Is OMF export what i need?

Cubase
1

Hi

well its getting close to the time i need to send my cubase project to a mix/master person who uses PT. i have looked into OMF exporting and it seems like this is what i want

i need to send him my tracks, and of course not all start at 0. once i convert some omnisphere/rmx tracks to audio they will all be audio tracks.

so is OMF what i want to do so he can drop it into PT and everything lines up for him? or is there a better way to do this?

thanks for any pointers

2

What does the mix/master person tell you…?

3

He said he isn’t sure how or what it’s called in cubase or how it works

Hence why I am asking

4

i saw your other post regarding omnisphere .
make sure all your midi VSTi tracks are rendered to audio.(OMF work only with audio )
for clean export,name your tracks logically, then export to OMF file.
if there are some options for exporting OMF just check what you need (dont remember whats going on the OMF export dialog). i think u can choose omf 1 or 2 and which audio tracks to export etc…
now u have an OMF file containing the projects audio files with time pointers to them and it can be imported to protools session.

5

Cool

Thanks so much for the help

I have pro tools as well but don’t use it, maybe I can practice with it as we’ll to see how it happens

Thanks!

6

you are welcome :wink:
Alternative way is to (batch) export all tracks from same starting measure to the end of project and sent him the files.
but in your case its better go OMF i think.

7

“omf” works great … but remember to write a “readme” file to go along with it just in case
ie. tempo and maybe a track list plus" l and r" locator range…
also you may need to think about splitting stereo files to mono as pt has an issue with interleaved files…
other than that it works great .

8

cool

thanks for the tips, i will def include the readme with that info

good tip on the stereo to, can you set that in the export values somewhere? stereo to mono tracks?

9

Im figuring some of this stuff out at the same time. My friend is on M-Powered PT, and I just exported n sent him our first OMF last nite.

First thing I noticed was, yes, NO MIDI. The drums were done in MIDI so they did not export at all. I will have to export a separate MIDI file for him to import into a project.

Panning - I believe if a track was panned even slightly L or R, it would be completely panned L or R in PT. Not a big deal.

Effects - Audio tracks exported non-destructively it seems. Did not hear any of the effects that we put on in Cubase. This kinda sucked actually, but I was half-expecting it. What’s the best work-around for this…export “selected tracks” or just a mixdown of solo’d tracks?

Is it safe to assume that Cubase is just exporting raw audio files, meaning: no automation, no effects, no eq, no MIDI etc?

THANKS!!

10

That would be correct. No mixer information gets transfered in an OMF file.

11

I had serious problems getting Mac PT to recognise Windows Cubase OMF, admittedly a few years ago.

The safest was is to mix down your separate tracks making them all the same length – it could save a lot of frustration.

12

Starting to think that’s best. OMF may be convenient for certain situations, but definitely has it’s drawbacks.

That said, what’s the best way to kinda “batch export” or export the tracks separately? Do I really have to solo each track, and then export one-by-one? Can I export the separate tracks as individual files to their own folder with maybe just a couple of clicks? Is that what “channel batch export” is in “audio mixdown” lol??

THANKS!!! :smiley:

13

Sure, you dont want your OMF turning into an OMFG. :wink:

You should set your locators, go to ‘export audio mixdown’ and tick ‘Channel batch export’, then tick each channel you need. you may need to configure the naming scheme.

Bear in mind that this wont record the send effects onto each channel. You’ll just get one track for each send effect with everything you’ve thrown at it on there.

If this is no good you’ll have to export each track with send effects on it manually, or recreate the sends on ProTools.

14

are you saying that “Channel Batch Export” ignores effects & just sends raw audio? Does it also ignore faders (ie volume/gain is unaffected?)

I used Channel Batch Export extensively recently, which recording tracks in Cubase for a project being produced in another studio using Logic Pro. I carefully switched off all plugins before exporting to make SURE they got only raw audio - was this unnecessary? (I DID notice that all tracks, even mono tracks, exported as stereo WAVs, unless I ticked “Mono downmix” in the export dialog box)

OMF sounds like a HUGELY useful tool, but so far I’ve never seen it actually work. The Logic Pro studio sent me OMF files, which appeared to import neatly into Cubase 6, BUT the resulting tracks contained nothing but static/distortion. Fortunately, they also sent me WAVs, which imported perfectly.

15

Insert FX on the channel are recorded, so you did right to disable them. Killawatz did say ‘send effect’ and these aren’t mixed in because they’re on a different channel but Insert FX are applied.

I’m assuming this all went smoothly by now for the OP, but just a couple of things to say for future readers:

It’s always worthwhile sending a small test project to the mix person to make sure it imports. For example, I sent a test OMF to a well respected producer recently and he was using such an old PT version he didn’t have OMF import!

The other thing to mention is that my chosen method of transfer is to bounce the audio clips in the project, rename them to make them easy to find, then pull them directly from the Audio folder and send them off. While doing this, I set the project settings to 24 bit usually (for best compatibility) and Broadcast Wav Files. The latter format encodes the timeline clip position in the file so they can be spotted into place in PT.

Hoho, and finally, don’t front up at the studio with a stick and expect the project to be up and running in 5 seconds… It could take PT a long while to import/convert the audio. The time taken depends on the project size, for example a recent live gig with 24 tracks took about 45 mins to import. Have a cuppa!

Mike.

16

In this case, “bounce selection” might be the better option for you.