Export Premiere Audio for Postproduction: STUMPED.

[Will Thompson]

Hello All,

It's been a while since I last posted, but this one's got me beating my head against a wall - multiple walls, really. Quickly: 105min documentary, edited in Premiere Pro 2, AspectHD, 720p. Problem: I need to send this out for audio postproduction work, and there is no simple way (to my knowledge at least) to export the audio timeline of a Premiere project, along with associated audio clips, to an industry-compatible format.

Finding a facility that has a front-to-back Adobe-Kool-Aid-drinking workflow is not an option. The film was recently picked up for distribution, but as is the case with most documentaries, we are still working with an extremely low budget and are lucky to have found two talented guys - working in an Apple house - to do the audio and video postproduction on the cheap.

I just need to be able to give the audio to these guys in an Apple-friendly format -- and also get it back from them such that I can link it back in the Premiere timeline without a total nightmare (partial nightmares are acceptable however).

Does anyone have experience exporting AAFs in Premiere? Will that work for Final Cut Studio? All of our source files are CineFrom AVIs, so I'm unsure of how an audio-only export would work...

Any help would be greatly appriciated!

Best,

Will Thompson

[Steven Gotz]

You didn't say how many audio tracks you have, but you can turn off all of the audio tracks but one (click on the speaker icon), export the audio to a AIFF file, then do the same with each audio track.

The duration of the audio should match the sequence duration exactly so putting it back into the sequence to replace the original audio is a simple matter of putting it on a lower audio track (higher number) and turning off the original audio.

[Will Thompson]

Thanks Steven,

There are 3 sequences that I plan to export separately, each with 3 or 4 audio tracks. I have no problem exporting each audio track separately, but there are crossfades and other audio handles within each track - will these also be written to AIFF such that they can be edited in another application?

[Steven Gotz]

I am not sure what you mean exactly, so let me spell out my process.

I put some fades and other effects on my audio as I edit. However, before I export my multiple tracks for sweetening in a different program, I make a copy of the project and then in the copy, I delete all audio effects before I export. That way the effects can be applied in a more professional audio application, or even, by a more highly trained audio professional.

You really don't want to export a fade that you them want to adjust later.

Oh, I should mention that I export the master audio track from the original to have on hand to remind me what I had in mind. Just in case.

[Will Thompson]

I see what you mean now, Steven, but I don't think my audio tracks are set up that way. The crossfades are in-line - so for example, if you're crossfading A to B, A will be on the same track as B, but they will overlap at the crossfade. So if I delete the crossfade, then that's effectively deleting the handles of the fade in and fade out. So the sound guy wouldn't have enough audio leading and trailing the in-points/out-points of the tracks to recreate the fades.

Does that make any sense?

Thanks again,

Will

[Ben Winter]

Originally Posted by Will Thompson

I see what you mean now, Steven, but I don't think my audio tracks are set up that way. The crossfades are in-line - so for example, if you're crossfading A to B, A will be on the same track as B, but they will overlap at the crossfade. So if I delete the crossfade, then that's effectively deleting the handles of the fade in and fade out. So the sound guy wouldn't have enough audio leading and trailing the in-points/out-points of the tracks to recreate the fades.

That's correct. You can export each track individually after deleting the crossfades and pulling out the handles, or move every audio clip to a single individual line and apply the fades to the beginning and end of each adjacent track, so when you delete them the handles are still there.

You can't have two tracks separately existing in the same timeframe in an AIFF file, unless they are on different stereo channels.

[Steven Gotz]

Yes, it does. But you could always just send him 100% of the music untouched by editing and let him do his job based on your sample, I suppose.

Or, he can use your fades and just do his job with what you send him.

[Will Thompson]

I see how it could work if I break up each audio track into two separate tracks, A-B style, and pull out the handles for the fades. But this is mostly for the dialogue track of a pretty long documentary and there are LOTS of cuts - I'm afraid to do that much manual mucking at this point. I'll try it out on a copy and see how long it takes to get through one act.

I haven't tested this, but what if I import the project into After Effects. Would that separate out all the tracks, including handles? The problem there would then be associating all the sweetened audio to the tracks in the Premiere project - or AE for that matter.

Thanks for your help guys. I can't help but be dissapointed in Adobe, though, for not considering (barely) larger workflows like this - how is Premiere supposed to compete with FCP and Avid if there's no way to send your audio to someone working in a professional studio? I guess they're supposed to buy the Adobe suite? Seems like a catch-22 to me.

[Will Thompson]

After doing some more reading, it looks like the Automatic Duck product called Pro Export PPro does exactly what I need. However, it has conveniently been discontinued. Is there any equivalent to this application, through other 3rd party software perhaps?

Did some googling and came up with this in the Adobe Forums: http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.3bc3f80c

Has anyone done anything similar? or had any success with AFF export/import?

Thanks for all the replies.