[Nick Meyers]

you really need to try your media and projects on another computer.
do you know anyone else w FCP?

nick

[Nick Meyers]

this is the forum for FCP 7 and under,
you should post your question in the FCP X Techniques forum

nick

[Nick Meyers]

“does dialogue need to be always panned to the centre”

pretty much always.
the main use of stereo sound in dialogue tracks is for reverbs, to define a space

“there are some true stereo tracks on there”
well why is you mix being rejected as mono?

is the music really stereo in the timeline?
is it still stereo on your export?

you may still need stereo atmospheres (unless you have wall to wall music)

“very few of the music is mono only”
make them stereo, unless they are really supposed to be mono: a tinny music track come from a radio, say
you’d need to use Soundtrack Pro for this.
it’s easier that it might seem. all the effects have good presets.

“BUT, the dialogue being centered is ok then?”
more than OK, kind of essential except in very rare cases.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

DONT pan the dialogue or narration!
leave all talking panned to the centre.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

well, do you have any true stereo sounds in the timeline?

is the music one track only?
or two tracks?

if two, then maybe the stereo pair has become unlike, and panned to the centre, somehow.
that can be rectified:
select the clip,
hit option command L
then LISTEN TO IT!
look at the audio meters: are the two lines moving a bit differently?

however if its one track, then that can’t (of course) be stereo.
you can run it though soundtrack pro and add a “make-steroe” filter to it.
(that’s not it’s real name, i can’t remember it at the moment)

do you have stereo atmosphere tracks, that also may have been panned to the centre?

so it seems like you haven’t done a proper sound mix outside of FCP?
i guess you’ve done a good job to only have the mix rejected on the non-stereo factor.

but you might need to add some stereo atmospheres,
and fix your music

nick

[Nick Meyers]

you have to have a clip selected for this to work.
what sort of audio is in your timeline?

nick

[Nick Meyers]

i saw a dozen or so VR works at a film festival last year.

of those, only two stood out for me:
Millions March was one,
Clouds of Sidra was the other. I’d recommend seeking it out.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

did you go to this page (image attached), and change the “Real Time Audio Mixing” to 24 or higher?

i see you have a lot of copies of the clip stacked.
get rid of them, and just have the one instance.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

“generally the fix there is to up the number of RT Audio tracks in your FCP user preferences.”

open FCP’s user preferences (option Q)
one of the items on the first page is “Number of Real Time Audio Tracks”
by default it’s set to 8, which is crazily low.
make it 16, see what happens.

i generally work with it at 24, at least.

cheers,
nick

[Nick Meyers]

” on a second monitor in full screen, the menu bar in the top remains visible ”

this is a OS issue, not FCP

go to system prefs, Mission Control (i think)
turn OFF “second screen is a separate space” or something along those lines.

nick