The following terminology applies to field recorders in general:
|
Information embedded in a media file. This may include scene, take, sample rate, bit depth, external clip names, the name of the videotape from which the media file was captured, and even timecode values.
|
|
|
Information embedded in Pro Tools sessions or other sequences, including what files are used, where they appear in a timeline, and automation.
|
|
|
For AAF or OMF sequences, information about automation or clip-based gain.
|
A field recorder, also known as a hard disk location audio recorder, is a device used by a production sound mixer during a film or video shoot to make a multichannel recording of multiple microphone inputs recorded simultaneously.
Depending on the capabilities and settings of a field recorder, multichannel recordings can include one or more tracks (up to 32) and are saved as monophonic or polyphonic audio files on a hard drive, DVD-RAM, or Flash media.
Multichannel recordings made by a field recorder should be encoded with start and end time stamps representing SMPTE timecode or linear timecode (also known as LTC). Most field recorders also allow manual entry of additional types of metadata, including Channel Name/Number, Scene, Take, Circled Take, User Bits, and more.
Pro Tools can import monophonic and polyphonic files and certain types of metadata entered on field recorders.
For each multichannel recording made by a field recorder, the production sound mixer may designate a production sound mix comprising either a representative channel or a mixdown of other selected channels in the recording.
The production sound mix is intended to function as a general reference of all audio recorded within an individual multichannel recording, and is typically used by the Avid® video editor when assembling a sequence.
A WAV file containing a BEXT chunk is known as a Broadcast WAV file (or BWF) while still maintaining a .WAV file extension. Broadcast WAV files can contain both BEXT and iXML chunks, or a BEXT chunk by itself.
BEXT and iXML chunks are sets of metadata found within a Broadcast WAV file.
The following caveats apply to handling of imported metadata from field recorders.
|
|
The BEXT specification as described here adds some features that conform to standards used by Avid video editing applications and Pro Tools—specifically, Description metadata is interpreted differently.
|
|
|
When you import multiple files in which the same metadata are populated with different values, Pro Tools imports the value that is first present based on the following order:
|