Three steps, all on your Mac
In Final Cut Pro, select the project and choose File ▸ Export XML. Drop that file on fcp2aaf. Choose fades, handles, timecode and which tracks travel, then convert.
You get the AAF, its audio, and a report of what travelled and what did not. Nothing is uploaded — the conversion runs on your own machine, reading your own disk.
Every role becomes a Pro Tools track
Final Cut has roles and lanes; Pro Tools needs one clip at a time on a track. fcp2aaf resolves them: overlaps within a role spill onto extra tracks, roles stay contiguous, and two clips joined by a crossfade stay together. A stereo pair opens as two slots, A1.L over A1.R.
You see the session drawn before it exists — every track, every clip where it will fall — and you set the order, the names and which tracks stay behind. You can click any clip and hear it first.
Fades Pro Tools turns into real clip fades
By default fcp2aaf writes fades as dissolves, which is the one form Pro Tools imports as a draggable clip fade. A curved handle — easeIn, easeInOut — arrives as a straight fade, because that is what Pro Tools accepts as a real fade, and the report counts how many had a shape so the curve is one dialog away.
You can also write fades as volume automation, or not at all, or as native AAF properties that Pro Tools ignores. Split edits, J-cuts and L-cuts arrive laid exactly where the sound played.
Markers land in Memory Locations
Final Cut's markers arrive as locators. The three kinds each have their own switch, so a mixer can take the notes and leave the chapter marks. The kind is written into the marker's own name — [TODO], [DONE], [CHAPTER] — because Pro Tools reads one marker ruler and nothing else about a marker's kind.
Source timecode, so Spot to Original works
The timecode the recorder stamped travels inside the AAF, whether the audio is embedded or beside it, and every channel of a recording points at the same origin. That is what Pro Tools matches on to spot a clip back to where it was recorded and to pull in the other microphones of a take.
What an AAF cannot carry into Pro Tools
Some of these are worth knowing before you go looking for a switch. Each was established by writing an AAF and opening it in Pro Tools — they are limits of the format as Pro Tools implements it, not things fcp2aaf leaves out.
- Track and clip colour. An AAF carries none; Pro Tools colours each track on import. Its own AAF exports carry none either.
- The shape of a curved fade. It arrives straight, which is what Pro Tools accepts as a draggable fade. The report counts them.
- Pan on a track grouped in stereo. Pro Tools does not read it there. One channel per track — the default — keeps pan.
- A muted clip. AAF has no mute a session reads back, so silenced material arrives with its clip gain at
−∞: whole, inaudible, one gesture from being heard. - Final Cut's audio effects. An EQ or a compressor added in Final Cut is a Final Cut plugin. The audio arrives as recorded, at its clip gain.