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Contents

The Old MajorDomo DS Discussion List
Output Frame Size
OMF Export

• OMF Export with MXF Files

The Old MajorDomo DS Discussion List

Some time ago, Avid had a discussion list using MajorDomo software for e-mail distribution. On January 25, 2006, the group was moved to Google Groups when the folks at Avid or Softimage wanted to free up a server. There is an archive of the old list here. Be advised, if you are searching for an e-mail address, many of the e-mails revealed by MajorDomo have the @ symbol removed and changed to "at."

Output Frame Size:

When checked, images larger than sequence size (such as linked Photoshop files) are masked by the sequence window, revealing a sequence-sized
window to the clip and hiding outside areas. Deselect to view layers in their entirety in the viewer. IMPORTANT NOTE: If Output Frame Size is deselected, you will be processing ALL of the pixels in the source clip instead of those just shown in the viewer.

REMEMBER NOT TO DO THIS unless you need pan and scan!

OMF Export

(Case Study)

DS version 7.6
I'm attempting to output an OMF of a film for an audio post house and I'm having troubles getting the files out whole. At this point I only have two tracks of audio (we are just cutting down a previous mix on our end) and I still can't get them out without them failing. I've tried isolating L and R and it still doesn't work. I've tried consoldating, not consoldating... Any other options besides breaking it up?

The film (1h 30min) was cut and audio was posted somewhere else. I made five cuts to the audio (more to the video but that's not relevant here). I cut the end off the timeline and moved it down five seconds. Our audio post guy will add in the music to fill the gap. Early on in the film I removed some time and put in some video to cover the edit. 5 total edits to the audio. When I attempt to output the OMF it corrupts with an error about checking my harddrive for enough space. It corrupts if I drop it on a new sequence and output. It corrupts if I output one audio track or both of them. If I remove all audio I can output an OMF with no audio (duh) but at least it outputs. If I delete all my audio and bring in the orignal full tracks (no cuts) and output, everything is fine (however nothing syncs obviously). If I output the original sequence without cuts it's fine. If I take off all DS generated effects (gain, tone etc) it still corrupts. There are no containers. There are no timewarps. Nothing but five cuts. If I cut it down to chunks, it corrupts.

Solution
If the audio tracks were originally imports from files, things get even wonkier. If you imported a 10 minute WAV file, and then made 10 edits in it (opening up gaps, or even cutting it down and only using 1 second pieces) when you go to make an OMF, DS will put 10 copies of the *entire* 10 minute clip in the OMF. This can send you over the 2GB limit in a hurry and result in a bunk OMF file.

Even if you manually consolidate the media by purging unused parts of the clip, it will just put dummy 'blank' audio in. You'd have to hand-consolidate by exporting each audio segment as individual files and then re-capture and replace the clips on your timeline.

If there are not a ton of edits, why not lay the original audio file off onto digital tape? Then capture the audio from tape and re-edit the audio clips from there. Then the OMF will only copy the parts of the clip (plus pads) to the file. There is a little manual labor involved in this, but it may be worth it in the end.

The good news (though not for you, immediately) is that OMF export was mostly re-written in either v8 or v8.4. I've made half a dozen OMFs out of v10 for ProTools houses and so far haven't had any complaints, and what used to create 300MB+ files for a couple of :30 spots are now more reasonably sized in the double-digits :)

7.6's OMF was a constant hair-puller.

(Thanks to Jason Russell, Bob Maple and Ed Fraticelli)

OMF Export with MXF

DS Version 10
(Case Study)

I want to output a MXF file for our audio guy, to accompany an OMF export but v10 doesn't have this file format; I couldn't find this in the output settings. Version 8.4 had it. This is a real PITA!

Avid removed "Output MXF" because they were too many scenarios were DS was generating MXF that Media composer would not understand. To achieve what you want you just need to create a MXF storage that is writable and have no purge option set. You can then output your timeline to Media Composer and you will create an MXF file that either MC or ProTools can understand.

(Thanks to Nathan Downing, Chris Hahn, Bob Maple and Jean-Marc Porchet)

Revised: May 1, 2009 11:09 am