[Matthew Slaughter]

Thanks again.
Well, I’ve managed to test out at least one thing you suggested –
It sure as heck isn’t a problem with my own music.
I just imported a 24/88 version of my track and it works fine.
I still have no idea why there was a problem in the first place, but there is no longer a squelchy audio track happening….

[Matthew Slaughter]

The source audio file is not the problem.
It has been professionally mastered, I’ve had CDs factory pressed etc.
The audio file, in ANY format, plays fine ion VLC, quicktime, iTunes, via my iPhone, my Fiio X3, my CD player, band camp etc.

The problem is within FCPX, and it must be something to do with how I am importing it in terms of settings because surely FCPX can’t get this kind of thing wrong.

[Matthew Slaughter]

Ok. Thanks guys. Buuuut…

1. It’s my .WAV file. I’m a musician and this is my track. I have it in all formats and have tried pretty much all of them.
2. It is still squishy when I share the video to master file.
3. I have tried a 16-48 iteration and it is doing exactly the same thing.

I would have thought that search terms such as “how” + “create” +”music video” or “how import audio correctly” etc would at some stage turn up a simple guide somewhere for how to properly import lossless audio (or *any* audio, for that matter) into FCP, but seriously, I can’t find one single guide anywhere which explains this… I am not a pro, so surely I am missing something real obvious!

[Matthew Slaughter]

I have tried simply centering the image without resizing, and even at maximum quality “master file” huge file size settings, the output video is much softer and evidently degraded from the raw digitized video.

Given that when I centre the image in FCP I am not rescaling anything, and the image size is unchanged, is there any setting I should be checking to make sure the output file is not compromised in its image quality? I was very surprised to see how much softer than the raw file the output centred video was….

[Matthew Slaughter]

That helps, thanks Bret!

[Matthew Slaughter]

Thanks all. As the image looks strange with the large black area underneath, I have to do *something* with it, so i’ll try both scaling to a full 4:3 *and* cropping / upscaling to 14:9 or 16:9.

Again, is the transform function the best way for me to do this…?
Or will creating a 14:9 or 16:9 sequence automatically do… something?

Trial and error this weekend will no doubt answer many questions…

[Matthew Slaughter]

Thanks.

Is the transform function the best way to do this?
In a 16:9 timeline you can use the transform controls to fit the frame as wished:
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH12604?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US (google it if you are region blocked from this US page)

Or is the best thing to do now is stretch the image to fill the 4:3 frame after all….?

[Matthew Slaughter]

I created a new event / project, reimported everything and it is fine now.

[Matthew Slaughter]

I have no idea how to even establish that. That information is nowhere obvious…. help?

[Matthew Slaughter]

Just a follow-up to let you know that I picked up an ES10 and have started the transfer process again. There are no MPEG artifacts and the unit does indeed appear to be simply allowing my video to passthrough its analog pathways with the benefit of very generous timebase correction – ie just about *everything* is coming through now.

I have done some direct comparison of footage from the same tape transferred with and without the ES10 in the pathway and there may be some very, very slight softening of the image but it’s really hard to tell with the quality of footage I am dealing with, so essentially I am relieved.

Best $50 I have spent for a long time.