One tiny piece of audio that I can't figure out.

We have a short clip of audio in our sequence that will play when unrendered yet when rendered the volume drops dramatically. So much that we cannot hear it.
We've tried filters, exporting the clip as a new final cut pro movie file and reconnecting it that way...we've tried exporting it as an aif file and replacing the audio with that. The same thing.
One thing that did happen was when one producer listened to the movie on surround sound he heard it in back of him.
Anyone know how to correct this, or have had a similar problem? I'm at a loss.
Thanks

When you have it on a timeline by itself, export **just left** and not both channels. It's almost certain you have a stereo track with phasing damage.

Koz

OK, now I have a second to talk about this.

Odd problems like under certain circumstances the whole show vanishes or goes way low and wearing headphones with the show coming from behind you mean the two stereo tracks, left and right are out of phase.

Do this. Put your show on a timeline at a point where there is normal show sound. Double click on the audio tracks so they appear in the Viewer. Using the magnifier tool (lower right), keep clicking on the viewer until one frame of show covers about an inch or so of the screen. Usually clicking until you can't click any more will do this.

*Most* of the wiggles in the two sound waveforms should be going the same direction between the top and bottom wave. If *most* of the wiggles are mirror images of each other, that's the problem.

I don't know how to fix that yet, but it involves delinking the left and right tracks and inverting one of them. A handy get-out-of-jail process is just export Left and use that (split back out to stereo) as the show.

This is easy to do in a sound program, but I have no idea how to do it in FCP.

Koz

sure you do

just cut the WHOLE track into a timeline,
un-stereo link it (option L)
or just un-link it if it;s not stereo (apple L)
click on one side to open in the viewer,
(make sure you've only got the one side in there)
export from the viewer.

(export from viewer will be determined by in/outs, that's why i said cut the whole clip into the timeline)

export as QuickTime movie.
this will maintain TC & Reel#


nick

<<<export as QuickTime movie.>>>

Oh, I can do that. I thought you were going to tell me how to invert the phase of one track. That's the magic.

Koz

I havent been able to get onto the system to test out your solutions, but they sound good. I appreciate the help, and I'll post my findings-
Thanks
Jeff