How To Open .ALE File Format With FileViewPro

An ALE file serves as Avid’s tab-delimited log format that passes clip information as plain text instead of carrying video/audio, containing details like clip names, scenes/takes, roll numbers, notes, plus the core reel/tape and timecode in/out fields, ensuring footage imports cleanly labeled and making later media matching more dependable thanks to identifiers such as reel and timecode.

A simple way to identify an Avid-style .ALE is to open it in Notepad and look for clean, readable text organized into labeled sections like “Heading,” “Column,” and “Data,” followed by tab-separated entries; if instead you see random symbols or structured formats like XML/JSON, it’s likely from another program, so the source folder matters, and because Avid ALEs are tiny metadata logs, unusually large files usually aren’t Avid logs.

If you loved this write-up and you would certainly like to obtain more information relating to ALE file support kindly browse through our own site. If you simply want to inspect the file, importing it into Excel or Google Sheets as tab-delimited will display the metadata in columns you can filter or sort, but these apps can strip zeros unintentionally, and for Avid workflows the usual process is to import the ALE to build a metadata-filled bin and then link/relink the clips using reel/tape names and timecode, noting that relink failures often stem from reel-name mismatches or timecode/frame-rate discrepancies.

An ALE file is typically an Avid Log Exchange file, basically a lightweight information sheet for film/video work that behaves like a spreadsheet saved as text but is tailored for editing software, carrying clip names, scene/take info, camera identifiers, audio roll notes, on-set annotations, and the key reel/tape plus timecode in/out details, and since it’s simple text, logging apps or assistants can produce it and pass it along for editors to import cleanly and consistently.

The real value of an ALE comes from how it links raw media to an organized edit, since bringing it into Avid Media Composer creates bin clips already filled with correct metadata, eliminating manual entry, and the reel/tape names with timecode then act like a precision marker that helps the system relink to the right source files, meaning an ALE provides context—telling the software what the footage is and how to match it—rather than actual content.

Although “ALE” usually denotes an Avid Log Exchange file, the extension isn’t globally locked to that meaning, so the easiest identification method is to view it in a text editor and see whether it reads like a structured clip log with columns for clips, reels, and timecode; if yes, it’s likely the Avid style, and if no, it’s probably another software’s format and must be identified by its location.