A major step in any film/video project is sound design. For rich media, often times, sound design is not an overly complicated process. There may be a few lines of dialogue, some music, and sound effects and thats it. Since the piece is short, it can all be handled fairly easy by exporting .wavs and finalizing sound in Pro-Tools. However, as projects get more complicated, so does the process.

In order to work with the sound properly and efficiently, one needs to export an AAF. Depending on what form of media and your capture method, this can require different steps. For media such as DV, HDV, MOVs, AVIs, etc . the process is fairly straight-forward. Once the edit is complete and finalized, navigate to project and scroll down to “Export Project as AAF”. This will consolidate the project and export the necessary sound components into an AAF, which can easily be imported into Pro-Tools.

If you happen to shoot with tapeless media such as P2 or XDCAM, the process gets more complicated. In the future, I am sure there will be a patch to address this issue, but that is yet to be officially announced, so in the meantime workarounds are required. If you follow the above process you will get a long list of error messages upon export because Premiere is unable to unlink the audio and video portions of the MXF file structure. Therefore, it can’t consolidate the project properly. There is a solution though, but takes a little bit of work and foresight.

Step 1 -SAVE AS!

Create a new project, otherwise you will be in a world of hurt in a matter of days, if not minutes.

Step 2 – Clean House

In order to allow Premiere to export properly, you need to isolate the audio portions of the MXF files first. The only way to do this is to unlink each video and audio clip and then delete the video (hence why you want a new project. I’d also recommend duplicating your sequence to be safe). This may take some time depending on the length of your project. It’s a daunting task, but not very complicated.

Step 3 – Add Handles

In the end we’re going to convert our audio tracks to individual wav files. However, when we do that, our audio will not be able to be lengthened. Therefore, if you need handles (which you probably do), you need to manually add them. You might have to add audio blank tracks in order to do this, so that you can move clips around efficiently. Another daunting task, but not difficult. Be meticulous about this, because going back is not easy because of Step 4.

Step 4 – Reduce and Render

If you haven’t saved as a new project yet, do so now because what is about to be done, can’t be undone. Select all of your audio and then navigate to clip/audio options/render and replace. This process may take a few minutes based on the length and complexity of your project. You are replacing all of your linked MXF media with new rendered .wavs. Once this step is complete, you will be able to find all your rendered wav files in your project window. I recommend reducing the project to nothing but your sequence and the rendered audio. It will guarantee that the export to an AAF goes smoothly. However, at that point, there is no going back.

Step 5 – Export

At this point, all you have to do is export you project as an AAF and it is ready to be worked on. Project/Export Project as AAF.

At some point in the future, I am certain that Adobe will release a patch to address this issue, but until then, this is the best workaround I have found. If you have any input into this process, please let us know.

- Brad Strickman