[ardour-users] importing & automation, digital mixer

[Jesse Chappell]

Josh Karnes wrote on Mon, 21-Mar-2005:

 > We are considering using Ardour for the primary application in our studio, 
 > and we would also like to try and get some business doing mixdown projects.
 > 
 > So we think most of the clients coming to us may be using ProTools variant 
 > of some sort (maybe PTLE), Cubase incl. SX & Cubasis, Logic, Sonar, 
 > Cakewalk, Nuendo, and we're currently working a project done in Cool Edit 2.
 > 
 > So, what's the way to import these projects?  Is there a clean way of doing 
 > this?  Even if it's a multi-step process I'm not averse to writing a script 
 > to do it.  Is there a roadmap for this kind of work?
 
The short answer is that there is no clean way to import complete
sessions from these other apps.  I don't foresee us trying to reverse engineer
the session formats for any of those applications.  The most promising way forward
is to implement import from one of the emerging session interchange formats
such as AES31 or AAF.  Many of the above applications might support
exporting to such a format.

However, in almost all of the above cases you can import the audio
files themselves manually into ardour, but you'd have to figure out their
relationship, positioning, etc.   A nightmare on a session with
any real complexity.  But possible if the recordings were live
or almost live with few punches or overdubs.

Your best bet is to start using ardour for start-to-finish projects.
Mixdown-only is going to be a difficult fit until these session interchange
formats are more widespread and supported by everyone (and ardour).

jlc