Audio level editing in FCP?

[Don Greening]

[Paul Campbell] ” Is this a preference that I must enable first? “

Make sure “clip keyframes” and “clip overlays” are both enabled for the timeline. You’ll find both icons for these at the bottom left in the sequence window. the icons are toggles for on and off.

– Don

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Because I do all my own audio myself (so it doesn’t matter if I chop up my audio tracks willy-nilly) I use the razor and crossfades to mark the passages where I want the track level to alter, then use the Modify>Audio +dB or -dB commands – from the keyboard, to take the level up or down as required.

I only resort to using the pen tool on the rubber bands to cope with the very ends of a track if the transition is too complicated for a cross-fade.

It means my project looked at in an EDL/OMF/AAF looks like confetti – but thats not part of my workflow,
The big advantage is that the crossfades are very easily shifted earlier/later on the track if say the voice over or dialogue is altered and the dip-under position changes.

I also use it for GarageBand-created music tracks where I make a full-on version and an underscore version. Putting both, in sync, onto one audio track means I can easily manage the music character-changes just by slipping the crossfade between the two one way or the other.

[Paul Campbell]

Hi, Don. I did find these while searching, and saw how this turned the volume bar on and off…I just couldn’t mark any locations to make volume bar edits. Lemme go back and check this again later. Thanks,

Paul

[Paul Campbell]

Hi, Paul. I actually considered this before I posted, but thought it would just look like hell and make the project very nasty looking with all those segment splices. It seemed like marking the volume bar at those locations where you’d splice would be a lot cleaner. I have no problem using the volume bar for editing. I’m quite comfortable with it from using Audition. (I just can’t figure out how to turn the damn thing on 🙂

[Michael Gissing]

The other option is to open the audio mixer, enable the automation (icon up the top right from memory)and do real time mixing which writes keyframes. So much faster than mucking around with manual keyframing and you can edit them later if you need to.

Splitting clips is a nightmare if you end up going out via an OMF. It seems so much faster to just mix but hey, I am primarily an audio post person who also color grades.