I know that might not help everybody, but: is there a slight chance of an open exchange standard? NLE s like kdenlive, shotcut , etc… have the same problem: there is no omf aaf import… so how to get a sessions from video editors to daws and versa without compromising and having complicated workflows? i could imagine that also lightworks + blender would have an interest in that… but i guess that is also not easy to obtain? or someone just has to start and the others follow?
Posted by seablade:
[ArdourXchange] worked with A2, at least on certain styles of AAF, not sure on it’s current state with the session formats for A4 or MB3. John has been known to post here though so maybe he can confirm?
ArdourXchange support worked with Indamixx (which was based on Ardour) but it’s never found its way into Ardour itself. Remember though that both Ardour and Mixbus are open source. So for anyone building from source, there’s nothing to stop you from borrowing the relevant code from Mixbus. Only one file needs to get modified (gtk2_ardour/session_dialog.cc) and you just need to look for sections that refer to “AAF” or “OMF”. After that, I think there are about 6 sources which need to get added to the build:-
gtk2_ardour/3rdparty_import_helper.cc / .h
gtk2_ardour/import_helper_aaf.cc / .h
gtk2_ardour/import_helper_omf.cc / .h
IIRC that’s all there is to it.
John E wrote:
" Only one file needs to get modified (gtk2_ardour/session_dialog.cc) "
Actually, I just realised there’s also a modification to ‘libs/ardour/file_system_paths.cc’ (and .h). Basically, there’s a new function needed, called ARDOUR::user_doc_directory()
Just need to add my feeling here.
Ok, many of the major DAW have not the AAF/OMF import export feature implemented (Ableton Live, Studio One, Bitwig). But they are actually not made with post-production in mind. No one would think to use those DAW with video soundtrack.
Conversely musicians and artists don’t need to use Nuendo, Sequoia or Protools HD.
I can see everyday at work that AAF and OMF are “crappy” formats, but those are standard and I can’t see how it could be different in the future.
Why ? Because be able to export session from one DAW to another is not the priority for a a majority of DAW users. Musicians and artists just don’t give a f…k.
But musicians and artists don’t use Nuendo, Sequoia, Protools HD (ok, there are some exceptions!), really professional workflow oriented.
And imagine companies like Steinberg, Magix and Avid working together to make the future new fresh rock solid open source interchange session format… wow, just not gonna happen…
So I think we’ll still be stuck with AAF/OMF for a while.
To me Ardour is clearly in the court along Nuendo, Sequoia and Protools HD in terms of quality and functionnalities.
I think Ardour is a little gem in the middle of the DAW world, made by passionate top programmers.
And it’s maybe a pain in the rear, but without this feature, Ardour will still only interest geeks and curious (I wish to be wrong!) although it could interest all the disapointed pro Avid users (inter alia).
PS : I’m following Ardour for a long time now, and I’m glad to see what it became. It’s really exciting.
Hi l-cut…
Many years ago you started a feature request to see if people would sponsor AAF within Ardour (in fact it was me who was going to write it !) But from what I can remember, it attracted hardly any sponsors… 
Have you thought about using Mixbus (which can import AAF’s using ArdourXchange)? Or if Mixbus isn’t viable for some reason, maybe give AATranslator a try…?
Hi John,
Indeed, long time ago ! I remember I started a feature request and that you were able to work on it but as you said it didn’t attract lots of people…
Thank you to pointed out Mixbus, which is also a great value and can work with ArdourXchange, but I see Mixbus as a music software, as Cubase is for Music and Nuendo for post (to give a rough comparison). What I’m looking for is a DAW to make essentially post-production work, with surround routing.
And yes AATranslator is the way to deal with AAF/OMF in Ardour, I never tested it but it seems to work very well.
What could be great would be the possibility to have a special Ardour Edition of AATranslator for an extra cost when purchasing Ardour.
Cheers
Hi l-cut. I must admit, my impression has tended to be the opposite way around (i.e. among vanilla Ardour users, interest in AAF tends to be very low - whereas for Mixbus users, the demand is considerably higher).
Having said that… I think you’ve come up with a great idea and you should maybe propose it to the folks at AATranslator. Maybe they could come up with a cut-down version of AATranslator (just converting between AAF format and Ardour format). Hopefully that could get sold at a low cost - but with an option to upgrade later to the full version.
Alternatively (if Paul was agreeable) I could push an “AAF aware” branch to Ardour git. Essentially it would be the same as git master - but with some extra mods to handle ArdourXchange (i.e. the same modifications that are already in Mixbus). By switching to the new branch, anyone building from source could then gain ArdourXchange support but without it affecting anything else in git.
here is PTX import feature on Ardour5
you can use AAtranslator even on Mac and Linux via Wine. Works great. So I left windows and actually leaving mac os for… Linux ;0)
true. my way to go these days is usually aatranslator which works great on linux (as long as wine stays like it is… this is always a risk with every update ;( )