[Phil Lowe]

[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s very obvious you don’t need or want help. You’d prefer to troll.

You want it to work like Avid, it doesn’t.

What you want to do is available in fcpx, you just refuse to do it.”

There’s absolutely nothing I would love to do more than forget I’d ever heard of FCPX. Unfortunately, I can’t. So I came here (again) looking for a SIMPLE fix to deal with dual mono source clips. It’s clearly not your fault that Apple’s “pro” NLE can’t deal with dual mono sources as well as any other NLE out there. (I guess that’s too much to ask for $300, eh?)

Trackless is just plain pointless if a 21st century NLE can’t handle something as simple as this as a 1990 Avid can.

But thanks anyway.

And then there’s this:

“Until they release a version with a dedicated workflow for dual-mono, I don’t see X as a good choice for news. Right now, everything is based on stereo, and keeping dedicated channels for reporter tracks, SOTs and nat sound is almost impossible to do in a timely manor. Don’t get me wrong, there are workarounds for almost everything (as noted, lifting your track from the storyline and use your primary storyline for sots/nats is a decent solution) but workarounds take time. There’s a lot I like about X, but if I’m slamming together a PKG at the last second, it’s not a good tool. As an Apple certified trainer for FCP X, I’ve really, really tried hard to like it for news, but I’m just not there yet.”

https://www.b-roll.net/forum/showthread.php?t=28445

News departments are using FCPX for one reason: it’s cheap. There are certainly better tools for editing news than FCPX.

And yes, it’s OK to admit when you don’t have the answer to my question.

Update: just put in a feature request to Apple for dedicated audio tracks in FCP X. It needs them. Badly.

Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.

[Phil Lowe]

[Jeremy Garchow] “You say that roles represent precious lost editing time, yet you’re trying to select everything and pan them.”

Yep. Once and done, something you don’t even have to do in Avid. Fancy that!

[Jeremy Garchow] “With trackless the output channels are defined on export and they might require the use of Roles.”

I need to keep the channels split throughout the entire post process, from ingest to export, not just export. Apparently, there is no quick and easy way to do this without a plug-in or keypunching metadata. Got it. Thanks.

[Jeremy Garchow] “If you don’t want to use X the way it was designed, you are going to lead yourself to a path of frustration “

X was clearly not designed for news. Or news editors. It was designed for mall rats to edit their selfie-videos on their iPhones and upload them instantly from anywhere in the world to anywhere on the web, just by dragging their clips around. After all, who needs split audio for that? O.o

Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.

[Phil Lowe]

[Bret Williams] “Click where it says dual mono and change that to stereo. Which is the very definition of what you are attempting to achieve. Channel one will be out the left speaker, and channel 2 will be out the right speaker.

If that’s all you wanted to do I can’t believe that’s what all the fuss was about.”

Yep. Have tried this over and over and here’s what I get:

Sure, now each channel plays back on its own speaker, but both channels are combined in one track!!! How do you disable one or the other when you don’t need both?!?

I’m NOT shooting iPhone video here, people! The cameras we use do NOT record stereo audio! They record DUAL MONO audio, which may be a wireless lav on channel 1 and a shotgun on channel 2! I need to be able to keep these DUAL MONO channels separate THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE POST PROCESS! Avid can do this quickly and simply. Same for Premiere, Vegas, and Edius. FCPX cannot???

So let me see if I understand this correctly. In FCPX, you can split recorded multi-channel audio into dual mono “tracks”, but cannot batch pan them to left and right (as they were recorded), in the browser, as you can with changing the channel configuration and pan mode. Any such changes either have to be made on the timeline or through the use of “roles”, which only affect export, not playback. Or, you can leave the tracks stereo, but have no control over one channel or the other, as stereo audio is not broken out into separate “tracks”.

Wow! What a convoluted, overly-complicated POS (piece of software!) this is!

Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.

[Phil Lowe]

[Bret Williams] “But your main complaint about X was that it was difficult to pan individual mono tracks within clips. That you had to pan each clip individually. I demonstrated that was incorrect and specifically detailed the simple 10 second process to do what you wanted.”

You showed me how to do it after these clips were already on the timeline. I wanted a way to do it in the browser across every clip selected, so that the channels would play back separately (alternating left and right) without having to fuss with clips already on the timeline. As you can see by the attached screen cap, I have selected all 90 clips in my bin, and can change the channel configuration and panning mode, but panning them all to left or right affects both channels of audio. I want mono 1 left and mono 2 right, and want this at the browser level with all 90 clips selected. Now, is there a way to do this or not? I have tried disabling the track that I don’t want to pan (unchecking mono 2) to pan only mono 1 left, but mono 2 still ends up on the left side of the mix. Premiere’s track mixer can handle this. Why can’t FCPX?

In short, I want this to work as simply and as efficiently as Avid’s alternating L/R panning for mono tracks, which is nothing more than a check mark in a global audio setting. Do you see the value and efficiency in that?

Thank you for your help so far. I am extremely frustrated by this entire experience, and am trying not to take those frustrations out on people. (I do, however, reserve the right to complain and hold contempt for this ghastly and unwieldy piece of software!)

Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.

[Phil Lowe]

[Bret Williams] “Seems similar to the workflow with tracks.”

Nothing at all like working with tracks in Avid. As I wrote before, put channel 1 audio on any odd numbered track and it’s automatically on your left channel. Put channel 2 audio on any even numbered track and it’s automatically on your right channel. Done. No messing with roles. No coming up with descriptive names and keypunching them in. No need to lasso anything on an Avid timeline just to name it or assign something to it. You’re telling me about a lot of steps to do something that takes a lot fewer steps and a lot less time in other software. I will grant you that roles will (probably) do what I require, however – like everything else in this iPhone editing app – it looks like it will actually do it slower and less efficiently from a news editor’s workflow perspective.

Once set as seen in the first 2 images, you never have to mess with panning anything again. Ever. Track patching, when needed, is a single, simple, click-drag move. There;s absolutely nothing about roles – that I see – that is either fast or intuitive.

Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.

[Phil Lowe]

[Bret Williams] “Please show me how that is even close to possible within Premiere, Avid, Resolve, or even AE”

You can turn off track monitors or solo them in Avid to get the same effect. Roles sound unnecessarily complicated and a waste of time when you’re under the gun.

Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.

[Phil Lowe]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I’m still confused as to why you need to split the audio clip by clip and pan them”

In news, we have to split the narration from music and “nat sound” so that the nats can be repurposed as vo’s or reused in packages. It’s about archiving the footage for reuse later. Because we’re on such tight deadlines, we don’t have time to make a separate archival export. Every piece has to be cut as it will be archived. That’s why this is critical.

Roles sound like a waste of precious editing time to me, and patching tracks, for as little as it needs to be done in a news piece, sounds a lot faster than tinkering under the hood. I’m an editor, not a programmer.

Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.

[Phil Lowe]

[Bret Williams] “Seems to be even worse in Premiere. All changes have to be made in the browser there. Once you place a mono track in the timeline in premiere, it’s mono. No panning allowed. You’ll find threads about it in the Premiere forum. The answer there is to match frame to the clip in the bin, change it’s audio format, then reedit back into the sequence over the mono audio clip.

So that’s better? I disagree.”

I opened Premiere CC2015 and dropped a dual mono clip onto the timeline then panned channel 2 right and channel 1 left. But, more importantly, I opened the audio track mixer panning 1 fully left and 2 fully right and arrived at exactly where I want to be with FCPX: every clip in the bin set for dual mono with left and right panned audio. And I didn’t have to do it clip-by-clip after having dropped it on the timeline.

Avid is even easier: drop channel 1 on any odd-numbered track and channel 2 on any even numbered track and – so long as your audio settings are set for alternating L/R tracks of mono clips, you will have exactly what I want and should expect from any NLE.

Whoever coded FCPX threw the baby out with the bathwater when it came to audio editing. IMHO.

I’ll only add that I honestly don’t see how Apple can continue to support this program much longer. It’s too arcane for the iPhone/iPad crowd, and way too hobbled for pros. They either need to fix these issues or EOL it.

Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.

[Phil Lowe]

Yes. Once you have the audio in dual mono mode, you still have to change the pan mode from none to stereo left/right. The problem is, you still actually have to pan the channels manually to the left and right to get them ro play back as split audio tracks (something, by the way, you don’t have to do on a track-based system.) You can batch change the pan mode in the browser, and even put clips into dual mono mode. What I need to do is pan these split channels to the left and right for one simple reason: if you have to do it only when on the timeline, you have to do it for each clip you put down, so you have to leave the inspector open. But with the inspector open, you can’t skim across multiple clips.

So apparently, the only way I’ve found to do what I need is to expand the audio components, open the audio animation tool, and pan each clips audio individually on the timeline. Not fast at all. In fact, I’d say it’s half-fast compared to any track-based NLE around. They need to stop smoking crack down in Cupertino before programming this stuff!

I have a serious feature request for the next update on this iPhone editing app: put tracks back in it!!!

Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, FCP X.

[Phil Lowe]

I’ve always used the audio mixer and ganged the tracks I want to adjust. Never used rubber-banding (never liked it).

Select your audio tracks. Place the timeline indicator where you want the changes made and gang the selected tracks on the audio mixer (literally only takes a second.) Now, when you drag the slider on one, the other(s) will follow. If you prefer keypunching in a value, changing one will change the other(s). This method was always faster for me than trying to drag a tiny slider around on the clip.