AAF Export

My colleague gets h.264 (MTS & MOV) footage for editing. I want to help him to transition from FCP7 to FCPX and work with the footage natively.

Currently edited sequences is exported as OMF and sent to Nuendo, I don’t know what version.

To some extent FCPX plays nicely with LPX, which allows to export AAF, but there are some issues. Fades and keyframes are not translated to LPX and disabled audio channels appear as muted tracks. Although tracks are named after roles. Basically I’m happy with everything except the automation. People on forums usually point out that sound guys still reapply automation on their own.

X2Pro is the alternative. I wonder if it’s worth the money. LPX is only $50 more.

Also should I assign roles in browser or timeline?

Doesn't matter where you assign the Role, all instances of that clip adopt that Role, universally.

Not sure X2Pro will help going from FCPX to LPX. But if you are doing that as a way to get an AAF, then for sure get X2Pro and save tons of time and buggyness.

P.S. Unless you're doing all your sound work in LPX, then XML is the way to go.

X2Pro is better managing audio than Logic (at least for ProTools, not sure about Nuendo). I use X2Pro all the time and it works flawlessly as long as you are obsessive with assigning specific roles to all your audio. I work at a recording studio and send AAF's to the mixing room all the time and it works great as long as everybody knows what they are doing and understands the entire workflow.

I would also recommend X2Pro, especially for handing-off audio to ProTools. We regularly work with a ProTools-based sound facility and it works great for us. Our routine is simply to send them an h.264 QT movie with a rough guide audio track, and along with that we send an AAF created in X2Pro with all our sound elements divided up using roles.

X2Pro is very simple, you can even set it to show up as a preset button in the FCPX 'share' menu. It's definitely true that the more care you take setting up your roles before you export, the happier your audio people will be!

John G