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Audio editing in FCPX
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[Herb Sevush] “The other point I was trying to make earlier with Jeremy is that the designers of X did not have audio insert editing in mind when they designed X. The fact that there are so many ways to achieve the same results is an argument for the richness of the X tool set, but when it takes a number of steps to achieve something so basic, then you are obviously “working around” the designer’s intents.”
I’m sorry, but this is silly. It seems to me you are saying that adding audio is impossible.
It’s not.
If audio is in a secondary, you can achieve the exact same thing as you can in tracks. I can insert audio.
If audio is not in a secondary, the audio has to be layered. BFD.
I’m not working around a function that doesn’t exist, I am using the NLE like it was designed to function.
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Oh, I agree that if you are knocking things out of sync in X a lot you are not doing things right. Sure! But in any other NLE there are out-of-sync indicators, so it’s important to do things properly in X. Sure you can tell if something’s out of sync when you play back the footage, but is that ideal? Detaching audio or breaking apart clip items both are the same in the sense that they make the audio liable to be pushed out of sync. Which is why I said they are virtually the same, not exactly the same. Expanding audio or expanding audio components is different in this sense and I still think it’s a better practice if you want to keep stuff in sync, but anyone is free to edit how he/she wants. I think we both agreee that audio editing in X is not the monster some believe it to be.
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I’m sorry if I got it wrong but I had assumed, since no one challenged it, that this quote was accurate
i was trying to say i want to simply “cut a piece of room tone directly into the audio of an interview clip, thereby in effect “embedding it”, directly in my main timeline, without clicking into another timeline, or opening as timeline, or making a compound clip, or “detaching’ the audio. A more complicated way of saying, i want to alter the audio “track” as if it lived in a “track”, which in the main storyline it doesn’t, unless you of course “detach” it… My way of saying, the functionality of the main storyline is strange and requires odd workarounds compared to treating all “tracks” or “layers” or “lanes” as equals. Thats what i want! Equality for all clips!… X unfortunately forces a hierarchy.
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/69569
So either you can directly insert audio, like room tone, directly into the primary storyline with one click, which any other NLE can do, or it’s a multi-step process – which one is it?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “So either you can directly insert audio, like room tone, directly into the primary storyline with one click, which any other NLE can do, or it’s a multi-step process – which one is it?”
I have never seen a one click room tone button in any NLE. As far as I know, it’s a multi step process of finding the room tone, targeting the destination, and overwriting, or replacing, or whatever operation you are going to do.
It’s about the same in X. If your are trying to do this to a video clip in the primary, the room tone will be connected.
If it’s audio only in the primary or secondary, it works pretty much like tracks.
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Inserting audio one-step, overwriting audio two-step (insert as connected, remove unwanted audio).
But then again, in Legacy it isn’t exactly a one-step process either, since you have to set the appropriate Auto Select tracks previously. No such thing in X. -
Hi Herb,
In my opinion 10.0.6 was a huge update. An update after which a lot of people used it professionaly.
We had multiple PIOP, An R3D workflow that is arguably the best of any NLE because of speed and a Built-in proxy workflow, and copy and paste attributes (long overdue, but the new version is – again – better than what we had in 7), audio components (also huge, can’t remember that being in the white paper).
Those were the bigger features, there were of course a host of smaller ones that really made the program better.That being said, I agree that it SEEMS that the pace of development has slowed a bit and I would Like it if Apple would release another road map and put out another juicy feature update.
BTW a great tutorial on audio components by Sam Mestman for Anyone that’s interested:
At the end, Sam says there are no fade handles on individual audio components. This was added in 10.1.
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[Atilio Menéndez] “in Legacy it isn’t exactly a one-step process either, since you have to set the appropriate Auto Select tracks previously. No such thing in X.”
Only if you need to change them. Most of the time my default targets work just fine. i.e., in a situation where I’m going thru a show and constantly dropping in room tone on track 1 I never have to change the targets.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I have never seen a one click room tone button in any NLE.”
Wouldn’t that be a nice feature, especially if it created the tone by sampling the nearest clips.
[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s about the same in X. If your are trying to do this to a video clip in the primary, the room tone will be connected. “
But then you also have to remove the bad sound in a separate operation, no? And unless I misread the comments here, connected clips are in some ways limited in terms of EFX and transitions. So you have a 2 step process leaving you with a somewhat compromised result. I doubt you would have designed it to work this way. I know I wouldn’t.
As to the silliness of this, or how much it matters, I understand that operationally it isn’t a big deal, but as an indication of the designer’s intent and priorities I find it interesting.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “But then you also have to remove the bad sound in a separate operation, no? And unless I misread the comments here, connected clips are in some ways limited in terms of EFX and transitions. So you have a 2 step process leaving you with a somewhat compromised result. I doubt you would have designed it to work this way. I know I wouldn’t.”
Sure, you’ll have to do something with the bad audio which is a very simple and quick process in x via a number of different methods. Connected clips aren’t limited with Efx and transitions. Sometimes you have to add a secondary if you want an actual dissolve, but you can use fade handles like any other track based program as well.
As far as setting out to design the magnetic timeline, I think it’s a major undertaking that is downplayed here significantly. Was it was realeased “too early”? Blah blah blah, sort of but not really. Would it be where it is today if it wasn’t released at that time? We will never know.
I find the magnetic timeline to be beneficial, especially with more and more attended edits I have been hosting lately. It’s ridiculously fast to make changes and explore content with not a lot of penalty.
Audio could use a few more tweaks, and so could keyboard clip layer navigation (a big one for me), but yesterday I was doing real time mixed res multicam (4k and 1080) in a 1080 timeline with 18 channels of available audio, a chromakey, two stacked, keyframed, and animated layers of type, with multiple grades, with scale and crop on video layers, in real time, in full quality (best quality not better performance) SDI to a monitor, using native XAVC MXF media (not ProRes or Proxy). Not one render, background or otherwise, until export.
Having to trim or mute a bit of unwanted audio to make way for room tone is fine by me. It’s trivial, really.
It is no doubt that Apple set out to design the amount of full quality real time performance available in X, so as we have said any times in this forum, insanity beauty is in the eye of the beholder?
Jeremy
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Fair enough. It’s true that one usually doesn’t need to change targets very much. It still feels very clunky when you are used to not having to.
But what about what’s probably THE other most common operation when audio editing: changing the volume of part of an audio clip using keyframes?
Legacy:
1. select pen tool
2. set first keyframe
3. set second keyframe
4. set third keyframe
5. set fourth keyframe
6. change to selection tool
7. drag up/down between keyframes 2 & 3 to adjust volume
Note, also, that playback stops as soon as you make an adjustment.X:
1. select range tool (if audio components are expanded this is NOT NECESSARY since the range tool activates automatically)
2. drag horizontally (or you can simply select IN and OUT)
3. drag up/down (or use the keyboard)
And playback does not stop while adjusting.So in legacy this most common operation involves more than TWICE as many clicks/steps! Plus in legacy you are forced to press the spacebar repeatedly. This all becomes VERY tedious once you have experienced a better way.
Also, to adjust audio keyframes in X you simply range-select them and drag them horizontally or vertically. In legacy, to move them horizontally you need to open the clip in the viewer then use the slip tool there, where you lose visual connection to the other clips in the timeline. And vertically you are limited to adjusting ALL the keyframes in a clip at once, by using the gain adjust window.
And the fact that you can make adjustments without interrupting playback is really a big timesaver. Audio editing (and editing in general) in legacy feels soooooooo slow once you properly learn and get used to X. But unless you have actually used it, you can’t really know this. The above is just one example among many.
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