SD2 Support [PROTOOLS Sound Designer II Files]

[brandonjp]

In addition to wav and aiff, Digidesign's audio recording software ProTools uses it's proprietary lossless format called Sound Designer II or *.sd2 files. I'm not a ProTools user but recently did sessions in a ProTools studio and was wanting to remix from the masters which are all in SD2 files...

Does anyone know anything about these...how to convert SD2 files??

This is likely the first of many batches of SD2 files i'll be fighting. I found River Past Audio Converter.... but I'd obviously like to use dMC (who wouldn't right?!)

[Spoons]

Re: SD2 Support [PROTOOLS Sound Designer II Files]

from what i can gather it is a mac format and 24-bit / 96 kHz ?

[brandonjp]

Re: SD2 Support [PROTOOLS Sound Designer II Files]

well, some improvement....i just found this, but haven't gotten it to work quite right yet...it's a problem (i think) with my sample rate, channels, etc. my files end up at half speed, double speed or simply all static...only one has come out correctly...nevertheless, my hat's off to this [color=#800080]Rail Jon Rogut[/color] guy - a genius!!

The sdTwoWav software is here:
[color=#800080]http://www.railjonrogut.com/sdTwoWav.htm[/color]

Now my only desire is to: A) get the conversions to be successful, then B) write a codec that could incorporate it into dMC
--bp

[Spoons]

Re: SD2 Support [PROTOOLS Sound Designer II Files]

there is some information here: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/developer-cli-encoder.htm on how to write a cli codec.

[brandonjp]

Re: SD2 Support [PROTOOLS Sound Designer II Files]

okay...so i've started (with my complete LACK of programming skills) and i've realized something i feel rather dumb for......

so since i'm wanting to convert from .sd2 to .wav (or .aiff) don't i need to create a dMC DEcoder instead of ENcoder? or does the fact that the sdTwoWav program carries out the conversion override the encoder/decoder question

[brandonjp]

Re: SD2 Support [PROTOOLS Sound Designer II Files]

okay...so i've given up (with my complete LACK of programming skills) because i figure it's just as quick and easy to convert via Rogut's program at [color=#800080]http://www.railjonrogut.com/sdTwoWav.htm[/color]

if anyone ever gets the itch to incorporate .sd2 files into dMC, then please let me know! brandonjp - AT - yahoo - DOT - com

[MikeCerm]

Re: SD2 Support [PROTOOLS Sound Designer II Files]

I'm a sound engineer and ProTools veteran, and I can tell you that SD2 files are both outdated, and bothersome. Because they're meant to be used in ProTools and Protools can automatically convert them, and because they're basically out of circulation anyway, I suggest you not bother with writing a CLI to support them.

Best thing to do would be to do a slightly tedious, long-hand conversion. What you need to know is the bit-depth and sample rate. Once you have that, you can just used any sound editor to open them as RAW waves (change the file extension, if you have to). You'll also have to know if they're LSB or MSB endian. I think that Mac are MSB and Windows uses LSB. Your wave editor will open them without any problem, and then you can just save them as normal wave files (like your engineer should have done if the first place).

I've actually done this very conversion in Cool Edit Pro (Adobe Audition). Once you figure out what the actual file-format, CEP/AA make it pretty easy to automate the conversion of the rest of the files.

If you do go this route, you have to be sure to remove silence the beginning of the wave, just a few milliseconds is fine. Because you're treating the file as all audio, there's a little be of meta-data in the front that gets converted into an audible pop.

[brandonjp]

Re: SD2 Support [PROTOOLS Sound Designer II Files]

yeah, I starting noticing the < .001 millisec pop at the beginning and end - the sd2 format really gets under my skin (along with a few other things about ProTools) - never the less after several testing rounds to get the bit, channels & sample rate right, I got GREAT results from Rogut's sdTwoWav - for speed and ease, I'd recommend it to anyone facing the same problem