Is it possible to glue back the sound track once it's razored to smithereens?

I have bits of sound over three tracks with gaps in between. There are plus and minus signs on the bits. I'd like to glue them back together into one track like they used to be, if it's possible, so I can do the RIPPLE ROLL SLIP AND SLIDE now that I know how to do that :-)

use the roll tool on the first edit to extend it all the way.
delete all the other mess.

or do you want the cuts left in?
control click on the red sync warning and chose "move into sync"

then grab them all (T for Track tool is good for this)
and move them up, back into the first track
hold SHIFT to stop them going out of sync.

if there's no overlap on the clips you can select them, and use Option + Up arrow to bump them all up to the next track.
Option + down arrow would of course move them to a lower track.

there probably will be overlap, though.


nick

> I have bits of sound over three tracks with gaps in between. There are plus
> and minus signs on the bits. I'd like to glue them back together into one
> track like they used to be, if it's possible

If you're talking about the one original piece of sound that came with your 25-minute chunks of image, the fastest way is simply to Match Frame the sound into the Viewer, press OPTION-X to clear In and Out points, -drag the video and sound back into the timeline, and delete the pieces.

If two pieces of one clip that had originally be adjacent to each other are put side by side in the timeline, and you have "Show Through Edits" turned on in Sequence Settings, it's possible to click on the cut between the two clips (which will have two opposing red arrows) and press Delete to rejoin the two clips. Any effects, levels, pan etc. on the second piece will be overridden by the effects, levels pan etc. on the first clip. This method, however, is only good for small jobs.

Thanks derekmok. I appreciate your coming back with more helpful hints to salvage my first feature editorial job on FCP5. The last third of my 100 minute movie is fine now. I used the SLIP tool and was able to move the words around in the timeline and synch up the dialogue -- without creating gaps in the AMBIENT SOUND. This was an exciting discovery for me. There were a few cases where I had to rejoin bits of sound and use the RAZOR tool again because, as you know, sometimes one runs into another word from the other piece of track when slipping or sliding too far. So by extending the AMBIENT SOUND portion of the take on one end or the other, I was able to move the words around until they synched up without causing a sound glitch at either end of the sound bit.

Here's the problem with the first two-thirds of the movie: I have sound bits strewn over three tracks. They do overlap, Nick. So I don't want to just glue them back together, because then all the synching up that I've done will be lost. BTW, I do have the track saved, so I can go back to the original out of synch track, which is whole. (I'm working with one mono track.) I'd like to be able to drop all the sound bits on one track in the timeline and then use the SLIP tool to rework the relationship between the sound bits and recover the AMBIENT SOUND inbetween. Now, one way I coul do that is make a note on a piece of paper how many frames I'm plus or minus, and then putting the sound bits back on the same track and recovering synch, then use the slip tool on the already razored bits to recover the plus or minus frame count in each cut. Is this the best way? Or is there a bit of finessing I can do to make it easier?

By the way, Nick, I'd like to know how to get my movies into www.imdb.com You mentioned you could help me with this. I registered as a user on that website but it's not very user friendly. They seem to be pushing for that monthly service charge :-) I don't know. I hope you can write me about it. I'll have to get the data sheets ready for each movie -- I don't look forward to that :-) but I'd like to list my movies eventually on this website; it seems that they've gotten acceptance by the industry as a data bank for movies.

I've been having a little trouble following your project, so I'm going to throw this out as a possible solution.

IF your pieces are not continuous (meaning you had a clip ABC, and now you have AC, because you cut out B) then you can export the sound and reimport it as one clip. Use the green buttons on the left to "turn off" the video if you only want to export the sound.

Also, if your pieces are continuous, you can cntl+click the red "bow ties" and relink the clips -- two adjoining clips that have no break in the timecode are called "through edits." (Well, the edit is called a "through edit."

Thanks, Mike. I actually have the complete soundtrack, so that's not the problem. And I took the suggestion to just click on the main track and stretch the sound to fill the whole sound track area; I had a one-piece complete track before I took the razor to it to synchronize the dialogue. You didn't follow my last thread, but I have an entire track which is wild and mostly out of synch (I shout with an Arri 2c and recorded the sound on the Canon Optura, then edited the film on a Cinemonta flat bed from work print and mag, then telecined picture and track to DVCAM, and capture into FCP5 -- now that I have the G5 and FCP :-) So now I'm finding that I can go back and re-synch every shot that's out of synch and I'm using the razored bits as reference to see where I'm out of synch. It's worked out to be easier by just re-synching the whole track now that I'm having so much fun with the SLIP tool :-) The first time I began trying to synch my dialogue, I was using only the razor and moving the sound bits out on a separate track to facilitate moving them around so they wouldn't bump into each other :-) So I ended up with overlaps and gaps. Ah, well, it's all a learning experience at this stage. It's a little extra work, but I have to go back and do it over. Thanks for the help.

man, just move them all up to one track if that;s what you want.
you've got clips all over three tracks, you want them on one, right?
well just do it!
how-to is described in my 1st reply.

dont be afraid to do things and mess up. there is always Apple Z for undo

wish i knew how imdb works, but i dont.

cheers,
nick

At the bottom of the pages on imdb is a link to register and change pages.

It takes about two weeks for changes to show up.

Sorry, Nick, I got you mixed up with somebody else who suggested that I enter my movies into the imdb data base.

Thanks, Mike. I've registered but still find the process of entering info on imdb to be difficult. I'll have to spend more time figuring out the way the website works.

And thanks everyone for the help with the sound editing of my movie. I'm getting faster with fixing feature film my track.

Just to thank you all and report what I learned (and what I didn't learn...yet :-)
Okay, you have to understand that I recorded all my sound WILD! And I had to switch some words around; they were said out of order, beside the fact that the delivery of the words is almost never perfect. I have had to juggle almost every phrase, if not every word. With some actors, it's honesly been every word OUT OF SYNCH! Method Actors! LOL So, my first efforts to razor down the sound track and synch the dialogue willy nilly didn't work -- ON ACCOUNT OF DEAD SPOTS in the track, that would entail supplies oodles of AMBIENT SOUND. I gave up on this idea after I'd edited the sound of 3/4 of the movie. Alas, I wish I'd stopped sooner. Here's what I've ended up doing: I've gone back and dragged out every cut in the sequence to its original connected-ness (in other words I've made all one piece of audio). Then I've used each cut (razored and placed on individual tracks) as a reference to how I should synch the original audio by using SLIP & SLIDE. Mostly SLIP -- what a great tool for audio -- wow! It takes care of the AMBIENT SOUND at the same time -- but this takes some learning, and thank God I did learn how to use the SLIP & SLIDE tools! These are the greatest tools invented for synching up dialogue. PERIOD. So the upshot of it is that I've had to re-synch my whole sound track again, which is really great, because I can now synch it 100 PERCENT. It's as if I recorded the whole sound track with a synch sound camera and tape recorded going in crystal synch. I couldn't make the control click on the red out of synch numbers and choosing MOVE INTO SYNCH WORK. Perhaps I should've tried slip into synch -- I don't know what that would've done. And I never tried re-map sound. Maybe someday I'll get to figure out the rest of it. Thanks everyone for the advice that led me to see my way clear or rather to hear my way out? :-)

I just completed synching up all my dialogue. I highlighted the bits of sound on the three tracks, held down SHIFT and dragged the 3rd track to the 2nd track (it combined with it), and dragged the 2nd track to the 1st track (it combined all with it). So now I have one sound track (on the first track). I did a spot check of the movie and it seems everything is in synch. So now I've save this version of the movie. I don't dare delete the first one (the messy one) with all the bits of sound spread out on three tracks. I took another bit of precaution, and here I ran into an unexpected problem... I sent the sound to Soundtrack Pro and then re-exported it as one AFI track back into my project, BUT it's out of synch! I haven't mixed the movie. I just wanted a track without the red pluses and minuses -- oh, well, I don't need that.