You hop from one program to another, sometimes within the same project... but for every program, there are often multiple output formats, and many of them are not interoperable. This is of course by design – each wants to keep you in their own ecosystem without reason to do any other tasks elsewhere. This results in a usually satisfactory experience, but is not perfect for every workflow. If I'm not doing any motion graphics in After Effects, I will usually use Resolve for the edit. If I want to emphasize the audio design, or need that fine level of control over the audio, I find Reaper to be my go-to. But as I mentioned at the top, it's not typically just one program- this is why it's a work flow. You move through a series of stops, each program a waypoint offering a different set of features, capabilities, and control. For this example, I am using the text-based editing features of DaVinci Resolve to cut a podcast (but you could use Premiere as well). The other producer has taken the interview transcripts, and created a 'paper cut' with some corresponding timecodes. I could honestly cut the whole thing in Resolve – I find it to be a capable Audio editor, and I know all the shortcuts and interface really well – but I wouldn't raise it to the status of DAW. I want to do the fine cutting and adjustments inside of Reaper. Of course, just because I want to, that doesn't make it so. What could this workflow look like? My initial thought was:

1. Lay out the timeline using the text-based editing in Resolve. No effects, not even any fades or volume adjustments. Just the clips in a single track in a timeline.
2. Export the Timeline as an EDL, or FCP XML
3. Convert this to a file that Reaper can read and parse (using magic?)
4. Edit and finish in Reaper
5. Profit!

In order to tackle step 3, I attempted to create a python script with the help of ChatGPT (I'm not proud of it). If you've ever tried to create custom scripts for something like this using AI, you know that it will either work the first time, or fail forever and ever, mocking you with how close it comes to actually working. I know a little bit about Pythin coding, and I could see where it was failing, but I am not smart enough to bridge that gap on my own, dear reader. What felt like it should have been a couple of rounds of iterating turned into hours in chat purgatory, coming up against the same error messages while the output just circles the target, not getting closer but always just different enough to give you hope that the next iteration will do it. Honestly, part of this was probably user error, but I tried all the prompts I could think of. No dice.

I'll back up a moment... before I began the Altman-Assisted marathon, I looked at who might have already tackled this challenge. Surely there existed a github repository that could do this? Some brilliant, benevolent coder who saw the need and sat down one night with a couple of red bulls and powered through the challenge, emerging with a perfectly formatted program with a passable UI or command-line that could take your .prproj, .drp, .edl, .fcpxml, .rpp, and spit out a project format to work in anything you wanted. Alas, this was not the case. I did find, however, a couple of paid programs:

AATranslator – this is by all accounts exactly what I described above, or at least close to it. $79 for the 'Standard' license or $249 for the ability to go to and from .prproj, AAF , omf, and protools. Not cheap! But lots of people have a lot of great things to say about it- most coming back to the fact that 'it just works!'

Vordio – two pricings here: * Standard (£80 per user) * Advanced (£160 per user) – An advanced license is required for AAF conversion and Compare/reconform. I went with Vordio, as the standard seems to have everything I need.

If this saves me even an hour per project, then it pays for itself within a couple of projects. Well worth it.

I often try to find the cheaper route. If I can just do something manually, I'll probably do it that way, before dropping any $ for a tool. I've also found that since moving to a Linux-based environment, I've become accustomed to free software that is amazingly capable- so paying or not isn't often a decision I need to make. But this was one of those situations where it makes sense.

Being able to harness the best parts of what these different editing programs have to offer, and working between them, can be a game changer. We'll see where it might falter – I don't expect it to be perfect – but I'm excited to save time using this new toy.

Happy cutting!

#editing #video #videoediting #software

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