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FCP RealTime Audio
Hi all, and to any Final Cut Pro guru’s in particular.. I have a question for you.
I can summarise my question as:
“Is there any way I can force FCP to use more CPU to realtime render audio effects? – for example if I disable the video track, there should be plenty of CPU for an EQ and a compressor”
I am editing a music program and I am finding it impossible to tweak the sound with FCP. I come from an pro audio background, I have been using FCP for a few months, I have more or less got to grips with its ways now, but sometimes I need to do things like sweep to find a resonant frequency, or add a little bit of something around 8-11k, but having FCP stop every time I touch an effect control or worse, having to render to hear the change makes it totally impossible to work.
Now, I understand that it’s pretty well established that FCP falls on it’s face as an audio editor, in fact I am using Vegas on PC to do the audio when I need to do a lot of work on it. (as in more than add the FCP Compressor/Limiter) I would use Vegas outright, but the MAC is more reliable for capture and also I prefer not to tie up my (laptop) PC cpu with renders.
Now, here’s a couple of things, sometimes when I add effects to the audio, FCP lets me realtime edit them for a while, until at some point, I make a change, it just stops rendering in realtime, shows the a “needs render” notification in the timeline and a can’t hear a change anymore without rendering. Even if I remove all the effects and add them again, I still can’t tweak in realtime. So it was able to do it, but it surpassed the cpu capability, decided to not do RT anymore, so that’s really the essence of my question, is there a way to force it, even if glitchs or drops a frame now and then?
I have read that by opening my timeline audio in the editor, I can hear the effects in realtime, I have found this is true, but in my case, FCP STOPS playback every time I make a change! As an audio engineer you really need to be able to do things like switch in and out an effect to hear the difference.
It would be great to be able to do this, and keep it all in FCP.
Please note that going to SoundTrack Pro for audio or something is not a solution, as I might as well just keep going out to vegas, which has more than I need and I know the program.I’d also like to checkout things like the AU DynamicsProcesor and the AUMultiband comp some more, (as the FCP Comp/Limiter is a bit weird, especially it’s “Preserve volume” feature, which should act like a gain compensation, but it doesn’t quite work right) – but lack of RT makes it impossible to use these.
All in all a pretty frustrating experience, trying to do audio for music vids in FCP, but if i could only get RT preview, I could work with it.
Any ideas?
Thanks!!!
Keith.
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2 Replies
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Audiofilters in fcp are previous century.
Use soundtrack, logic or protools.
Or wait for fcp 8 which hopefully has all the soundtrack pro plugins built in.
Or i will cry and scream at Apple. -
FCP doesn’t have bussing, channel based effects or anything like the quality needed for serious audio. I would do all your audio post in a proper system after the cut.
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