I have a few pro tools session I would like to transfer to ardourto try the software out.
Now is there any easy way to do this, due to the fact that most of the audio files dont start at the same point.
I havnt got ardour install yet will do later tonight.
As long as the format of the ProTools-Session-file is Digidesigns mystery there will be no possibility to convert it.
The only possibility I see, is to export every track in ProTools by selecting the whole track and using “export selected as file” (click on “make continuous file”) and import the tracks in ardour.
All bus-settings and plugins will be lost.
Hmmm… quite a pity that the .ptf file format is some kind of binary gibberish. But from a company that requires you to buy a certain brand of soundcard in order to use their software, I wouldn’t expect anything less…
I have a bunch of sessions that I recorded in a studio in another country last month. Luckily most are continuous takes, so the .wav files are useful on their own. But a few of the multichannel takes, I didn’t record all the channels, so the numbering of the soundfiles doesn’t match up for all the tracks.
I actually took a photo of the screen during that session, to help me remember which files belonged with which other files! Besides that, I guess the only other option is to match them up by length/timestamp of the individual files.
I simply can’t imagine what I would do in a more complex situation with punch-in/punch-outs, etc. Throw down 1K for a Digidesign soundcard just to open the sessions? No f-ing way!
This whole issue reminds me of the whole open document format war happening at the moment. I think the potential impact that getting everyone to honour a standard document format and have tools to export to that format could have a rollon effect to things like audio session formats. If you think about it, it really is completely unacceptable that any company should be able to stop you from moving your work from one program to another by not providing a way to migrate. I wonder if anyone knows whether or not there is a plan for a standardised session format that could be developed, so whether you use cubase, protools, digital perfomer, logic etc etc… there is an option to export to an xml based session file that can be recognised by any DAW (obviously features not supported by other software can’t be expected to be conformed to), but for things like timeline data, region size and plugin names and settings would be. Imagine how much more freedom and flexibility recording engineers and musicians would have!
Well, one can dream I guess
To an extent, there is such a standard format… OMF I believe it’s called, which pro-tools and some other DAWs can import/export. It only carries with it the tracks and their contents; no FX, routing or mix settings. It’s a start though, and for moving sessions between a tracking engineer and mixing engineer (probably one of the more common scenarios), it would do the trick. IIRC, there was a discussion a while ago about OMF support in Ardour but I don’t remember the conclusion.