No Audio Monitoring with IO

[Jeremy Garchow]

If FCPs audio meters are blank, that would usually point to no audio in your sequence. DOuble check that it is in fact there (turn on your audio waveforms, command-option-w).

Select an io easy setup and then make sure in the View > External VIdeo is set to all frames

View > VIdeo Playback is set to the io and the proper resolution/frame rate

View > Audio Playback to audio follows video.

Jeremy

[Jeff Coleman]

Thanks for your response. Perhaps I wasn’t clear in the first post regarding FCP’s audio meter.

The only change I make to get audio on FCP meters is to change the playback Easy Setup from an IO easy setup to “DV NTSC”. The NTSC Bars in the Viewer play with tone in the meters when I’m NOT using an IO easy setup. There’s no tone seen on the meters when using and IO easy setup. (I’ve proven this with a sequence as well, but for explanatory purposes the old Bars in the Viewer is fixed/not changing between the two easy setups.)
The other settings you mentioned have been checked and triple checked.

Other ideas?

Love,
Jeff

Final Cut Studio 5.1, G5 2GHz Dual Processr, 2.5Gb RAM, AJA IO

[Jeremy Garchow]

Doesn’t make any sense, Jeff as the FCP internal meters are not controlled or influenced by the io.

Try this with a sequence and not from the preview window. Put bars and tone in a sequence if you have to. Put an aiff in the sequence or video that you know has good audio.

Make a new sequence. Check the master audio levels in your mixer (option-6) and make sure nothing is muted. Make sure that your audio tracks are on and not off, make sure the clip is enabled and not disabled. Make sure none of the audio tracks are soloed. There’s a number of ways to turn off the audio in FCP.

There’s obviously something wrong with something you have setup, but I assure you the io is not doing anything to ‘mute’ the audio in FCP.

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Jeff,
I don’t love you. This is what you are going to do. You better own a VTR or at least an audio mixer. You are going to close FCP. You are going to play back your VTR (with some audio on the tape), or sing into a microphone that goes into a mixer whose output is plugged into your I/O, and monitor the output of your AJA I/O. You will open the Pro I/O Control Panel (do you have this application from AJA on your MAC) – click on the input tab, make sure that ANALOG is selected in the audio area (lower left hand side), and you should hear audio RIGHT NOW. Do you ? If you don’t, turn off the I/O (power off), and turn it back on. Open the Control Panel again, click on INPUT tab, select analog audio again – do you hear any audio ? DO YOU? If you don’t, your I/O is dead. If you do hear audio, you have an FCP problem

Open up FCP, open up a NEW PROJECT – select something like ProI/O Betacam 8 bit uncompressed. Click on LOG AND CAPTURE. You are still playing the tape. Do you hear audio now ?

Bob Zelin

[Jeff Coleman]

Bob, great answer! Thanks. Good old fashioned troubleshooting. Let me respond accordingly:

[Bob Zelin] “You are going to close FCP. You are going to play back your VTR (with some audio on the tape), or sing into a microphone that goes into a mixer whose output is plugged into your I/O, and monitor the output of your AJA I/O. You will open the Pro I/O Control Panel (do you have this application from AJA on your MAC) – click on the input tab, make sure that ANALOG is selected in the audio area (lower left hand side), and you should hear audio RIGHT NOW. Do you ?”

No.

[Bob Zelin] “If you don’t, turn off the I/O (power off), and turn it back on. Open the Control Panel again, click on INPUT tab, select analog audio again – do you hear any audio ? DO YOU?”

Yes.

[Bob Zelin] “If you do hear audio, you have an FCP problem

Open up FCP, open up a NEW PROJECT – select something like ProI/O Betacam 8 bit uncompressed. Click on LOG AND CAPTURE. You are still playing the tape. Do you hear audio now ?”

No.
Then for a few seconds I had it again. Closed the Log & Capture window, tried playing bars from the Viewer and no go. Opened the L&C window again and nothing. (again). Switched apps to the IO Control Panel and I hear my incoming mixer tone. I switch back to the L&C window still open in FCP and I hear tone. So I close the L&C window and tone goes away (so far so good). Then I open the L&C window and no tone. Furthermore, I switched apps to the IO Control Panel and I heard tone. Switched back to FCP and open the L&C window and I hear nothing.

So I have a FCP problem? Could some recently installed app be conflicting with the IO?

I still love you Bob. But only in the agape’ sense. (No, I don’t care what Jeremy says about you.)

Speaking of Jeremy,
[Jeremy Garchow] “Doesn’t make any sense, Jeff as the FCP internal meters are not controlled or influenced by the io.”

Doesn’t make sense to me either, but I tried switching to something like an EX XDCAM easy setup and audio played fine on the meters. It’s only when I’m in an IO easy setup that I get no audio on the meters.

I follow your trouble shooting about playing back a known good sequence and indeed I have with the same result. (But IMHO I still think the Bars source is a better one that ought to play tone in these setups rather than monkeying with a potential handful of variables from using a sequence as a known good source.)

Any other ideas?

[Jeff Coleman]

Actually, I’ve discovered that even staying within the IO Easy Setup and simply changing View/Audio Playback to “Built-in Output” will get audio (hear on its monitors and see on FCP meters); changing to “ProIO Out” will get no audio (don’t hear on its monitors and don’t see on FCP meters).

[Jeremy Garchow]

What is your io hooked up to?

Acutally, what else is hooked up to your system? Pull any other firewire devices.

[Jeff Coleman]

[Jeremy Garchow] “What is your io hooked up to?”

Input — Shure Audio Mixer generating tone.
Interface — FW400 to MacBookPro
Output — PreSonus Central Station/ Sony analog monitor component inputs.

Does this answer your question?

[Jeremy Garchow]

Media drives?

[Jeff Coleman]

Media Drives = eSata striped pair RAID 0. According to my AJA KONA System Disk Whack Test perform at 127MB/s Write and 126 MB/s read using 4GB file size for a 720×486 8-bit frame. Oooooodles for DV (which is what I’m working on for this project) but I did try to switch my capture/scratch to the internal just to see if it would make a difference and it didn’t.