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Bringing BWF files into Final Cut Pro 4.5
I shot a short film last week with very limited resources, but we decided to rent a PD-6 and get good sound on separate channels, well-mixed.
I have downloaded the files from the PD-6 to my computer and now have, per take, one 4-track file for lavaliers and one 2-track file for the boom mike.
Two programs have been recommended to me, in order to bring these files into Final Cut – Sebsky Tools and BWF2XML. With both of them I have the same problem:
The 2-track file imports into Final Cut Pro just fine, and can be brought into the timeline with no problems. However, I can not view those clips in Viewer or Canvas in order to fine-tune level settings or find peaks, etc. They open, but the sound tab doesn’t show any waveforms.
The 4-track file imports into Final Cut Pro and are visible in the browser. I can not view them in Viewer or Canvas, as above, but I also can not render them in the Timeline – they lay in as 4 tracks, but will not play.
I was told that Fostex had a Waveform Manager (WAVManager Ver2.00) program that would parse out the tracks (into single files? I’m not sure….) to assist with that problem, but I downloaded the program and it seems to want to import from an MR Drive (?).
I was then pointed to a program called Audacity by a friend – I can bring in the 4-track file, and in turn delete all but one track, save that track as a unique file, until each track in the original file has its own file.
This system works fine. The files import into Final Cut Pro, play in the timeline with no rendering and the waveforms are visible in the Viewer and Canvas.
But this process is very cumbersome, even though we have a very short project. I can not invest in extra hardware and don’t own ProTools, so I need a freeware solution, which I was given the impression there was. Is this the best I can do?
I have the additional problem, by the way (I am a camera person and am very ignorant about sound, although I have learned a ton in the past week!) that we accidentally had the PD-6 set at 24 fps. Initially, I was told that we’d have to transfer all the files from the original PD-6 hard drive we used to another PD-6 that was set at 29.97 (or 30? I’m editing in NDF). But I’m finding with takes that are up to one minute that the sync is fine by eye, and with longer takes I figure I can resync at minute intervals to be safe. Any thoughts on this part? All three programs mentioned above, btw (Sebsky, BWF2XML and Audacity) seem to be solving part of that problem by restriping to NDF timecode, and so I’m gathering that then I’m just fighting the smaller pull-up problem. I’d appreciate any input on this.
Many, many thanks.
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