Suggestion: Copy Offset Value to Clipboard Checkbox

Seems like I just missed the boat on the new version but maybe this could be part of a .1 update?

We frequently on jobs get AAF dailies that don’t perfectly match BWF sound roll files when doing Pro Tools field recorder guide track expand by timecode (out by a matter of samples not frames.) There are a few great keyboard maestro etc scripts floating around that use auto-align post to detect the sample offset against the AAF track, which our assistants then enter into the nudge value and nudge the BWF clips into sample-accurate sync (since this is the raw multi-track files we don’t want to rendering new media at this stage in the process) As you can imagine this is very tedious across a whole feature!

If Auto Align Post had an (even semi-secret) checkbox option to turn on copying the offset value “-1930” “+28” etc, into the clipboard which would let us then use that value as part of a keyboard maestro/applescript, this would make what used to be a very tedious task even more of a breeze!

I’d been using regular Auto Align for this process for a long time before post came out. When our supervisor first showed Auto Align Post to me he did so by saying “You’re going to want to go back and re-do every film you’ve ever done with this, it’s amazing.” It immediately became an indispensable part of my workflow, I’ve used it on every single multi-mic line since the day I got it.

Best,
Matt Rigby, Dialogue Editor.

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Thank you, Matt.

We sneaked in this feature into Auto-Align Post 2 :genie:
Check out the /tmp %TEMP% directories on macOS and Windows respectively@yair’s answer below for the correct file location.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Cheers,

Nir

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You’re rockstars! We’ll check it out.

Matt

Oh wow. I’m definitely jumping on this too to make a SoundFlow script for this.

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On Mac, is it:

/tmp/

When I select run AAP2 in visualize or render, nothing appears in that director/folder…

(I meant “boot volume”/tmp/)

The correct path on macOS should be ~/Library/Caches/AutoAlignPost/AapAlignResult.txt where ~ is your user home folder.

Also: It’s only enabled when the mode is STATIC+POLARITY.

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Fantastic! Thanks Yair!

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Phenomenal thanks Yair! It’s a tiny thing but this will hopefully save so many assistant editors so much time.

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Thanks @Nir and @yair for adding this! Just updated my KM macro to take advantage of this feature. Will need to update the demo video as well. I

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Working well in Sound Flow!

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I’m not sure this is possible with the custom UI that AAP2 uses, but is it possible to have the buttons be exposed to accessibility so they can be programmatically set/controlled? (I’m out of my depth here in terms of what that means on your end so I understand if it’s a massive headache)
Thanks!

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Hi @dustinharris ,
You’ve actually stumbled another sneaked feature :slight_smile:

AAP2 is our first accessible product.
As we’re still getting more valuable feedback from accessibility users. it’s not mentioned as a whole feature just yet.

If there’s something missing, let us know.

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maybe it’s a function of HOW SoundFlow wants to access the custom UI elements?
They don’t seem to appear visible to SoundFlow. When I log the children of the AudioSuite window, I can see all of the usual AAX plugin options, but I can’t seem to see any of the custom UI elements. (All that said, I have no idea how to make elements visible to Sound Flow):

{
  "title": "Audio Suite: Auto-Align Post",
  "description": null,
  "role": "AXWindow",
  "fullRole": "AXWindow:AXFloatingWindow",
  "children": [
    {
      "title": "PluginView",
      "description": null,
      "role": "AXGroup",
      "fullRole": "AXGroup",
      "children": [
        {
          "title": "dummy",
          "description": null,
          "role": "AXSlider",
          "fullRole": "AXSlider"
        },
        {
          "title": "Master Bypass",
          "description": null,
          "role": "AXSlider",
          "fullRole": "AXSlider"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": null,
      "description": null,
      "role": "AXStaticText",
      "fullRole": "AXStaticText"
    },
    {
      "title": null,
      "description": null,
      "role": "AXStaticText",
      "fullRole": "AXStaticText"
    },
    {
      "title": "input mode",
      "description": "",
      "role": "AXPopUpButton",
      "fullRole": "AXPopUpButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Settings Menu",
      "description": "",
      "role": "AXPopUpButton",
      "fullRole": "AXPopUpButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Plug-In Selector\nPackage: AAX AudioSuite",
      "description": "Plug-In Selector\nPackage: AAX AudioSuite",
      "role": "AXPopUpButton",
      "fullRole": "AXPopUpButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Use Processed Output In Playlist",
      "description": "Use Processed Output In Playlist",
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton:AXToggle"
    },
    {
      "title": "Selection Reference",
      "description": "Selection Reference",
      "role": "AXPopUpButton",
      "fullRole": "AXPopUpButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Target button",
      "description": "Target button",
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton:AXToggle"
    },
    {
      "title": "Key Input",
      "description": "",
      "role": "AXPopUpButton",
      "fullRole": "AXPopUpButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Processing Output Mode",
      "description": "Processing Output Mode",
      "role": "AXPopUpButton",
      "fullRole": "AXPopUpButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Processing Input Mode",
      "description": "Processing Input Mode",
      "role": "AXPopUpButton",
      "fullRole": "AXPopUpButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Preset",
      "description": "",
      "role": "AXPopUpButton",
      "fullRole": "AXPopUpButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "COMPARE",
      "description": "",
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton:AXToggle"
    },
    {
      "title": "Previous setting",
      "description": "",
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Next setting",
      "description": "",
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Plug-In Settings select",
      "description": "",
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Analyze",
      "description": "",
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "AudioSuite Handles have been disabled due to Processing settings.",
      "description": "AudioSuite Handles have been disabled due to Processing settings.",
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton:AXToggle"
    },
    {
      "title": "Render",
      "description": "",
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton"
    },
    {
      "title": "Processing Handle Length in Seconds",
      "description": null,
      "role": "AXTextField",
      "fullRole": "AXTextField"
    },
    {
      "title": null,
      "description": null,
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton:AXCloseButton"
    },
    {
      "title": null,
      "description": null,
      "role": "AXButton",
      "fullRole": "AXButton:AXMinimizeButton"
    },
    {
      "title": null,
      "description": null,
      "role": "AXStaticText",
      "fullRole": "AXStaticText"
    }
  ]
}

@dustinharris the sound flow script looks great.

I don’t have my iLok at home, but I’ll check tomorrow. I thought I saw a way to get the text box that says the offset. I’ll check again for the other buttons. It might be a child of one of those objects you listed.

1 Like

I’m actually reading the offset from the tmp file location Yair gave us, which should be a bit more robust as I can store the current date right before I hit ‘visualize’, which should refresh the offset written to the file, and as long as the file last-written date is newer than the stored date I know the correct offset has been used :slight_smile:

Hey Dustin,
I’ve further investigated this. while we ‘expose’ the UI. it looks like Pro Tools always put a big area of it’s own PluginView which for conventional plug-ins, exposes the parameters.
I’ll update as we have something fresh about this.

A possible workaround @yair suggested until we resolve this is adding a pro tools preset with STATIC to be used by the script.

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Hi Tal! Thanks for the update. A plug-in preset is a really elegant solution!

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Hi @tal just a heads up, I’ve experimented with saving plugin presets, and it appears that the Time and Phase settings actually aren’t saved as part of the plugin preset (or maybe just the UI isn’t being updated when the saved preset is loaded?) PT 2021.10.0 on Mac OS 11.6.1 and 12.0.1.

Hi @dustinharris ,
Thank you so much for all your great feedback and efforts.

Myself and @Oran from our QA are squashing those issues for the upcoming maintenance release.

Will update as soon as we have more details.

Tal.

1 Like