[Michael Gissing]

Strange stems. The music and effects are obviously 5.1 but two dialog tracks is unusual. I think what you are doing is best. Leave all tracks to edit and mute the Ls,Rs and sub when playing.

When you make the OMF at the end, you will need to split the program into 20 minute sections, otherwise the OMF will exceed the 2 gig limit, particularly with that many tracks. When you are locked off, duplicate the sequence and delete all but 20 minute blocks to make the OMF. In Out markers aren’t recognised when making OMFs.

[Michael Gissing]

Firstly FCP is not a good audio tool. If you have no other option, use Sound Track Pro which has better EQ and dynamics.

The five attribute that you need are EQ, dynamics compression, distortion, phasing, noise.

Firstly EQ the sound to roll off a lot of low frequencies. Secondly parametric boost around 1-2 Khz. Roll off all hi frequencies above about 6Khz.

Compress the dynamics savagely. Distort the signal. This can be done with various overdrive plugins. If you have access to a VST capable device, there are free plugins like Ruby Tube that can distort plus something that can phase or flange the sound. Finally you need crackle and noise as a background to help sell the effect.

If it is astronaut, then the classic NASA beep can be probably found online. Listen here to get an idea of what the elements are –

https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/video11.html#Step

[Michael Gissing]

Never seen or heard of that behaviour. The usual first step when something strange happens in FCP is to close and trash preferences. There are some nice free third party tools to help you do this like

https://www.digitalrebellion.com/pref_man.htm

You may consider their maintenance package (not free)

https://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/posts/introducing_fcs_maintenance_pack.html

[Michael Gissing]

Actual Baz, us sound post people don’t like that way of splitting a project. If the first OMF is say tracks 1-4 and the second one is tracks 5-8, the second OMF moves the audio to tracks 1-4 so when you import both into the timeline, you have a mess with the second import sitting on top of the first.

It is better to split along the timeline for another reason. You can load the first OMF and start tracklaying, without waiting for the second OMF. This matters on fast turnaround where the OMF’s are being downloaded via ftp.

[Michael Gissing]

14 tracks is a strange number. What are the files names? If they have names like “…Left””…Center”….LS …sub…RS then they are 5.1 tracks.

Avoid nesting as I presume the final will go out to an audio post facility to remix the cutdown, particularly if they are stems. You will be making an OMF if you are sending it out for sound post so nesting will make that messy. Also if you use mixdowns of the tracks, that will be a problem for sound post.

If you can give me an idea of the file names, I can help you set up your monitor mix so that it makes sense and also establish a track pattern that will help the sound post people to finish.

[Michael Gissing]

[Garrett Gibbons] “FYI, you may not have to convert to ProRes to conform, but it should make your editing faster and require no rendering.”

As the source code is H264 you really must convert to an edit friendly codec like ProRes. This forum has hundreds of posts from people shooting with these new movie DSLR camera’s about how to edit H264 and this is the consistent answer to the horror of trying to edit H264 in an FCP sequence.

I was suggesting that the frame rate issue could be solved at the same time as converting to an edit codec.

[Michael Gissing]

[Tamas Erdosi] “The drive where you want to export the OMF file isn’t FAT-32?”

OMF has its own 2 gig file limit, regardless of the drive format. You can thank AVID for thinking like Microsoft on that one.

And yes it doesn’t recognise In Out marks unfortunately so follow Shane’s advice.

[Michael Gissing]

Check and see if the drive was reformatted as FAT32 when you were using the Silverlining software to erase.

[Michael Gissing]

Some basic info might help. What deck? What are your sequence settings? Do you have a firewire drive and a firewire deck connected at the same time?

Have you tried the usual – trash prefs etc. Can you play the sequence and crash record on the deck?

[Michael Gissing]

Media Manager uses hopeless terminology and I understand your reticence. When it says “Delete unused media” it really means “Do not include unused media in the new copy”. It isn’t going to delete master clips.