Audio Mixing is Actually Brilliant

[Jim Giberti]

OK , so that didn’t work – bear with me, I’ve never included an image here.
Gee, I should have read the directions.

[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Try detach, David. I’m just curious and haven’t been in front of fcpx today.”

Detach is grayed out. Break apart is the only option. Probably because the audio in this CC is already detached from the A/V source.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[Jeremy Garchow]

Or detach doesn’t work with compound clips? I was messing with detach the other day, and when I broke apart, I lost all my adjustments, when detaching, all the adjustments came with the clips.

[Jim Giberti]

Here’s a close up of the top.

0_xclose.png

[David Lawrence]

[Jim Giberti] “Here’s a close up of the top.”

Thanks Jim, Makes sense and from your description was what I was expecting.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl

[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Or detach doesn’t work with compound clips? I was messing with detach the other day, and when I broke apart, I lost all my adjustments, when detaching, all the adjustments came with the clips.”

Hmmm, yeah maybe. I’ll have to experiment. A compound clip could be anything, so what does “detach” mean in that context? And what happens when you start compounding other compound clips? Inception!

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl

[Jim Giberti]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “… well, you certainly do seem enthusiastic.”

I’m always enthusiastic about creative. I’m really liking all the new and nice stuff in X and this was the time in the learning curve that I had to see if I could really do it all “in house”.

[Franz Bieberkopf] “I have to disagree with you about hardware faders, though. I find they allow and enable the user to manipulate more than one track at at time (where in most software you are pretty much restricted to one track at a time) as well as allowing quickly changing focus while you’re listening. Further they provide a record that can be adjusted manually with keyframes etc.”

There’s always some compromise early into adopting. I’m just trying to see if it can do really quality audio post and it can. Honestly though, I’ve got a new song in mix now that’s well over 48 tracks with vocals, real instrument tracks and virtual instruments. I absolutely want to see them all layed out and grab faders in real time to work the mix hour after hour.
I’m a tweak junkie.

But not audio post. If it’s got music, I’ve already done what we described in that mix.
I’m not riding faders in a mix for TV or film, I’m sculpting the sounds I have and laying them into cues.

[Franz Bieberkopf] “If I’m not misunderstanding you, it seems that FCPX requires a sort of listen / stop and adjust / listen work-flow in terms of volume graphing.
“

Well it’s not a mixer, but no, you don’t have to stop and listen. You play the project, select the track and adjust the fader in the inspector in real time while hearing it.
I think it works great for film post.
So far, early on.

[Jeremy Garchow]

And it’s worth a thousand words. Thanks so much.

I think there’s a flaw here, and it’s why I needed to see a picture, but it’s possible I’m missing something.

If your video edit changes, all of the clips in the secondary won’t ripple.

If you need to change the timing of video in the primary, the “scream”, f16, etc and so forth won’t move along with the rest of the timeline. I wrote about it here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/18165#18236

Of course I am assuming that those SFX are timed to video, but maybe they aren’t.

Also, your voice roles (“Tara”, etc) will get lost of if you compound them as clips inside compounds take on the role of the compound.

I think role based effects (apply effects to the entire role) and patch panel actions (like bussing) would do well as it would keep all the magnetism in place, but allow global controls of selected elements…without tracks. The only effects you can add globally here are to the “music bed” and “ambience”, unless I’m missing something?

We also talked about having “zones” in the timeline that would simulate dynamic tracks, but keep all the benefits of the magnetic timeline here: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/18676

Jeremy

[Andy Field]

Hi Jim

You write:

“you don’t need to open a mixer – just select the Secondary labeled “Music Bed” and right there in the Inspector there’s a master volume and pan control for that buss.”

So are you saying that in the master volume for your SECONDARY Story Line — you can control this volume in real time while the track is playing and it records keyframes on the fly so you can “duck” music under narration etc and then bring it back just like the mixer in FCP 7?

Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852

[Jim Giberti]

[Andy Field] “So are you saying that in the master volume for your SECONDARY Story Line — you can control this volume in real time while the track is playing and it records keyframes on the fly so you can “duck” music under narration etc and then bring it back just like the mixer in FCP 7?”

No Andy, can’t record the moves that I’m aware of (and the fader’s way to inaccurate for any reasonable move anyway.)

But, FWIW, before automated consoles we use to have a couple of engineers rehearsing complex moves like that when going to master.

Then we got automated consoles that would record those moves and play them back with motorized faders.

As soon as we got DAWs and virtual mixers where I could run my faders from an SSL Nucleus or Mackie type controller I immediately began to do less and less because it’s much less accurate for critical work than just drawing a curve in a sequence window.

I would never use a fader to duck music under a VO especially now in X because I can see the waveform and hear the track instantly mark my fade points, use the R tool to select the range and in one step create a four point keyframe fade up and down. Option click for a minute and you’ve got it perfect.

If I’m ducking something for film or broadcast I could rough it out with a fader move but there’s no way I’m not going to refine it with a curve. With this technique you go right to the fade and smoothing with a simple drag and pull.