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Audio Dropouts in 10-track Project!
Can someone please help me? I’m not super-adept at FCP – I’ve got a 1920 x 1080 ProRes 4444 project (90 minute movie) that has to go out to HDCAM-SR. I’m using FCP 7.0.3. The audio is 24-bit 48 kHz.
I’ve set it up per deliver requirements with audio tracks as follows:
Tracks 1&2: PrintMaster Mixdown L/R (Stereo)
Tracks 3&4: Stereo M&E
Tracks 5-10: 5.1 Tracks as Follows
Track 5: 5.1 L
Track 6: 5.1 R
Track 7: 5.1 Center
Track 8: 5.1 Sub
Track 9: 5.1 L-Surround
Track 10: 5.1 R-Surround
Tracks 11&12: MOS (no sound)I rendered the entire project, turned the mixdown OFF on the Audio Mixing Window and was doing a QC playback in Final Cut prior to delivering to a facility for Edit to Tape. (i.e. I was listening just to Tracks 1&2).
Here’s the thing: at a certain point, there is a several-second audio dropout. From what I’m reading on the forums, this dropout will occur if I Edit to Tape, so that’s no good (my HDCAM-SR won’t pass QC).
The only advice I’ve heard from the forums is to do a Mixdown Render. I tried that to no avail (plus, if I do a Mixdown Render, aren’t I mixing all 12 tracks together? That’s not what I want – I already have a mixdown on Tracks 1&2, provided by my audio post house). Perhaps I’m not understanding what a Mixdown Render does, but it didn’t seem to work when I tried it either way.
Anybody else dealt with this dropout issue successfully (or have any ideas)? I gotta deliver this tape soon!
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4 Replies
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No you don’t do a mixdown render with those files. Try the edit to tape and see if it drops out. It may not as edit to tape is more robust than just playing the timeline.Does all the audio drop out or just certain tracks?
Alternatively, you could do a playout to tape in two passes. First with picture and audio 1-4 and then audio insert only doing 5-10. By turning off the other audio tracks, you will get a smooth playout.
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You could have a bad tape as well, or your HDSR could need maintenance.
I’ve never heard of just audio dropping out because of drive speed, but I could definitely be wrong.
Joey -
Thanks for the ideas. I actually fixed it after reading up on various newsgroups – here\’s what I found out/did:
I had the audio tracks in nested sequences – there is apparently a longstanding FCP problem with the render files for nested audio clips being corrupted and resulting in the occasional audio dropout. I got rid of nesting and put all my audio imported tracks directly into the final project timeline.
Also, I had to go into User Preferences and set Realtime Audio Mixing to 12 tracks (it had only been set to 8 – since I had more than 8 tracks of audio, the setting of 8 was forcing FCP to do an audio render – upping the setting to 12 resulted in no need fir audio rendering).
So, the safe bet with lots of audio tracks like this seems to be try to find a way to avoid having FCP render audio at all.
Hope this can be of some help to someone else down the line!
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Thanks for getting back with that advice. Nesting is something I absolutely avoid at all costs. I presumed you had the track outputs and patching all sorted.
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