[John Fishback]

Very strange. Did you try trashing the prefs and repairing permissions? Maybe FCP is losing track of where the audio is on your hard drive for that section of the clip. Also try going to the View menu, External Video and select Off then select All Frames. There have been times that I’ve lost audio playback entirely and doing the Off to All Frames has brought it back. But, I’ve never had part of a track play and another not.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

When I said listen to the media, I meant the digitized media on your hard drive, not the tape. If the digitized media is ok, then the problem is in your monitoring.

Another thought is CB radios, ham radios, taxi companies or anyone else in your building or neighborhood who might be emitting RF that could cause an intermittent buzz. In a former facility there was someone in our area with a souped up CB radio. Whenever he drove by and was transmitting some of his signal leaked into our audio. It only affected the video suite which was on the side of the building by the road.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

Threre’s a nice plugin at https://www.lyric.com/fcp-plugins/ which costs about $50 that can do all of the above and keep the blur tracking the motion of the underlying object in case the shirt is moving. There’s a motion tracking demo you can download. You want to try the Pin Blur plugin in the demo.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

Is the buzz on your media? Have you tried moving the media clips from your suite to the other suite and see if the buzz is there. If it’s not, then the media is clean and something is happening in your output chain (video card out to mixer in and/or mixer out to monitors amps). If it is on the media then the problem is definitely occuring during digitizing. Do you monitor the tape deck’s output or the return from FCP when you digitize? Are your cables wired balanced or unbalanced? If you don’t hear the buzz at the deck outputs or on the FCP return then it could be a problem within your CineWave card. You might try switching the cards in the two suites and see if the problems follows the card in your suite. Just some ideas that come to mind.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

I looked at the acoustilock website and it’s ambiguous about how to get air into the cabinet. It seems to imply that it will extract the room air. I suppose you could drop a vent down in the wall to where the cabinet will be and so direct more air at the cabinet intake. You might even run a soft duct from the a/c vent to the air intake of the cabinet.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

We use a room adjacent to our edit suite as a machine room. We cool both rooms with the same system year-round. PVC conduit through the wall at two places stuffed with foam to make the pass-throughs virtually airtight. The cable run from computer to keyboard and monitors is about 10 feet. And we have no noise in the edit suite. Be sure to make the wall between the machine room and suite as airtight as possible. Caulk cracks where necessary. Air through cracks transmits a lot of noise.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

Love it! Brings me back to my linear days.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

It’s funny, but sometimes even when everything’s in sync, lipsync looks wrong even looking at the subject. If I have a OS take where the dialogue is the same as the CU, or at least similar, I try to line up both audio tracks as a guide to help get the best match. Then I mess with the visual cut. When I’m happy, I dump the audio track I’m not using.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

If you look at a waveform display of the audio you can see much of what’s being discussed above. “P”s, “K”s and “S”s (and many others) have distinctive shapes. Once you get used to them you will know the sound even without listening. If you need to replace a word, or partial word, it’s often easier to cut on a hard sound, particularly if you see the same shape on your waveform in the original and its replacement. Sometimes you might want to edit one “S” to another “S” and find the cut doesn’t sound right. Try a very short fade between the two sounds to blend them and smooth them out.

If your editor has enough resolution (ie sub-frame) you can try to cut out some of a plosive if it’s a problem. Leave the beginning of the sound and edit out some of the jaggedness. Don’t go too far, or you’ll affect the word. It’s trial and error most of the time. You’ll use UNDO a lot.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors

[John Fishback]

I don’t think there is an automated way to do this. Find the clips that are the volume you want. This should have them peaking on the meters around -12. Then, go through the other clips and drag the levels up or down to make them all peak around -12. They should all sound the same. Sometimes, depending on whether any compression was added to the original clips, you could have a clip peaking to -15 “sound” the same as one peaking at -12. The aim is not to have the viewer have to change the volume throughout the program.

Hopefully, each clip is consistently high or low so you can just increase its overall level by +3 or -4 or whatever. If the gain is uneven over the course of a clip, you can add nodes to your timeline with the pen tool and control your levels that way. That can be time consuming.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26
SonicStudio HD DAW, Yamaha DM1000, Genelec Monitors