clip shows sound wave, but no sound is played

[Jeremy Garchow]

Open the timeline idea and click the Roles tab. Make sure the appropriate Roles are turned on (check the box).

[James Wood]

Hi Jeremy. Thanks for the quick reply. I added the roles column. That particular clip has “Video, Dialogue” in the roles column which appears to be the same for every clip. I went back to the source file and played it. There doesn’t appear to have been any sound recorded. Not sure why the wave appears in FCPX.

Thanks for the help. I must have screwed up that shot. I can work around it. Just a lot of extra work.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Can you post a screen grab of the issue?

[Jeff Kirkland]

is James looking at the enhanced waveform? Often you’ll see some ‘ghost’ waveform even if it’s just based on the pre-amp noise from the camera.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[James Wood]

Hi Jeremy. Attached are the images of the clips. The first has just a shadow of a sound wave, the second from which I can hear sound, has a clear image of the sound wave. Perhaps this is what Jeff is referring to, that no sound was actually captured in the first image. I didn’t realize that FCPX would should a shadow wave when no sound was captured.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Two things,

1) Thanks for posting the pic. When you said greyed out, I though you meant this:

2) With the clip selected, open the inspector (command-4) and then click the audio tab. Turn the volume up from minus infinity to 0 and the active waveforms should reappear.

OK, three things.

3) Those less opaque waveforms are called reference waveforms. There’s a preference to turn them on or off (Preferences > Editing > Audio, Show reference waveforms). Since the fully opaque or active waveforms are dynamic in fcpx (meaning, the waveforms adjust to volume of filter changes so you can see what’s happening to the audio as you process it) those reference waveforms are handy to show you that there is audio to begin with, and what the audio looks like as a fully expressed waveform.

Jeremy

[James Wood]

Hi Jeremy. Thanks for the detailed information. Unfortunately, it’s pretty clear I messed up. The volume was already at 0, not minus infinity, and I turned it up more. There’s simply nothing there. I’ll be okay though. I have a plan to make it work. But again, thanks for taking the time to write the detailed reply.

[Scott Witthaus]

Hi James –

I had the same thing happen to me. Was banging my head against the wall trying to hear audio, that I could see as a waveform, that never was on the camera file. Irritating FCPX does that. Luckily the crew recorded all audio to an outboard digital recorder. Not fun syncing, but at least it was available. Good luck.

Scott

Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter

[Craig Alan]

Scott. I have a similar issue. Two cam shoot that needs to be synced. Usually this is a piece of cake with multicam in FC. But on one shoot that runs about an hour the on board mike of the second cam was turned off. So there is no reference track. So what methods did you use to sync?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Deepak Lohia]

that could be becz you have solo option on.

just hit Alt + S on a layer . it should fix the issue.