About AAF Conformation

T-SBANIM-006-004

In this video, you will learn what AAF conformation is and means in Storyboard Pro.

Material

To complete this topic, you will need the following from the sample material you downloaded:

• MO-SBANIM-006/conformation aaf.pdf

Author

• Marie-Eve Chartrand
• Director of Customer Success
• toonboom.com

In Storyboard Pro, you can export your Storyboard project to Media Composer, an Avid third party editing software.

Media Composer has its own compatibility with the AAF. It does not follow the AAF Edit Protocol. Since Storyboard Pro specifically targets Media Composer for conformation, the AAF exported by Storyboard Pro will not necessarily produce good results in other software used to import AAF.

Guidelines

Media Composer has a wide variety of features or effects not compatible with Storyboard Pro. For a successful conformation, the AAF project must respect some rules and guidelines.

• The AAF sequence imported in Storyboard Pro should have been originally created in Storyboard Pro.
• The structure of the composition (number of video tracks and order) in Media Composer needs to respect the structure of the AAF originally exported from Storyboard Pro.
• All clips representing a panel need to be on the same video track. Other tracks will be ignored on import.
• Storyboard Pro exports the camera motion using a 3D Warp effect on the clip. You should use the same pattern if you want to have camera motion on the new clip when conforming back the AAF.
• Metadata associated to original clips exported from Storyboard Pro must not be altered.
• In Media Composer, images should be imported using the Import Media options (not Link to Media). In the import settings of Media Composer, Resize image to fit format raster should be used for the Image Size Adjustment option.
• New clips and new layers should use image formats compatible with Storyboard Pro.
• New sound clips should use sound files compatible with Storyboard Pro.
• If you want to add new sound files in Media Composer, stereo sound files should be added to stereo tracks and mono sound files to mono tracks.

Transition Compatibility

Not all Storyboard Pro transition types are supported by Media Composer. When a transition is not supported, it will be converted at export time and a warning message will be displayed. Here are transitions not supported by Media Composer:

• Slide-in and Slide-out transition are converted to dissolve.
• Only 12 o’clock (0 degrees) clockwise is supported by Media Composer, therefore, all clock wipes are exported as 12 o’clock clockwise.
• Media Composer only supports horizontal wipe, vertical wipe, or corners wipe (45, -45, 135 and -135). All edge wipes with custom angles will be converted to the nearest wipe supported by Media Composer.