I have been wondering about this a lot. For our show, we archive our stories onto tape with 4 channels of audio. We put narration on 1, nat sound on 2, stereo music on 3 & 4.
How do I do this on FCP X?
I think the answer will be in the metadata tags.
Apply the tag “narration” to all the narration tracks. “Music” onto all the music tracks, etc.
In the timeline index, you can use the searchbox to find all the narration clips, select all, click on one in the timeline, and they are all selected. Now you can perform an operation on all of them at once. Pretty cool.
You can solo all the narration, and export an aiff file.
Then solo all the music, and export a stereo aiff file.
Now turn on all of your audio tracks, and disable the narration and the music, and you will have all of your video with just the natural sound of the clips. Export that as a quicktime file.
You can use FCP 7 or Quicktime 7 to assemble the separate files into a quicktime with four channels of audio.
With only 2 tracks, you could pretty easily select one type of sound file to pan left, and pan everything else right to output a split track quicktime.
Of course, in FCP 7 you don’t need the workaround. I can export my 4 channel quicktime with no problem.
Apple’s FCP faq says they’re working on it:
Does Final Cut Pro X allow you to assign audio tracks for export?
Not yet. An update this summer will allow you to use metadata tags to categorize your audio clips by type and export them directly from Final Cut Pro X.
I’ve just edited my second story that will air locally on our show in Seattle. I’m trying to make it work, but I have a buttload of questions for Apple, and I’m hoping they’ll keep the faith and fix it.
–> Mark
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Mark Morache
Evening Magazine
Seattle, WA