audio in FCPX

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Michael Gissing] “, I find FCP7 terrible for audio.”

Here, here. Audio in fcp7 is tough. Workable and somewhat controllable, but tough.

Fcpx’s multichannel audio mixing is pretty bad to non existent, as you can’t attach audio to anything but the primary, so if you need something else, you need to make gregarious arrangements to do so. You can lose sync really easily in a timeline where “sync is king”.

Fcpx also has some really powerful and welcome audio features. If you only have two audio source channels on a piece of video, and all you need to do is choose one, fcpx is pretty cool.

When you have something like 6+ channels of audio that you constantly need to juggle, fcpx is pretty goofy. A few interface updates are needed, expanding audio in to multiple channels would be a good start, and an easy to use loop function for fx. I haven’t checked 10.0.3, but the loop function didn’t work very easily.

I feel like some capabilities in X are playing a big game of hide and go seek.

[Carsten Orlt]

I do not understand this argument. The only missing in X are the ‘out of sync’ indicators.
Audio clips in 7 are kept in sync by their first frame in relation to the video they belong too (if they are linked to video). Kind of exactly like in X.
The whole idea of the ,’magnetic’ timeline I think is the premise to avoid the problem of throwing things out of sync because in 7 all tracks need to be adjusted together to avoid sync issues. That’s by the way the reason why asymmetric trimming was invented in the first place. Take the tracks away and link individual audio clips to single video clips makes it impossible to throw anything out of sync. Yes sync indicators would be nice but strictly speaking they are not necessary.
So nothing is taken away, it just works differently and common editing task need a different approach.
If you like the different approach is up to the individual, but it is very often just not true that X has made certain task impossible or really complicated.
For the record I disagree with Bill that the strength of the magnetic timeline lies in the pre-assembly of building blocks. I see the strength in the timeline that I can edit e.g. interviews where they are in the timeline rather than throwing them to the back of a timeline so I can avoid making gabs or jump through hoops not to throw anything else out of sync. Add to this the ability of subframe audio editing and modern high end audio plugin support makes X much better for audio editing for me. Mixing is another issue, but I leave that to the pros in that field.
my 2 cents
Carsten

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Carsten Orlt] “Yes sync indicators would be nice but strictly speaking they are not necessary.”

There’s a flaw.

Let’s say you have a clip in the primary, above that you have a connected clip with 6 channels of audio. You need to adjust the mix of the six channels of the connected clip’s audio.

The only way to do this is to break apart as fcpx does not allow access to all channels in the context of the timeline unless you break apart.

Now, your video and your audio from that clip are connected, separately, to the primary timeline with their own connection points.

Now slip/roll/move the video only of the connected clip. The corresponding audio is now out of sync, with no indicator and no easy way to get in back in to sync without manually putting the clip back in sync, and then compounding the result.

[Carsten Orlt]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Now slip/roll/move the video only of the connected clip. The corresponding audio is now out of sync, with no indicator and no easy way to get in back in to sync without manually putting the clip back in sync, and then compounding the result.”

2 solutions I see:

A. Compound the connected clip even if it is just a single connected clip. Break apart audio in the new compound, adjust levels, jump out of compound, which now still stays connected to the primary and behaves as a single connected clip. I know that that doesn’t give you level adjustment in context, but you can now adjust, than check in context. But honestly how likely is it that you want to do adjust in context? Most likely the audio has main tracks and additional which you want to fade out/down if they disturb the main audio. But ok I accept that this might hinder you.

B. After breaking apart in main project, adjusting the levels, compound the result again before you adjust the video (slip/slide etc) Again there is a a step that wasn’t there before in 7, but I do to see this as a deal breaker, just a workflow adjustment.

Might be for you though?

Cheers
Carsten

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Carsten Orlt] “2 solutions I see:”

Yes. There are “workarounds” not really solutions. Another is to open the clip “in timeline”, but then again, you lose the greater timeline context.

For example, I am cutting spots in FCP7 right now that have 6 channels of audio.

1 mono mix
1 Boom
4 separate Lavs for four separate actors.

I usually don’t use the mono, so I am really working with 5 channels at once. I need all of those in context for the edit, and in FCPX, I’d need some of those as primary and some as secondary.

I also need the relationship of all of the audio channels to each other so that I can properly mix the levels, or turn off what I don’t need, keep on what I do need, or some combination therein.

With X, this process is rather convoluted. I have to be very careful when breaking apart a secondary to NOT MOVE ANYTHING while I adjust the audio levels and then recommend the clip.

Let’s face it, sometimes things happen, a clip gets moved, and I didn’t see that I made a mistake. FCPX gives me zero feedback that this mistake happened. In FCP7, I get immediate feedback with sync markers, and then I have simple right clickable tools to fix the sync if I want to.

FCPX needs this functionality. I am not perfect.

A “good” solution would be to allow me to keep the six channels of audio broken apart, but attached to their parent video/secondary clip, so if I moved the parent video, the broken apart audio stays attached. Or, if I could simply expand the audio (like you can now in FCPX with control-s) but it showed me ALL of the separate audio channels instead of a mix down of all of them, I’d be happy as well.

Giveth the options, don’t taketh away. Or whatever.

Jeremy

[Richard Herd]

Do you sync them first, like mutticam? re:

[Jeremy Garchow] “For example, I am cutting spots in FCP7 right now that have 6 channels of audio.

1 mono mix
1 Boom
4 separate Lavs for four separate actors.”

[Richard Herd]

[Jim Giberti] “for instance, for quickly editing dialogue and VO work, ducking music to voice in realtime, and even grouping audio for “track wide” EQ and compression”

This has been my experience too. I’m not understanding what the original poster meant by “serious audio work.”

I’ve always worked like the following, in this order (since 2003, in Avid, M100, Vegas, Premiere Pro, and FCP&X)

— Edit an assemble
— Rough cut
— Picture lock

— Audio (Music, Dialogue, ADR, FX, Foley) It’s here where Legacy was a bit of a pain and where STP could have been cool if it worked for longer pieces, so I exported audio channels with a 2-pop and a rough video for ProTools work.

— Visual Effects

— Mastering

Here’s my actual question: In what order are other folks working? Am I too old school? Is there a more efficient way?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Richard Herd] “Do you sync them first, like mutticam? re: “

If doing this in X, there was no audio guide track sent to the camera, so it’s a manual sync. Match Scene/take on slate to scene/take of 788T Audio recordings.

The audio guy completely boned us on this shoot.

He did not send audio to the camera as the “camera department didn’t bring the right cable”.

Audio is responsible for sending tc sync, and supposedly the “camera department had the tc set to internal for half the day”.

It’s like saying a grip can’t power this light as electric forgot the extension cord.

Sorry to say this, but this audio guy completely mailed in this project, and it’s a shame.

So, for this particular shoot (the last of a three spot series, the other two shot in a different location with different crew, which went swimmingly), we have no audio guide track at all, and for half the day the camera and audio tc don’t match. For half of this shoot, I could not set this up easily using FCPX mutlicam, or Plural eyes or anything as there’s no audio guide track to sync to. Once there was tc sync, I could use multicam and sync using tc.

In 7, I simply setup a timeline, laid out all the video clips, laid out all the audio clips and matched the slate audio and video with the appropriate scene/take. About half way through the shoot, I could start matching by timecode. Once all the clips were in sync, I dragged them back to a bin and used those as the master clips.

In X, I probably would have set all of this up in the Event with compound clips as editing multichannel audio with multiclips is even worse than regular Project editing.

I would have then broken apart the audio as needed, then re-compunded before touching anything. Not ideal, and it causes a lot of unnecessary bouncing around.

Jeremy

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Richard Herd] “Here’s my actual question: In what order are other folks working? Am I too old school? Is there a more efficient way?”

You are really lucky to still be able to leave the audio to the end of the process once you’ve got “picture lock”. Clients now almost universally expect the audio to be “perfect” from the very first cut, and I believe a lot of editors are now finding this to be the case.

There’s no “rough cut” anymore and that applies almost as much to the pictures.

This means that it’s increasingly important to have a workflow that allows for “polished” temp mixes that can be done relatively quickly. STP used to be pretty good for this (a lot quicker in most cases than going to ProTools) but it had its limitations, especially for longer form.

FCPX with its Logic/STP audio tools and the ability to compound clips to make “virtual” tracks does seem to be quite a good way forward in some ways.

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Bill Davis]

[Carsten Orlt] “For the record I disagree with Bill that the strength of the magnetic timeline lies in the pre-assembly of building blocks. I see the strength in the timeline that I can edit e.g. interviews where they are in the timeline rather than throwing them to the back of a timeline so I can avoid making gabs or jump through hoops not to throw anything else out of sync. Add to this the ability of subframe audio editing and modern high end audio plugin support makes X much better for audio editing for me. Mixing is another issue, but I leave that to the pros in that field.
my 2 cents
Carsten”

Excellent. First off, thank you for disagreeing with me. I say this because having ideas tested through disagreement lets only the best survive and half the time I’m arguing here, it’s because I get a whiff of an alternate way of approaching something, but don’t have time to investigate it fully.

I would agree that if you ONLY see a single-directonal flow – even the one I’ve written about – call it the metadata inheritance trail, if you like – then the “workspace” model I’m promoting is limited.

But new folks coming to X after traditional NLE experience have to understand that if they EXCLUSIVELY work in the timeline, they aren’t getting the entire value of the software.

You can make a compound clip in the timeline, marrying a piece of video and a title (as a simple example) – but that makes it available ONLY in that timeline. However, in X, you can also opt to mary the same piece of video with a title in the Event Browse – and the compound is available for ALL timelines you want to use it in. Same with all sorts of other clip manipulations.

It’s exactly this kind of subtle difference that hides much of the power of X from someone who just opens it up with a head full of legacy expectations and judges it against their existing experience.

Some stuff works better – but you have to understand how to work it.

Again, thanks for the push back – it’s of great value to me.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor