Community member Johannes Wengert sent us in this question and to date we have drawn a blank and so we thought someone else in the community may have the answer. Johannes asked…

I have a question concerning metadata in wav-files. I’ve received an AAF from Media Composer (not embedded audio, not consolidated but full copies of all wav files) and successfully imported it. Everything good so far. Now comes the problem:

I need to conform the multitrack audio (it’s a concert recording) to the rough mix from Media Composer using the “field recorder guide track” option in PT using timecode. Everything has been recorded properly with TC during the show so no problem there. Pro Tools cannot conform the tracks because there is no valid time stamp in the audio from MC - When I look at the files using the Workspace or the “Wave Agent” by SoundDevices it shows a Original Time Stamp / Start TC of 01:00:00:00 for every file

WaveAgent View - click on the image to see a larger version

The weird thing is: When selecting View -> Clip -> Original Time Stamp Pro Tools shows a time stamp for each clip. Not 01:00:00:00 but the correct one (I know it is the correct one since the show was recorded with real-TC).

Yet the “expand channels” function doesn’t find or conform the multitrack recording. How can this be? Why does PT show a time stamp in the clip view but not in the workspace or the file itself? I’m a bit confused…Apart from that we cannot figure out why or where the original time stamp information gets “lost” because we know it was there before the MC import. It’s very painful to nail this issue down since there are so many points where the metadata could be lost. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Can anyone help Johannes, the data is clearly in there somewhere as the timecode displays on the clips. If you have experience of the field recorder workflow and can offer any help then please chip in. My only thoughts are to conform the multitrack session using something like Ediload from Sounds In Sync but surely this requirement is exactly what the Field Recorder Workflow was created for?