Round-tripping to Soundtrack Pro

[Carsten Orlt]

Your workflow is correct.

So the only thing I can think of is that you might edit in 24/23.97 and Soundtrack runs at 30/29.97 or vice versa and therefor the audio starts running out of sync.

I’m in Pal land so I’m not too familiar with NTSC frame rates. You should check your Soundtrack project settings and see what FPS you have there compared your seq in FCP.

Carsten

[Brian Pitt]

My frame rates match in Final Cut and Soundtrack. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s getting REALLY frustrating!!!

Brian

[Austin Reeves]

Yeah umm… I was beating my head against a sharp corner on my desk for a short while on this one too… I looked everywhere but no responses from anyone, except Apple on “don’t change the start of your clip in STP”. Thankfully I found the problem… Atleast in my case.

HERE GOES…

Believe it or not, STP imports all info of the clip correctly, except your project frame rate.

Go to SOUNDTRACK PRO (menu) -> PREFERENCES -> PROJECT (tab) -> VIDEO FRAMES PER SECOND -> Change accordingly

I incorrectly assumed that since the video is referenced in the STP Project that it was correctly accounting for it. Apparently not. The video is played back, in sync, with the audio at whatever framerate you give it in the project settings. Once switched over (in my case, 29.97 -> 23.98) It synced right up. I did this in a project that already had material in it w/ effects, so the change occurs actively in the file, not just newly created projects.

Also for good measure I went in and changed the FPS in the SYNCHRONIZATION tab (which i believe handles only MIDI equipment) to 24p just to be sure.

Hope this helps guys…

—
Austin Reeves
AR&C
Production & Post-Production Services
Washington, DC

[Austin Reeves]

Okay, so I’m back to admit my defeat lol. The setting I did works, but after batching files, I had sync issues again. To fix it, all I had to do was open the individual project files in STP, click save, and close it. Suddenly the sync issue (as well as the green line over each problem clip) went away. Needless to say I think this qualifies as a bug, and I’ve seen posts that Apple is aware of the problem.

Alas, I come with another solution though, one I think I will use for the time being.. Check out this screencast for a helpful tip on roundtripping entire sequences:

https://www.screencast.com/users/hatuckett/folders/Default/media/d781e0cb-8689-444e-9c49-7e8592e86052

—
Austin Reeves
AR&C
Production & Post-Production Services
Washington, DC

[Federico Urdaneta]

god bless your soul. i cant believe soundtrack pro (now in it’s 3rd version) messes up the frame rate. thankfully your tip fixed sync. thanks a lot!

[Federico Urdaneta]

i take it back. it didn’t work : (

i actually had to export all the dialog separately and then re-cut and sync in FCP. whats the use of soundtrack then? pretty frustrating

[Caspian Brand]

I’m not encountering the frame rate/sync issue, but I am having trouble getting the AIFF file to show up in the new sequence from Soundtrack Pro.

I followed the steps by the earlier referenced screencast, ensuring to match the sequence settings, and disabling the override from XML box.

Not sure why, but when I open the new sequence, all the video is there, but not the mixdown AIFF file…

There was no audio in my original edit, I recorded some narration to the video in Soundtrack Pro, edited it, and now want it placed as a mix back in the Final Cut Project.

[Jiri Fiala]

I have the exact same issue. It happens when i export and reimport AIFFs even without as much as touching it with Soundtrack. Problem lies in FCP, Quicktime or audio drivers IMO.

Try this:

1) export your timeline as AIFFs from FCP
2) re-import these AIFFs into FCP
3) place them accordingly into timeline

Is it out of sync? Mine is. Just a few frames, but unpredictable (i.e. moving those Aiffs in timeline for a fixed number of frames doesnt help)

[Richard Reay]

This issue had me pulling my hair out, but there is a fix.

Export your video out as a quicktime file without the audio (use export via quicktime conversion) from FCP.

Next Export your master mix audio as AIFF from Soundtrack Pro.

Open both of these files in Quicktime 7 (not Quicktime X).

Set an in point and out point at the beginning and end of both the audio file and the video file.

cmd+c the audio or use edit>copy then select the video file and go to edit>add to selection & scale.

This will insert the audio into the file and stretch it to match the length of the video.

Voila, the video and audio are now together in one file and in sync.

Save the movie as a self contained file and return it to FCP. Now you are free to either use this movie file, or just it’s audio.

Don’t try and export the audio from that movie as a separate AIFF because it doesn’t work.

Hope this helps

Richy

[Federico Urdaneta]

i think i did something similar by simply time-scaling the audio to 99.92 %

which worked once. then it didnt

hooray.

if STP demands such stupid work-arounds, then maybe its just not worth using STP. i think the whole final cut studio needs a re-haul (rendering from Color is something else i’m not crazy about, having 2 copies of each HD movie file seems pretty dumb).

who’s with me?