob into an OMF file, IIRC, but it's probably a lot easier just to export it as an AIFF or WAV file and send that.