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Using Soundtrack media WITHIN Final Cut Pro
Was wondering if anyboday else works this way:
I’m a FCP editor who is looking to leverage all of the great sounds in Soundtrack, however I dont really know Soundtrack all that well other than using it to remove noise, clicks and hum. I do most of my audio work (mixing, cleanup, etc) right on the timeline in FCP. I wanted to find a simple way to have access to the Soundtrack material within FCP, for example, to add a quick “swish” sound to an effect or something. Pretty basic. I wanted to avoid sending stuff back and forth, or rendering out files and importing them, etc.
Anyways, I located all of the Soundtrack Loops on my HD (MacHD>Library>Audio>Apple Loops…etc). Then I created a new FCP project and saved it as “Soundtrack”. Then I dragged all of these loops folders from the finder right into my FCP bin and basically imported all of the loops into FCP, and preserved the bin hierarchy all at once. I now have a FCP project that I can open and access the rich variety of Soundtrack sounds from within FCP…like if I want to add a swish sound, or a simple effect. I’ll probably copy the ones I use a lot into a seperate ‘favorites’ bin too since there are so many files and folders worth of sounds.
Anyways, this seems to be slightly easier workflow than going back and forth between the two apps. Anyone have any thoughts on this or do something similar?
Sterling Noren
WideWorld HD Productions -
12 Replies
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Yeah, you’re making it incredibly difficult even with the new workflow you came up with.
Here’s what I do…
Open Sountrack and use it’s search engine to find the sound I need. Right click on sound and choose to show it in finder. Drag file to bin or directly to sequence. Done.
I don’t worry abou the file not being in my capture scratch or backed up with the project since it should always be on the machine (or any studio machine) with Soundtrack installed.
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Sterling,
There are indeed many handy aif files that come with STP and as you have found those sound files can be used independently without the app. I like your idea of making all the sounds accessable inside a FCP project, I may try it here. Thanks for sharing the idea.
DRW
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I just use spotlight and drag all the results into a SFX folder in fcp. Initially that doesn’t work as well, but as you learn what sound effects are named in STP it gets much easier.
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These are all great ideas. I too would like an easier way to have access to the STPro loops inside of FCP. Feature Request!
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com
Pres. SF Cutters -
How many times have you guys accidentally opened up the apple loops utility when you click on one of the loops in finder? Maybe I don’t understand it or am overthinking it, but that program is so annoying to me.
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My understanding of how the two apps work to geth is use FCP to to your video and once you have finished makiing the video look perfict you send it all to sound track and make all your audio adjustments there. Shure you can do basic sound in FCP but Soundtrack gives you much more control.
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Thanks for your input which has been insightful.
I also work this way with the free material that Motion provides which can be imported from the MacHD as well. There are a bunch of elements (stills, movies…) like smoke and fire, clouds, lightstreaks,etc that can be used within many FCP projects.
I havent found a way to do this with Live Type textures yet and dont think it is possible. Right now I create my textural backgrounds in LiveType and export them seperately which is okay.
Anyways, none of this is really how it is all intended to work but it does…and can save time when you’re feverishly cutting something in FCP and want quick results/ideas/inspiration without reaching for another app. (like adding a simple “whoosh” sound effect or some kind of moving image file to composite with. Of course if you are going to get sophistacted then you might as well load the actual app, be it Soundtrack or Motion… but these free elements are there and can be used quickly from within FCP if you take a few steps to set it up. Try it and see.
Sterling Noren
WideWorld HD Productions -
I’ve made a dedicated iTunes library for working with FCP. I’ve got all the Soundtrack sounds there, plus several sound effects libraries, bits I’ve made in GarageBand, and so on. I put them all there as 48K aiffs, so they are ready to be directly imported to FCP.
While it’s true that all of these *should* always be available later, I still take the extra step of copying them to the project folder first.
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Hi Folks
my favourite is now AudioFinder 4.01. Its not free but it directly supports
Audio Units and has a good editor built in. Here is the link:
https://www.icedaudio.com/
Hierarchy search is super fast as is audition of audio files. It reads everything. I had to slam through 19 GB of
Production Music given to me as an Itunes library recently and this application really did the trick.Best Regards
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I need a good workflow for using Mp3 with FCP and STP.
We have a large library of mp3-musik we like to use for editing jobs.
(find+listen to tracks in Itunes, when you like it, you put it into your project.)
to easy to be working, because FCP hates MP3, they even have to be rendered, and then they still play somewhat funny(have you ever noticed that btw?)
OK: Everything has to be converted to aiff to make it work! Is there a way to do that without putting everthing into STP first??
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