PC to Mac file compatibility

earthboundrec

earthboundrec

Member
I recorded a session on my PC laptop. I saved each track of each song individually to my external hard drive and I'm going to be mixing at a different studio. The studio Im doing the mixing at runs Protools HD on Macs. Will the Mac be able to read the folders on my hard drive or is this hard drive just formatted for windows? Will I have to convert the files from .wav to .aiff to run in PT on a Mac? Thanks for the input.
 
If the drive was formatted in FAT32, any mac should read it just fine.

I think if it was NTFS formatted, you may have problems.
Apparently macs can READ NTFS drive but not WRITE to them, so pulling the files off may work OK, but you won't be able to write any changes back.

Macs can read .wav files just fine.
 
You need to do some prep on your tracks before you bring the files to the studio. What is most likely on your hard drive are many small snippets of audio that you have arranged very carefully in your DAW. It will take forever to sort those out on the studio machine.

So what you need to do is to consolidate each track of audio into one continuous file. All the tracks need to have exactly the same start and end point, and need to be labelled clearly.

In other words, if your song has 32 tracks, you need 32 tracks of consolidated audio, one for each track. So what you'll actually be bringing to the session is a bunch of tracks of audio in WAV or AIFF format, that you guys can import into PT and line up.

This is the fastest and easiest way to do this. It sounds like you've already done this, but I just wanted to go into detail in case you hadn't. Macs will indeed read WAV or AIFF files just fine.
 
SonicAlbert said:
You need to do some prep on your tracks before you bring the files to the studio. What is most likely on your hard drive are many small snippets of audio that you have arranged very carefully in your DAW. It will take forever to sort those out on the studio machine.

So what you need to do is to consolidate each track of audio into one continuous file. All the tracks need to have exactly the same start and end point, and need to be labelled clearly.

In other words, if your song has 32 tracks, you need 32 tracks of consolidated audio, one for each track. So what you'll actually be bringing to the session is a bunch of tracks of audio in WAV or AIFF format, that you guys can import into PT and line up.

This is the fastest and easiest way to do this. It sounds like you've already done this, but I just wanted to go into detail in case you hadn't. Macs will indeed read WAV or AIFF files just fine.
Click to expand...


Yeah, definately took care of that. I just export the tracks to disk as .wav files with starting point 0:00. That way even if a track starts in the middle of the song it will just be just still fit in it's place correctly. I'm really not a protools fan, I find it counter intuitive, so I record to what I work with best, (tracktion 2) and then find a pro tools nerd to engineer the mix, and I just tell them what I want done. It's a fun way to get things done. Usually the studio we use runs PT LE on a Digi002 through a PC. But, I guess that one is booked so they gave us their main room which runs PT HD on Macs.
 
The easiest thing to do, assuming your DAW supports it, is to export an OMF file. Export two files: one with everything, one with all the automation and stuff disabled just in case. That should preserve the bulk of your edits and stuff in such a way that it is almost like you're opening a native project created by the destination DAW.

As for the audio material itself, any file format a PC supports, the Mac should also be able to handle. (The reverse, however, is not true. There's no good way for a PC to read a SDII file because of the lack of support for multi-fork files....)
 
dgatwood said:
The easiest thing to do, assuming your DAW supports it, is to export an OMF file. Export two files: one with everything, one with all the automation and stuff disabled just in case. That should preserve the bulk of your edits and stuff in such a way that it is almost like you're opening a native project created by the destination DAW.

As for the audio material itself, any file format a PC supports, the Mac should also be able to handle. (The reverse, however, is not true. There's no good way for a PC to read a SDII file because of the lack of support for multi-fork files....)
Click to expand...

I don't even have any edits to preserve. These are just raw tracks. Completely unmixed. There's a studio I like to use in town for recording, because the room is fricking amazing. It's a bring your own gear studio, just a control room, vocal booth and live room, The rent is like $10/hour which is great. I just bring in a basic setup to get the tracks recorded then take it to another studio that has all the toys, and great plug ins and such. So yeah, these are just completely dry, unmixed, center panned 24/48k tracks.
 
You're going to be fine. As long as all the tracks start at the same point, and they are in WAV, everything will work out just fine. Pro Tools can read wav.
 
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