OMF export issue for sound mixing

E

eddiebaby

Member
Hi everyone. I hope someone might be able to help me.

I am trying to finalize my sound mix on my film and to do so I must export an OMF file for my sound guy to mix in a program called Sonar.

I use CS5.5 and when I go to export an OMF file I go through the required steps, I can only encapsulate if I trim the files otherwise it tells me the file will be too big which is fine because I can extend the handles by a few seconds or frames and it's all good. However, when my sound guy tries to import the OMF into Sonar, it crashes. I have tried every which way I can export it, Encapsulated, separate files and so on with the same effect each time. He cannot open the file. He is a pro so I doubt its a hardware issue on his end.

The only thing which for the life of me I cannot work out how to do is to change the format from .aiff to .wav. There is a drop down menu titled format with .aiff selected so I presume it can be changed, but it is greyed out and will not let me change it. Regardless of the different combinations of options I select in the other menus.

If anyone has had any experience similar to this or knows anything that might help I would really appreciate the help. My premiere is drawing close and I need to get this done, I will even credit you if you can help out :) .

Thanks
 
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Hello - Usually if the NLE says the OMF is too big, you can split the timeline up by tracks. Therefore, you can duplicate your sequence so that you might have 2 or even 3 sequences. Then delete audio tracks from each one. Export each sequence as an OMF and your sound guy can import 3 smaller OMFs instead of 1 large one.

In regards to Sonar crashing because of it, I don't know, but last week I received an OMF from Premiere, imported it into Pro Tools and noticed that there was nothing even in the OMF. There's some funny business going on with Premiere's OMF/AAF export.

Try exporting smaller OMF and hopefully it won't crash Sonar.

In regards to the conversion from .aiff to .wav -- was your audio ingested as AIFF or WAV? How did you record your audio? Single system? Dual system? Is the audio married to the video file?
 
First off, thanks so much for the response ryan.

OK, I will give it a go exporting 3 different OMFs with fewef tracks.

to answer your questions,

Was ingested as wavs

recorded using an H4N with a shore field mixer
the audio is not married to the video except on a very small number of exceptions.

Thanks :)
 
Your post sound guy should be able to convert all the AIFs into WAVs upon import. Is there a specific reason why your sound guy is requesting .wav files? You can certainly complete the job with AIFs and not WAVs.
 
I guess a question I forgot to ask the OP is how long is the timeline? 1.5 hours? 20 minute short? Does Premiere support the "Avid Edit Protocol" that allows greater than 4GB AAFs/OMFs to be generated? The only NLE that I know that has this option is Media Composer.
 
eddiebaby said:
Okay, thanks guys for the help. As far as I can ascertain, Sonar cannot import aaf files.

my sound guy told me this error report came up omfi_err: null object not allowed.

According to this https://discussions.apple.com/thread/719217?start=0&tstart=0 getting rid of the fades and transitions should resolve the issue.

gonna try it out and I will get back to you.

thanks again :)
Click to expand...

Any luck or workarounds? I have a feeling I might come across this in the near future.
 
I have had no issues exporting entire timelines out to OMF for ingestion by Sonar (which my sound guys uses as well). but the longest project has been 30 minutes. This is from both 5.5 and 6.
 
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