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Audio in FCP (aiff vs. wav)
Hello, I have a quick question about audio formats in Final Cut Pro. I almost always use .aiff audio files in Final Cut. However, I am working on a short film that recorded its sound as .wav files. Since I received hundreds of 48K .wav files from the shoot, and the FCP manual said .wav files worked fine in Final Cut, I decided not to go through with the trouble of converting them all. I used the “merge clips” function to sync the sound to the video files. I have since heard on another forum (RED Camera) that .wav files should not be used in FCP because they are more taxing to the CPU. Does anyone have experience with this? So far, they’re not giving me any trouble. No sync drift or anything. Should I convert all the .wav files into .aiffs? If so, can I just make the audio clips offline, then relink them to the converted .aiffs or will that create problems? I’d hate to have to sync all the clips again.
Thanks a lot,
Conor -
2 Replies
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.wavs are perfectly fine. All of our broadcast mixes come back from the audio production house as .wav’s. we’ve delivered something like 80 HD network episodes so far. Haven’t noticed any difference in computer performance at all with wavs vs aiffs
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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WAVs and AIFs are essentially the same thing, just in different wrappers.
They were originally written to take advantage of the different processor types (Intel vs. Macs) but both use PCM compression so it was something to make life easier for the computer. The sound comes out the same.
But the days where that mattered are long gone and both formats work equally well on either type of chip now.
The bottom line is, if the program can work with either kind (as Final Cut does) it really makes no difference which one you use.
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