Apply Audio Compression to a Sequence?

[Raven Plenty]

Actually to further get back to my original post, my hope was to be able to apply filters (whether video or audio) to entire sequences. As far as I know, the only way to do this right now is to make a nested sequence, but I still wish I could simply apply filters to regular sequences.

[Stephen May]

I will likely regret trying to reason here, sounds like you guys (Ravin, Michael) are pretty serious audio guys. David has given you some very good advice. Final Cut Pro is a very powerful VIDEO editing interface. As it goes with anything else, you must be careful at the acquisition stage to properly capture both video and audio. Good video is nothing in most cases without good audio.

If you have need to apply a filter such as compressor / limiter to various audio tracks, and each of your clips require the same filter but different adjustments within them, first – you may need to step up your game at the front end; acquisition – (not likely after reading your audiophile posts).

Secondly, a good practice in this case is to assign all sequence clips from the same take (thereby having the same filter needs) to its own video and audio tracks. In this way, all of the media on say V1, A1/A2 will be from “Joey” speaking into a lavaliere too close to his mouth (just an example) – and all of the V2, A3/A4 can be of “Becky” who was simply recorded too quiet and you find that raising the compression ratio and clicking on ‘Preserve Volume’ gets you back the level you need.

By selecting the Select Track Forward tool (t) you can apply a filter to every clip in that track only, and not effect all other tracks above or below. I have been able to correct large issues that were the result of poor ENG skills. I rarely need to go outside of the useful filters within FCP6. Often, a good sense of subtractive EQ processing and yes, compressor / limiter to re-gain can get most of the worst audio field work back. Beyond that, you can take your best mono track after all adjustments, (if it isn’t loud enough) and turn off Link Selections – double click your good audio into the viewer, place your playhead at the beginning of the clip in the sequence, and overwrite the audio to a second track – as FCP sums the two tracks (as panned) to the stereo master buss – thus giving you a noticeable bump in volume for the second incidence of the same track.

Like I said earlier – from the tone of your posts, Ravin and Michael, this reply will likely not be well received, but I am truly telling you what I know works, and for that matter, what I feel is the reason to need to use this much audio tweaking in the first place. Everyone can surely admit that getting great audio in the field is not easy, but it should be at least possible to get audio well enough that the tools within Final Cut Pro should suffice to bring it to life. If not, I’d have to say that the original audio recording may not be worth Logic, or Digidesign’s Pro Tools, or a decent post house’s time.

-s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Gerry Loew]

It is advisable to work with multiple duplicates of your sequence. This way, you can easily revert back to a previous version. I disagree with the statement that Final Cut is limited in this regard. If you learn a proper workflow you will avoid the lost time in applying filters hastily and having to then remove them.