Newbie audio question

[Jeff Carpenter]

You’re mixing up two different concepts.

A Stero Pair is two audio tracks that are joined as one. Changing the level on one (or adding a filter) will affect them both.

Linked tracks are more like linking layers in Photoshop. They’ll move around together and stay synced, but doing something (levels, filters) to one of them won’t affect the other.

So 1/2 are paired and 3/4 are paird, but 1/2 is only linked to 3/4, not paired.

So that’s what’s going on. I’m not much of an audio guru, so I can’t help actually fix your problem. But hopefully you understand the situation a little better now and maybe someone else can actually answer the question.

[Ron Craig]

Hi Jeff,

Yes, actually I did understand that. I can’t find anything else that works so I tried linking. Obviously, it’s not the answer.

Can what I’m trying to do be done?

[Mark Landman]

Highlight tracks 1 & 2 and click apple-C

Highlight tracks 3 & 4 and click option-V. In the dialog box that comes up click on audio levels and/or pan.

Mark Landman
PM Productions
Champaign, IL

[Ron Craig]

Jeez, this is embarrassing. Thank you, Mark, for responding but I hang my head in shame that I still don’t get it. (I’m really not stupid! Just uninformed.) I can easily copy Tracks 1 & 2 together, as you suggest. (Those tracks hold linked audio clips so clicking on one highlights both, of course.) But I don’t know how to highlight tracks 3 & 4. I only know how to highlight one track at a time. I tried several things but none worked. Do you mind getting more elementary for me?

By the way, just to be specific, what I am trying to do is not just to copy-and-paste clips with existing track attributes (mainly volume keyframes) but, rather, to have all four tracks linked such that adding a new volume keyframe to the clip on one track adds that keyframe to all four. Does your method allow me to do that?

Thanks again.

[Rennie Klymyk]

Doubling audio tracks to boost volume is a lazy man’s work around to avoid round tripping to an audio application. FCP was not designed around this concept as it is more proficient to repair audio in other ways. This is a quick and dirty solution we use when we can get away with it. If you want the exact keyframes in track 3+4 you adjust them in 1+2 and THEN copy and paste them to give you new tracks with the adjustment already there. Designers of FCP never figured on us or needing or wanting to link 4 tracks in order to set the same keyframes just as this would be moot with 2 video tracks.

“everything is broken” ……Bob Dylan

[Max Frank]

Hi,

There’s a MUCH easier way to increase the volume of audio – see below for Larry Jordan:

Normalizing Audio in Final Cut Pro

I’ve been a fan of normalizing audio for a long time, especially when the audio is really, really too soft.

Normalization means to raise the audio gain of an enitre clip such that the loudest portion of the clip does not exceed a level which you specify. As a note, I never normalize to 0 dB — it’s too loud. I tend to normalize audio between -4.5 and -6 dB.

With the release of Final Cut Pro 6, audio normalization is now a menu choice: Modify > Audio > Apply Normalization Gain.

This is a very fast way to get all your clips to play at about the same level of loudness.

However, the Gain filter ignores any level changes you’ve made to your clip. So, in order to get the results you expect, you must make sure the audio levels for each clip are set to 0 dB.

The easiest way to do this is to select all the clips which you want to normalize, then choose Edit > Remove Attributes.

Select the Levels checkbox to reset all your clip audio levels to 0 dB.

At which point, normalization will work the way you expect.

Wayne’s note: I’ve automated the above by simply creating a button for this by doing as follows:
Tools > Button List > Normalize > drag Normalize Gain Button into Button Bar on Time Line.

Then it’s just one click to normalize a clip or clips!

[William Carr]

You could adjust the key frames on your original stereo pair, then double it, then link the 2 pairs, then highlight the new aggregate and choose Modify>Levels>Make Changes Relative, and adjust the slider to increase the overall gain by increments until you have the “volume” you want. FYI, the key command for this is option-command L.

This is still a grotty workaround and you should eventually give Soundtrack a try!

[Ron Craig]

Thanks!

I promise to be better. I used to use normalize a lot with voicetrack through hardware devices in analog editing. Haven’t used that function in FCP yet. But I will now.

Thanks for the advice. (And thanks even for the slaps to my hand from others!)

[Ron Craig]

Grotty? You must be from Oz, eh?

[William Carr]

From NYC, and now South Florida… but in this business we need all the adjectives we can get.

My dictionary informs me “grotty” is a 1960s derivation of grotesque. Whadda ya know.