I do mainly game sound, VO projects and I mix films in Nuendo. For now in film, I only worked with really small film teams that did documentaries about people, and a few fiction projects.
Because the movie makers are small teams or even one man shows, they usually work 1-2 years on a project. They don’t have a lot of experience when it comes to technical details like sharing projects from Avid, Premiere, Final Cut to audio post. Let alone daily routine doing these tasks. And every time I get a project, I spend a significant amount of time just trying to import their projects. It comes as AAF or OMF, sometimes somebody did a rough mix in PT and I get a PT session. And there’s always something that’s a major pain. Sometimes it’s filenames with special characters that won’t import, in AAF all the fades the editor puts in place are rendered as separate file so I end up with thousands of small fade clips I need to manually delete, then expand ALL clips manually and place fades again. Sometimes they forgot to add handles. Sometimes the PT session has clip groups which prevents me from using AATranslator and I have to ask for a version without clip groups. But, of course, the guy that did the rough mix, isn’t around anymore. Every time, this importing process is a pain and takes valuable time. Small projects with people not used to technicalities are a major pain point and it would go a long way of simplifying this whole process. That’s why I think Davinci Resolve has made a genious move in integrating everything into one app. No more import / export if you stay within Resolve.
I sometimes ask myself it it wouldn’t be easier just running PT to get rid of all that crap. But I guess it has its own share of problems and I just exchange some problems for others.
I recently almost got a small gig for a web project from national TV, but in the end they settled for a guy that knew PT because they had time pressure and needed something quick and told me it would have taken too much time figuring out a new workflow, as they use PT and have a PT station. They didn’t want to take the risk giving the project to a guy with Nuendo under such circumstances. Even though I said with all my tools it should be no problem converting the session.
Even though we’re far away from Hollywood (Switzerland), people think PT is the holy grail. But there’s always a solution. AAF or AATranslator. It’s just a pain to find the right settings and asking for changes, in my experience.
So in essence, most people don’t care what I use. For these projects, they also don’t expect a PT session back, just the bounced WAV. But there are always some problems importing video projects. I don’t know if PT would solve those. When exchanging projects is a thing, many use PT and expect PT sessions. Take it with a grain of salt as my projects are fairly small.
In games, I never had any problems. Nobody ever asked what I use. As we deliver more finished WAV files and not such much exchange projects. When you work for large companies on AAA titles in a team, they probably use PT. But I don’t think exchanging sessions is a big thing there as you usually work on small sound bites and export WAVs, and don’t collaborate on huge movie timelines. And in my indie game experience, as long as you deliver WAV and implement them properly, nobody cares what you use.
