[Andy Mees]

if you’re trying to normalise the audio accross all these different clips then the “Normalize Gain” filter in FCP 6 may help https://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_normalizing_audio.html

or course this is just going to bring all your peaks to the same level, but it may well get you in a goosd place to start your manual adjustment using your ears and meters toolset 🙂

[Andy Mees]

… but then I never liked the scrolling timelines at all, way too distracting. give us instead a timeline that simply refreshes (page left/right)when the playhead reaches the extent of the displayed region, much nicer. different strokes for different folks, its way past time we had a much deeper preference set.

[Andy Mees]

yup, I too love the way AVID handle this and think FCP could so so much better in this regard

you’re given a rough tape log of clips that need digitising for the piece, you import the ALE or just type in the timecodes to generate the log, then hit Batch Digitise and you’re away … this will often be the first time you see the footage for yourself, and as it plays into the system you can bash away on the keyboard naming clips and adding log notes and adding markers on the fly. this is exactly the kind of functionality that always set AVID apart from FCP.

[Andy Mees]

And don’t forget …. Adobe Photoshop.

If you have Photoshop CS3 Extended edition then you can open your movie directly within the Animation (timeline) palette

[Andy Mees]

Animation files are big Alexander … 6GB for 12 mins is not enormous, heck even at DV data rates you’d get a 3GB file.

Are you sure you got the original recording format correct? Select one of the clips in the Browser window and press Cmd-9 to invoke the Item Properties window and report back on the Format properties listed.

[Andy Mees]

[mac cebu] “the directory cache is the default one, i cant remember the path but when i get back to the office i’ll post it here. “

the default cache location is the system disc … make sure you have sufficient disc space in this location

[mac cebu] “is that really possible? i think its not, the disk when mounted on the desktop is in read only mode, because if it is possible that would be really a great relief for us.”

It is possible. The root level of the mounted XDCAM disc is locked of course, but the CLIP folder is not locked, it is read/write. Please note though, that just because this direct transfer method is possible does not mean it is guaranteed to work … chances are that if the clip will not export to disc via XDT then it may not transfer via finder copy either. (Behind the scenes, this is what XDT is doing anyway ie writing a temp copy of your sequence/clip to the cache folder, then initiating a copy of that cached file to the XDT disc, then deleting the cached file)

[Andy Mees]

what directory are you using for the temporary export cache?
what happens if you export these same clips to the desktop rather than writing directly to disc?
if it exports ok to desktop, try drag and dropping the exported clip to the XDCAM disc CLIP directory (ie finder based copy)

[Andy Mees]

knew it had to be there somewhere … from the manual (Volume IV, Chapter 17, Page 237)

All audio tracks, mixing levels, cross fades, and audio filters are rendered and the
resulting stereo or mono audio tracks are embedded in the reference movie.

[Andy Mees]

for extra credit take note that F11 disregards marked in and outs, it works on playhead position replacing the clip under the playhead in the timeline with the clip in the browser so that the two playhead positions match up

more of the same goodness can be found with the venerable copy/paste functions
select the source clip and press cmd c to copy
then choose the target clip press opt-v to paste attributes and select video content and/or audio “content” (and whatever other attributes you may want to bring from the original)

[Andy Mees]

gotcha …

so how long does it take to render out this reference movie, and what is the final file size?
now do it again, but this time DO check “make self contained” … how long did it take this time, and how big is the resulting file size?

i’m thinking these reference movies only reference video and that the audio is always mixed down and embeded … damned if i can find any info to back that up, so I don’t know for sure if that is or was ever true.