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Splitting multi-channel audio into discrete left and right tracks?
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[Bret Williams] “Seems similar to the workflow with tracks.”
Nothing at all like working with tracks in Avid. As I wrote before, put channel 1 audio on any odd numbered track and it’s automatically on your left channel. Put channel 2 audio on any even numbered track and it’s automatically on your right channel. Done. No messing with roles. No coming up with descriptive names and keypunching them in. No need to lasso anything on an Avid timeline just to name it or assign something to it. You’re telling me about a lot of steps to do something that takes a lot fewer steps and a lot less time in other software. I will grant you that roles will (probably) do what I require, however – like everything else in this iPhone editing app – it looks like it will actually do it slower and less efficiently from a news editor’s workflow perspective.
Once set as seen in the first 2 images, you never have to mess with panning anything again. Ever. Track patching, when needed, is a single, simple, click-drag move. There;s absolutely nothing about roles – that I see – that is either fast or intuitive.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.
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Outputting a multichannel file that plays back on air as a perfectly mixed stereo file would be of no use? The same file could be used as archival or for reediting in an NLE with completely discreet audio. In fact, I’m kinda wondering why I’m not exporting multichannel stereo files for every project now that I think of it.
But your main complaint about X was that it was difficult to pan individual mono tracks within clips. That you had to pan each clip individually. I demonstrated that was incorrect and specifically detailed the simple 10 second process to do what you wanted. Hopefully that had some value. Roles are just icing on the cake and an advanced feature that I haven’t seen on track based editors. Setting up multichannel exports in legacy was quite a bit more difficult and limited compared to roles. From what I’ve seen Avid and Premiere haven’t advanced that much since then. But if you don’t like roles there’s no need to use them. Especially if you don’t have a use for file based multichannel output.
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[Bret Williams] “But your main complaint about X was that it was difficult to pan individual mono tracks within clips. That you had to pan each clip individually. I demonstrated that was incorrect and specifically detailed the simple 10 second process to do what you wanted.”
You showed me how to do it after these clips were already on the timeline. I wanted a way to do it in the browser across every clip selected, so that the channels would play back separately (alternating left and right) without having to fuss with clips already on the timeline. As you can see by the attached screen cap, I have selected all 90 clips in my bin, and can change the channel configuration and panning mode, but panning them all to left or right affects both channels of audio. I want mono 1 left and mono 2 right, and want this at the browser level with all 90 clips selected. Now, is there a way to do this or not? I have tried disabling the track that I don’t want to pan (unchecking mono 2) to pan only mono 1 left, but mono 2 still ends up on the left side of the mix. Premiere’s track mixer can handle this. Why can’t FCPX?
In short, I want this to work as simply and as efficiently as Avid’s alternating L/R panning for mono tracks, which is nothing more than a check mark in a global audio setting. Do you see the value and efficiency in that?
Thank you for your help so far. I am extremely frustrated by this entire experience, and am trying not to take those frustrations out on people. (I do, however, reserve the right to complain and hold contempt for this ghastly and unwieldy piece of software!)
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.
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You say that roles represent precious lost editing time, yet you’re trying to select everything and pan them.
You can do the same with Roles.
If you don’t want to use X the way it was designed, you are going to lead yourself to a path of frustration
I understand the need for split tracks. I work with stems and need to create archives with split audio for later retrieval and repurpose. There’s has not been one NLE that has been easier to do this from and make all kinds of masters from one singular timeline without having to Tetris everything around and make multiple master timelines.
The difference between tracks and trackless is that the tracks define the output channels. With trackless the output channels are defined on export and they might require the use of Roles.
If you need to define Roles on audio components in a batch and don’t want to do this on a timeline, look here:
https://fcpxpert.net/2015/07/15/geekco-role-o-matic-batch-set-multichannel-audio-roles/
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Click where it says dual mono and change that to stereo. Which is the very definition of what you are attempting to achieve. Channel one will be out the left speaker, and channel 2 will be out the right speaker.
If that’s all you wanted to do I can’t believe that’s what all the fuss was about. I assumed you must have more than two tracks, because then you might have an issue if dual stereo wouldn’t do what you wanted. I could forsee someone wanting ch 1 and ch 2 left and ch 3 rt and ch 4 left. Something like that would have to be done in the timeline. THAT would certainly be a legitimate and educated rant. But saying it can only be done in the timeline clip by clip misinformed, and hardly even worth worrying about once you’re familiar with the software. The way I see it you can worry about where you’re putting each clip during the edit (don’t you do anything more complicated like a simple J or L cut where the rigorous track panned system doesn’t really suit?) In 23 years of NLE editing I’ve never wanted to use that method. But I’m sure any new piece of software is frustrating in a fast paced environment if you’re not familiar with it. Especially news.
I would think news would find other aspects of X helpful. Motion template publishing and rigging for graphics? Keywording?
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Exactly. This is what I alluded to in the beginning.
You don’t want dual mono, you want stereo.
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[Bret Williams] “Click where it says dual mono and change that to stereo. Which is the very definition of what you are attempting to achieve. Channel one will be out the left speaker, and channel 2 will be out the right speaker.
If that’s all you wanted to do I can’t believe that’s what all the fuss was about.”
Yep. Have tried this over and over and here’s what I get:
Sure, now each channel plays back on its own speaker, but both channels are combined in one track!!! How do you disable one or the other when you don’t need both?!?
I’m NOT shooting iPhone video here, people! The cameras we use do NOT record stereo audio! They record DUAL MONO audio, which may be a wireless lav on channel 1 and a shotgun on channel 2! I need to be able to keep these DUAL MONO channels separate THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE POST PROCESS! Avid can do this quickly and simply. Same for Premiere, Vegas, and Edius. FCPX cannot???
So let me see if I understand this correctly. In FCPX, you can split recorded multi-channel audio into dual mono “tracks”, but cannot batch pan them to left and right (as they were recorded), in the browser, as you can with changing the channel configuration and pan mode. Any such changes either have to be made on the timeline or through the use of “roles”, which only affect export, not playback. Or, you can leave the tracks stereo, but have no control over one channel or the other, as stereo audio is not broken out into separate “tracks”.
Wow! What a convoluted, overly-complicated POS (piece of software!) this is!
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “You say that roles represent precious lost editing time, yet you’re trying to select everything and pan them.”
Yep. Once and done, something you don’t even have to do in Avid. Fancy that!
[Jeremy Garchow] “With trackless the output channels are defined on export and they might require the use of Roles.”
I need to keep the channels split throughout the entire post process, from ingest to export, not just export. Apparently, there is no quick and easy way to do this without a plug-in or keypunching metadata. Got it. Thanks.
[Jeremy Garchow] “If you don’t want to use X the way it was designed, you are going to lead yourself to a path of frustration “
X was clearly not designed for news. Or news editors. It was designed for mall rats to edit their selfie-videos on their iPhones and upload them instantly from anywhere in the world to anywhere on the web, just by dragging their clips around. After all, who needs split audio for that? O.o
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.
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It’s very obvious you don’t need or want help. You’d prefer to troll.
You want it to work like Avid, it doesn’t.
What you want to do is available in fcpx, you just refuse to do it.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s very obvious you don’t need or want help. You’d prefer to troll.
You want it to work like Avid, it doesn’t.
What you want to do is available in fcpx, you just refuse to do it.”
There’s absolutely nothing I would love to do more than forget I’d ever heard of FCPX. Unfortunately, I can’t. So I came here (again) looking for a SIMPLE fix to deal with dual mono source clips. It’s clearly not your fault that Apple’s “pro” NLE can’t deal with dual mono sources as well as any other NLE out there. (I guess that’s too much to ask for $300, eh?)
Trackless is just plain pointless if a 21st century NLE can’t handle something as simple as this as a 1990 Avid can.
But thanks anyway.
And then there’s this:
“Until they release a version with a dedicated workflow for dual-mono, I don’t see X as a good choice for news. Right now, everything is based on stereo, and keeping dedicated channels for reporter tracks, SOTs and nat sound is almost impossible to do in a timely manor. Don’t get me wrong, there are workarounds for almost everything (as noted, lifting your track from the storyline and use your primary storyline for sots/nats is a decent solution) but workarounds take time. There’s a lot I like about X, but if I’m slamming together a PKG at the last second, it’s not a good tool. As an Apple certified trainer for FCP X, I’ve really, really tried hard to like it for news, but I’m just not there yet.”
https://www.b-roll.net/forum/showthread.php?t=28445
News departments are using FCPX for one reason: it’s cheap. There are certainly better tools for editing news than FCPX.
And yes, it’s OK to admit when you don’t have the answer to my question.
Update: just put in a feature request to Apple for dedicated audio tracks in FCP X. It needs them. Badly.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.
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