FCP OMF Export for Post Sound

[Shane Ross]

Typically when you send an OMF to the audio guy, they want EVERYTHING, nothing mixed down. Every track as separate as you have them.

But you are asking the wrong people. You need to ask the person you will be sending the OMF to what they want.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
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[Ryan Krickow]

Post sound said that it would be fine to deliver an OMF of the production sound mix and the individual ISO tracks on a separate HDD. I’m trying to determine if there is a way in FCP to edit with the production sound mix and still have the ISO tracks included in the OMF so that post sound doesn’t have to go through and find each track on their own. If you have any advice in this regard I would really appreciate it! Thanks, Ryan

[Shane Ross]

[Ryan Krickow] “I’m trying to determine if there is a way in FCP to edit with the production sound mix and still have the ISO tracks included in the OMF so that post sound doesn’t have to go through and find each track on their own.”

Nope…FCP will export the audio you have on the timeline, it will not extract the ISOs from a production mix. If you need to get the ISOs to the audio guy, you need to have them on the timeline before the OMF, or you need to export an audio EDL for them to conform the ISOs.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Ryan Krickow]

Ok, cool. In that case would it make sense to cut the movie with the production sound mix and then once the picture is locked add all the additional audio tracks to the timeline before exporting the OMF? The only other option I can think of is to merge the picture with all the production sound tracks and then just mute every track except for the production sound mix while editing. Which of these workflows makes more sense to you? Thanks for your help, Ryan

[Michael Gissing]

It would be easier to add the ISO’s afterwards. Hopefully you had a sensible timecode strategy in shooting so resyncing is easy. EDLs are a problem with file based source as it needs both timecode and reel numbers.

I would guess that your sound post people are planning to mod match, which is tedious and expensive. You are better off doing this job your self and sending them an OMF. Bear in mind that the OMF will get pretty big with all that extra audio so you will need to split the project into into segments as 2 gig is the maximum file size allowed by the antiquated OMF spec.

[Colin Mcquillan]

[Ryan Krickow] “In that case would it make sense to cut the movie with the production sound mix and then once the picture is locked add all the additional audio tracks to the timeline before exporting the OMF”

I am currently working on a project that came with a line-cut that contained a live mix, and 6 ISO reels, each with 4 channels of ISO audio.

I cut the show using the Line mix and ISO video, then once locked and ready for audio, I went back and pulled the ISO audio into the timeline. It’s a bit of a tedious task, but as long as your timecode is good, not very difficult. just ‘x’ you clip, hit ‘f’ to load it, patch you tracks and F10, then next clip. Once on a roll it moves along quickly, and much better this way than trying to edit your vid with many many audio tracks that need to stay in sync underneath. For speed in this stage, I go through the sequences one ISO at a time, so Im not having to change the target tracks each clip, just once for each ISO.

Use the same tracks for the same reels, no matter what video track the ISO is on IE: map your audio something like this
A1 LINE 1(L)
A2 LINE 2(R)
A3 ISO 1 T1(L)
A4 ISO 1 T2(R)
A5 ISO 2 T1(L)
A6 ISO 2 T2(R) so on…..

Your audio guy will really like you for this, and it will save him lots of time organizing the project, thus save you/you producer money.

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.

[Ryan Krickow]

Thank you Colin! One thing I’m not clear on is how exactly you are getting the audio clips to sync up with the picture once you use the match frame function. Maybe I’m just not clear on what is meant when you say “patch your tracks”. Also, do you typically merge the production sound mix with the picture or link it? Finally, what do you usually do with the background ambience track? Do you just leave it on the drive or lay it down on a track of its own? Did you have any music or sound fx tracks in your timeline? Thanks again, Ryan

[Colin Mcquillan]

[Ryan Krickow] “how exactly you are getting the audio clips to sync up with the picture once you use the match frame function”

In the timeline I click on the clip so it is highlighted, then hit ‘X’ which marks an in and out at the beginning and end of the clip, I then put the playhead at the beginning of the clip and hit “F” which loads the clip’s source video at the first frame used of that clip into the viewer. Now with the viewer window active, mark an In point. then F10 and voila!

[Ryan Krickow] ” I’m just not clear on what is meant when you say “patch your tracks”

What i mean by this is setting the target tracks in the timeline, as to where the audio is going to go when you hit F10. First unpatch the Video, then move the audio (A1 and A2) the the tracks that you want the audio to be edited to.

[Ryan Krickow] “Also, do you typically merge the production sound mix with the picture or link it?”

Merge or link? not sure I understand what you mean by this? During the edit I keep the production mix in sync with the line cut, unless I’m covering something, or offsetting the audio edit point and video edit point, if thats what you mean.
I also send the line/production mix with the iso’s along to audio post, if thats what you mean.

[Ryan Krickow] “what do you usually do with the background ambience track? Do you just leave it on the drive or lay it down on a track of its own? Did you have any music or sound fx tracks in your timeline?”

I put everything I have down. Music, SFX, ambience… everything. If your location sound guy recorded, say, 30 sec’s of room tone/location ambience, I’d throw that patch of audio on a track somewhere within the scene, perhaps off the top so the audio guy sees it, and knows where to look each new location.

How I distribute the audio depends on what it is I’m working. Main thing is be organized, and be consistent.

I do most of my own sound mixes, so I might be a little more anal about this than most video editors. Having worked on both sides of this equation I know how much one can save by being organized at this stage, and it is faster and easier to organize this stuff now, than sending a messy jumbled OMF along to the sound guy to sort out.

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.

[Ryan Krickow]

Thanks for getting back to me Colin! To elaborate on my syncing question… One potential method of dealing with all the audio tracks is to use the Merge Clips command (found under the Modify menu and by Ctrl-Clicking on selected clips). In the Browser you can highlight your video clip and all the audio tracks that are associated with that shot, Ctrl-Click, and choose Merge Clips. There’s an option to have them synced based on timecode, in-point, out-point, etc. After that a new clip appears in the Browser with the suffix “Merged” attached to the end. From there you can drop the clip into the timeline (note that all the audio tracks will now have the same name as the video clip) and delete every track but the production sound mix tracks. Now you can edit the movie and then using the method you described you could place all the audio tracks back into the timeline. When I mentioned Merged vs. Linked this is what I was referring to (Linking is similar to Merging but it is done in the timeline). In the beginning there has to be some kind of connection set up between the video and audio tracks otherwise I just don’t see how you can lay all the tracks down using the method you described without first setting the in-point of each audio track to the in-point (timecode) of each video clip. I’m probably just missing something here. Thanks, Ryan

[Colin Mcquillan]

Ah,, I think I see what you are dealing with now. The audio you are working with, it was brought into the project on its own? not with any video/timecode attached? If this is the case, syncing and merging before editing would be the way to go with the method I mentioned.. might be to late for that.

I am working with video and audio captured from 6 ISO Digibeta VTR’s, all running synchronous timecode.

Are you working with different takes, or different angles?

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.