HHB Discussion Forums

[Simon Burges]

There has been a problem with importing some Portadrive 24-bit wav files into Avid Xpress Pro. Avid would import them via Quicktime rather than directly and in the process all metadata (including most vitally the timestamp) would be lost.

This is an Avid bug and will be fixed in the next release of Xpress Pro. In the meantime they have written a small OS-X application which fixes the wav files so that they can import directly into Xpress Pro with all metadata intact.

Download the zip file here:
http://www.hhb.co.uk/hhb/downloads/Portadrive%20downloads/Avid%20Fix/FixHHBWav.zip

Unzip the program (double-click it) then select all wav files in a project and drop them on the application icon. It will then fix all files so they import correctly. Files that would be OK anyway are left untouched

[mcsound]

I have found that many versions of Avid do not like 24bit. Avid Adrenalin is fine but it seems to me quite dangerous to work 24bit without absolute knowledge that the system will accept it. Maybe things have moved on since I last checked. I am sticking to 16bit until I am confident that a post production drama will not result. Any more information would be appreciated on this subject.

Best regards

Mike Cooper
_________________
Mike Cooper sound
Location sound mixer & Dubbing mixer
Southern Spain & London

[Simon Burges]

Hi Mike,

I recall the problems you had with a few apparently random 24-bit files last year, in that they wouldn't import into the Avid system post were using. I can confirm that this was the same problem that Avid are finally fixing and which in the meantime this little program will fix. The problem is that Avid doesn't like wav files that are an odd number of bytes in size. This can only happen with 24-bit files (3-bytes per audio sample) and only ones that contain an odd number of channels.

It is therefore feasible that this little program may have applications beyond Portadrive files.

Regards,

Simon