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Is anybody here actually cutting multi track audio with X?
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[Oliver Peters] “This will likely be an easy and pleasant m-cam cut in X. Figure out your audio issues first. If it’s just speaker audio direct to camera without any combination of isolated mics, then you should be fine.”
sorry, did I mistake this thread and for slow response – UK time – We are using 2 XF305s My plan is to have a wireless mike on the speaker – or get the sound engineer to take a feed from the PA desk – and feed the clean signal to one of the 2 cameras – the other camera will pick up reference sound with its on board mike.
Wasn’t quite sure what you meant by isolated mics.
I’ll be using this job to get started with FCPX multi cam and will do a dry run tomorrow.
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[Bill Davis] “it’s fundamentally crappy design to have a system where changes in one place can mess up previous decisions in another that you are no longer looking at. It’s something we’ve mentally had to learn to “anticipate” through rote learning. But it’s bad design. Period.”
Only if you don’t know what you are doing.
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Not judging FCPX- which I haven’t used yet so can’t comment on how successful magnetic is- but there is a simpler solution to this “problem” than chucking tracks entirely. Why not just implement a tracks locked ripple mode?
When I’m working fast and lazy and haven’t been tying my footage together properly I just work in tracks locked ripple mode so all tracks on the time line shift and move around together when I make changes in the same way I imagine they do in X. It’s not something I use often but it’s a simple solution to the problem if you struggle with pieces of your timeline shifting out of sync.
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“sorry, did I mistake this thread and for slow response – UK time – We are using 2 XF305s My plan is to have a wireless mike on the speaker – or get the sound engineer to take a feed from the PA desk – and feed the clean signal to one of the 2 cameras – the other camera will pick up reference sound with its on board mike”
Thanks for the clarification. Your initial question didn’t point this out. You should do well with FCP X based in the description. Lately, it’s been common to shoot with a couple of DSLRs and a separate sound recorder and sync the 3. In many cases, when multiple speakers are involved, the individual microphone feeds will be recorded onto separate tracks of a multichannel audio recorder (“iso” mics) instead of a mixed feed. That’s where the editorial issues come up. In your case, with a mixed feed from the board, it should be no problem at all.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “You should do well with FCP X based in the description. Lately, it’s been common to shoot with a couple of DSLRs and a separate sound recorder and sync the 3”
Well – I’ll create a post describing my experience once I’ve finished editing the job. 3 Cameras filming a whole days workshop!
Not going to be fun to edit.
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[Mark Dobson] “Not going to be fun to edit.”
They never are!
Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television -
Would the audition feature have the potential to be used for ‘multitrack’ editing? (does audition work for audio?)….
This is a rough example of a multitrack layout I edit with… tracks 1&2 are master audio – all other tracks have clip level set right down but will pass on to audio mix session, in sync with the pictures, in the event something needs remixing.0. came from line cut 1. from iso1 etc.
Would FCPx be able to emulate that at all in the current form? (e.g. the Avid tracks 3-16 are ‘audition’ tracks behind 1&2. Hopefully the ‘audition’ clip would be able to switch to any mono or stereo clip *and* be duplicated to allow multiple tracks to replace 1&2.
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[David Lawrence] “Yes they’re different tools for different jobs, but only in the sense that each is optimized for its respective media type and I/O needs. They’re both share a common interaction language and a common visual model for representing time-based media in space.”
Mmm kinda, but they are different.
They are two different tools.
[David Lawrence] “The reason I keep bringing up audio and DAWs is because if Apple’s trackless paradigm is truly the revolutionary improvement that they claim, then it should work as a general solution for all time-based media. This has been my core argument from day one of the FCPX release.”
I just don’t think this is true. Maybe it is for you, but it’s not for me. Not every media application has to have the exact same structure, and a lot of them don’t, my example of moving from FCP7 to AE is a good example. FCP7 works differently from Premiere which works differently from Avid. yes, they have tracks, but the audio and interaction of the clips on those tracks are different. FCPX is just radically different. I think the problem you are having is that this hasn’t been attempted before (although Michael Gissing sad something about Fairlight having some sort of selectable magnetic mode, fact check me on that Michael). It’s new, it doesn’t mean it’s quite right yet, but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong and it doesn’t mean that it has to the end all be all of every NLE or DAW or compositing application, ever. It’s a choice that you have to make as to whether you like it or not. It is using data to form relationships and opinions, things to keep and things to take away. This is certainly different. It is fine if people don’t like it. It’s fine if they do like it.
[David Lawrence] “By eliminating tracks, Apple changed something that wasn’t broken. The problem they solved wasn’t a problem for anyone skilled in the craft. The convenience their design affords is minor compared to the problems they’ve created for anyone who uses an NLE as a general purpose time-based editorial environment. Not to mention the interchange issues that are still getting worked out.”
Why do you think they were trying to solve a problem, instead of simply presenting a new interface? Don’t you think they know that the interface they are presenting has some issues and creates some different problems? They also have things that are done fantastically better in X vs 7. Since FCPX is underdeveloped at this point, it might not make a bunch of sense presently, but maybe they can see the end game?
[David Lawrence] “Nowhere do we see this more clearly than with audio. With muti-track audio, the idea of a single Primary track that all other tracks must relate to makes no sense whatsoever. Depending on your editing style and how you compose with multiple video channels in the context of posting a show, a single Primary may be just as meaningless.”
Maybe for you, maybe it makes perfect sense to other people, and those people might have experience. It’s not the magnetism that’s the problem as you can easily control what shifts time in FCPX, it’s the connections that you have the most trouble with.
[David Lawrence] “So 24 audio tracks in the Primary storyline and everything else connected to that? Doesn’t that seem a bit forced? You still only have one true track in FCPX. I think that’s the root of the problems with audio.”
Why do all 24 tracks have to be in the primary storyline? The primary storyline drives the time of your piece. it’s really that easy.
The root of the problems with audio is a programming one. You can easily edit more than one channel of audio in FCPX if you keep drilling down to the most basic clip level. They problem is is that you lose the context of the edit. If they would just program the channels to show up when you expand a clip, this problem would be much better solved as detaching the audio isn’t always a good solution and sometimes the wrong solution if the clip you are detaching from is not in the primary. You must use a compound clip to get around that wrong solution today. So, you explode the audio out by breaking apart, make your selections, then compound. Over and over. Not the best, but it keeps everything as it’s required. It will take some more programming to get that to work a bit more elegantly, but you can see the basic functionality is there.
It’s like when Bill Davis said that relinking might never be possible in FCPX, but a few days later it showed up. The capability was already in the program (by changing the prefs you could link to all new high or low resolution media). There’s no second viewier in FCPX, but it just showed up with multicam. this suggests that an Event based Viewer is already in there, all Apple has to do is turn it on, and with enough feedback, I bet they will.
Speaking of feedback the very first feature of the FCPX feedback page is “audio editing”, and that list is not quite alphabetical. They are listening, and what that says to me is that they want suggestions.
[David Lawrence] “If the Magnetic Timeline wouldn’t work for a DAW as well as tracks, then is it really as flexible and revolutionary Apple wants us to believe? “
A track is a container and nothing more. Data can also be a container.
Roles could easily serve as a function of tracks in an NLE, but it doesn’t necessarily have to replace them in a DAW. Michael laid that out pretty concisely I might add. FCPX just needs some more time on the programming level.
[David Lawrence] “I can’t imagine an audio editor would be happy with tracks affecting all other track timings by default or requiring elaborate workarounds to keep things locked to an absolute time reference.”
No question, the relationships of clips have changed in X. What you propose is completely doable. Is it a work around or how it works? X does not work like a track based editor at this point in time, and as soon as that is embraced and one learns how it does work, you start to work that way, just like tracks. Is it better? For some, but not others, just like Avid is better for some and not others. I don’t know if track based editing is a universal truth, but it is something that we are all certainly used to. People may not agree with X’s functions, and I will be the first to admit it needs some more work, but I also see it as a work in progress instead of complete.
[David Lawrence] “I’m with Mark Raudonis:
[Mark Raudonis] “Music video cutting against a single, unedited audio track…. OK. Nice trick. Now let’s see the tool used to cut a multicam scene with 12 iso trks of dialogue. That’s a demo that I’d like to see.””
I think the best way to do this today, is to cut the broken apart audio separately below the multicam switch. It’s not ideal, at all.
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Jeremy, dSP and Fairlight are two DAWs that allow clips to stack non destructively on a track. It is an alternate approach to magnetic timeline as you don’t overwrite a clip on a track as it simply stacks on top.You can get to the clips underneath.
They certainly don’t use magnetic timeline ala FCPX but solve the problem of accidental destructive overwrite in a different and more useful way. There is also a big advantage of stacking clips on a single track of being able to crossfade to the layer below in the same way you can dissolve from V2 to V1 with vision. So each track becomes multi dimensional. For editing dialog and music this is the most powerful and fast system I have seen. When moving a clip it shows an outline waveform with the next layer below’s waveform also displayed. So fast to match music beats to incredible sub frame accuracy.
I don’t know of any audio system with a magnetic timeline. Can’t see it being of any use given the need for tracks and fixed placement due to the need to route within a mix environment. I am utterly sceptical that Roles can ever reach the level that track based mix routing can achieve and even less confident that it would be as elegant and accessible if they even came close.
Happy to be proven wrong as well but I do side with David’s view that this is a change for change sake rather than looking at a superior paradigm. It feels like a corner that they have painted themselves into.
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[Michael Gissing] “It is an alternate approach to magnetic timeline as you don’t overwrite a clip on a track as it simply stacks on top.”
That’s it. Thanks for that.
Audio editing and performance tools have always been ahead of video, in my opinion. Mostly because of bandwidth, but even in interaction and interface.
A musician buddy of mine used to use digital performer, then he moved to ableton live. Watching him work reduced me to fits of jealousy. The amount of real time, real interaction and feedback, the amount of realtime creativity and decision making was extremely revealing. Live, although more of a sequencer rather than daw, doesn’t need tracks either, but they are there when you need them. It’s sequenced layers, really.
Fcpx, while a completely different tool and methodology, and not at all complete or useful for every situation, brings a new level of interaction with video. The ability to reorder, move, preview, change names, apply information in large quantities, operate and adjust parameters in a modicum of real time is pretty sweet.
Yes, there are huge workflow holes, and some things simply don’t add up, but it is a potential way forward even if a little bit or control has been lost in the short term.
[Michael Gissing] “I am utterly sceptical that Roles can ever reach the level that track based mix routing can achieve and even less confident that it would be as elegant and accessible if they even came close.”
And that’s why a DAW is not an NLE and vice versa. They are different tools for different jobs. You know all of this, but, video requires compositing, audio’s compositing is completely different. Usually, my job is to hand you the audio engineer the sequence audio in a relatively organized manner.
Stacking video clips on top of each other on the same track and dissolving one to the other isn’t really needed as layer order is more important in video because unlike audio, there’s actual physical interactions required. A bug that needs to stay on top, needs to be on top, usually.
I’m also fairly certain Protools can layer audio over each other on the same track. It’s how an audio engineer I use a lot records VO/narration. The first time I asked him if it was recording over itself as that’s what it looked like it on the monitor. He assured me it was all good. 😉
Fcpx’s audio control is very limited at this time, it is overly simplistic. Roles do work, and i could envision them working for a type of bussing, of course not with the control of a DAW, but an NLE is not a DAW. An interface would have to be built. Not sure if Apple would ever go that far, but who knows.
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