Prism Sound Orpheus - Audio Media

SOLID STATE LOGICPRO-CONVERT V5AUDIO PROJECT TRANSLATION TOOLThis well-appointed conversionsolution from SSL puts the HolyTranslation Grail within reach,says STEPHEN MURPHY.THE REVIEWERSPro Audio Review Studio EditorStephen Murphy has over 20years production and engineeringexperience, including Grammywinningand Gold/Platinumcredits. www.smurphco.com.Transferring a multi-track session with edits andhandles intact from one DAW application to anotheris generally a fragile process – a process that canbreak in many different ways and at many different places.The commonly supported EDL (Edit Decision List) andobject-oriented exchange standards – most notably OMF,AAF, MXF, AES31, and OpenTL – are no doubt powerful tools.Developed to varying degrees of success by manufacturerconsortiums and associations, these standards have gonea long way towards realising the near-divine quest for freeand unfettered media project exchange.But unilateral changes, application updates, multiplestandards versions, handling errors, unsupported/mismatched features and file formats, and countlessother quirks introduced by specific platforms conspire toroutinely shift the sand underneath what those of us onthe sending or receiving end hope will be a stable andpredictable transfer process. Add to that the large installbase of programs that offer no standard EDL standardssupport (many ‘LE’ versions) and/or charge a premium toget it as an add-on, and the shifting sands start to spin.Enter the Pro-Convert V5 audio project translation toolfrom Solid State Logic.FeaturesSSL acquired developer Cui Bono Soft and its wellregardedinterchange application EDL-Convert justprior to the 2007 AES convention in New York, whereit promptly announced the first major update to thesoftware in several years.In the years since its introduction in 2001, EDL-Converthas grown to be one of favourite stealth Ninja tools of posthouses. With the acquisition and the addition of significantnew and updated features, SSL hopes to bring this powerful‘secret weapon’ – re-branded as Solid State Logic Pro-Convert V5 – to a much wider user base.Pro-Convert aims to be a one-size-fits-all tool that actsas a go-between for a variety of popular DAW and NLEplatforms. Depending on the selected source and outputtargets, Pro-Convert allows for the translation of edit points,fades, crossfades, markers and PQ data, clip gain, volumeand pan curves/automation, track names, clip names, andother session data.The program supports what I would describe as threelevels of conversion integration: proprietary, intermediary,and open standard. At the highest level, Pro-Convert canaccess and translate an application’s native session fileformat directly without the need for any intermediaryexport steps.For example, a stunning new feature in Pro-ConvertV5 is the ability to directly read and write proprietaryDigidesign Pro Tools 7.x session files (*.PTF), in additionto the previously supported Pro Tools 5.1 format.Other native session file formats supported include AdobeAudition/Cool Edit (*.SES), Steinberg Wavelab Montage(*.MON) and SSL’s own Soundscape Arrangementformat (*.ARR).At the intermediary level, Pro-Convert supports severalapplication-specific interchange formats. These formatswere created by a platform’s developer to facilitate theexchange of session data between various versions ofthe same application, within an application ‘family’or suite, or the import/export of a specific set of tracksfrom one project to another within the same application.Unlike proprietary session formats, these intermediariesare XML- or text-based EDLs, and thus expose the sessiondata in an readable and ultimately parse-able manner.Also unlike the proprietary formats, the deliberate action ofexporting a session from the timeline into the intermediaryformat is required before it can be used in Pro-Convert.The most notable intermediary formats supported byPro-Convert include Steinberg XML (Nuendo, Cubase),Apple XML (Final Cut Pro, Logic, Soundtrack Pro), SonyVegas TXT and XML, Samplitude and Sequouia EDL, andSADiE Interchange.Pro-Convert also includes standards-based EDL formatconversion using OMF (V.1, V.2, and a slew of programspecificOMF templates), AES31, and OpenTL; there is noAAF or MXF support as yet.According to SSL, when all applications, applicationversions, and interchange standards are counted, over40 different file formats are supported. Pro-Convert also >56AUDIO MEDIA MAY 2008