FCPX Sound

[John Pale]

[Chris Harlan] “John Pale’s experience seems to have not been good. What is yours? How exactly do you mix without tracks?
“

Thats a good question. An even better one, is how do you mix without a mixer? It doesn’t have that either.

Audio keyframes still exist, however in order to effectively use them, you have to “step into” the individual clips to see the associated audio tracks. Granted, its only an extra step, but in a more traditional timeline, they are always visible and can be worked with easily.

I was actually having a bit of fun getting used to the editing paradigm in FCPX. I think video wise, I can see this working well, with a bit of refinement… but I really can’t see how you can work with audio effectively within the program.

Don’t even get me started about timecode.

[Chris Harlan]

Wow. That’s a bummer.

Am I wrong–is this whole trackless thing there to make the magnetic timeline work? Seems like a poor tradeoff.

Here’s a call to FCP X evangelists–do any of you see more evolved audio mixing features that will be able to coexist with the magnetic timeline, or is it an either/or situation?

[Dan Hayes]

[John Pale] “Don’t even get me started about timecode.”

Oh , please do.

[Dan Hayes]

[Oliver Peters] “There is no mixer panel. You can mix by rubbing-banding key frames in the timeline.”

Are there keyboard equivalents to allow you to raise or lower a clip’s volume 1db or some set amount?

[Matt Galuszewski]

Are there keyboard equivalents to allow you to raise or lower a clip’s volume 1db or some set amount?

Yes.

On a selected clip press. control – or control + to lower or raise by 1db

[John Pale]

[Dan Hayes] “Oh , please do.
“

Well, for one thing….there is no way to see the source timecode of the individual elements in your timeline.
No overlays for that, like in FCP 1-7, or anywhere else in the UI.

[Andrew Richards]

[Chris Harlan] “Here’s a call to FCP X evangelists–do any of you see more evolved audio mixing features that will be able to coexist with the magnetic timeline, or is it an either/or situation?”

Apple noted in their FAQ that they will add a feature for metadata tagging of audio for export. I hope this means there will be a quick and straightforward method for tagging audio and then a means for associating particular tags with particular export tracks.

So for instance, instead of patching a hard track in the timeline to a particular output channel, you’d point all the audio tagged as “dialog” to A1 and A2 and all the clips tagged “NAT” to A3 and A4 and clips tagged “music” to A5 and A6. Or whatever channel layout you want. This way the magnetic timeline can do its thing, automatically sliding collisions out of the way while preserving the channel output layouts the editor prescribed.

I’ve also put in a Feedback asking them to take this a step further, adding a sort of “view” for the timeline that would collapse all the audio clips into compound clips that represent each output channel. This would permit master mixing of output channels and clear visualization of the track outputs for QC. Who knows if they’d take that suggestion, but I think it would be pretty cool and would address many of the complaints associated with not having hard tracks in a timeline that was designed not to have hard tracks.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

There also isn’t any way to set starting timecode for the timeline. They need to add that too. It would also be nice to have the big timecode floating window back.

Best,
Andy

[Chris Harlan]

You’re f—ing joking?! Really? That’s dumb.

[John Pale]

There’s a lot of room to the right and left of the dashboard TC display for more info….its just that they decided it wasn’t important, I guess.