audio issues

I am having a problem that keeps coming back every time after I fix it.
I edited a music track and the result was great. HOwever, evry now and then the music isn't synched anymore, as if I did random cuts in the track.
I keep going back to an older version of my spot and copy/paste the music tracks, but it's becoming seriously annoying as I am getting close to delivery date.

ANother thing I should mention.
Last week I exported the sequence via compressor and then to DVD St. Pro and the audio was all messed up in DVD SP. I went back to my sequence and the audio was fine...

I thought I noticed that FCP didn't like cross dissolve, so I tried to edit the audio directly within the track in the viewer using the pen tool. But today, it's messed up again.

1. Try trashing your audio render files.

2. Convert all your audio to 48khz/16 bits.



www.strypesinpost.com

> I edited a music track and the result was great. HOwever, evry now and then the music isn't
> synched anymore, as if I did random cuts in the track.
> Try trashing your audio render files.

Assuming this is the same issue I've been wrestling with for the past year...

That works, but only once, and in my own experience, this issue will keep coming up repeatedly and force you to ditch your audio renders every time. Trashing preferences won't help if that's the case.

Check this. When you listen to the music track, it's playing an entirely wrong section, right? Double-click the clip into the Viewer and see if what you hear there is the same. If it's the same problem I had above, then the edits will look like what you had cut (ie. the Viewer won't be playing back the wrong section), but what plays in the timeline will be the wrong section.

If that's the case, the only way I've found to prevent this problem from repeatedly coming up is to disable all audio renders in the Render Selection and Render All options in the Sequence menu. Use Audio Mixdown (OPTION-APPLE-R) exclusively for audio renders. Ever since I started doing this, I haven't had that "jumbled audio" problem come back, on three separate FCP stations at three different companies (including my own -- which is an FCP5 machine).

As far as I can tell, this issue starts popping up when your project file gets larger. Very annoying.


www.derekmok.com

ALright, this is making sense.
I'll try all of the above
thanks guys

I had this issue a while ago, then i started converting all my music to 48k/16. And never had that issue with it anymore.

Then a few months ago, I've started working again with 44.1k music in the timeline and haven't yet had any issues that trashing audio renders couldn't fix.

Also, there are few kinds of audio renders- "item level" and "playback level". Item level renders are indicated on the audio clip itself, which may not go away even if you enable/disable the clip.



www.strypesinpost.com

> I had this issue a while ago, then i started converting all my music to 48k/16. And never had
> that issue with it anymore.

That would be a different manifestation of this problem, then. All of my audio is 48kHz on all three machines where I worked, and in my case it made no difference. Also, the strange thing about this problem is that if I were to turn off the errant piece of audio with Clip Enable/Disable, then turn it back on, it would often still be "stuck" playing the wrong part. However, turning off an overlapping audio clip and then back on sometimes fixed the issue. So what I deduced was that the issue wasn't necessarily just with the particular piece that was playing back wrong, but with the way audio clips were being combined. My money would be that it's a problem with the connection between the clip and the source media file.


www.derekmok.com

I haven't had a chance yet to try anything, but i have to say that yes, my project is big, and yes, it happens when tracks overlap.
I'll experiment tomorrow.

I have the same issue as well and I have been basically doing what Derek says. I never use "render all." I render video only and when I am ready to hear audio I use the mixdown.

It is a strange sensation when you are expecting to hear a nice fade in of music, from the beginning of the song, only to be blasted by some other section of music . . .

Can anyone take a guesstimate of the size of project where this problem starts to occur?

And is it also related to the length of the project or just the size.

I did have this frequently on a 90 min feature project about a year ago and then it mysteriously disappeared and I cut and did tracks for a similar feature with no problems immediately after that.

My solution was to place my music in the track and then export it to QT immediately and then import it again and lay it in at the same place. The there was no chance of that appalling "slippage.

Harry.

> Can anyone take a guesstimate of the size of project where this problem starts to occur?

Irrelevant, I'm pretty sure. I've seen it happen on my massive 200-sequence (but very few cuts -- most sequences are three to six minutes, each containing one extended clip with filters and multiple audio sources) FCP project, I've seen it on a 60-second commercial that's only about 5MB in size, and I've seen it on a 10-minute feature-film sales reel. These three projects span across Uncompressed 10-bit SD, DV NTSC and Motion JPEG A formats, and my last project (two-minute promo) had it pretty early as well. The only thing I know is that it tends not to happen on the first or second cuts. I don't think there's a single threshold that applies to every instance.


www.derekmok.com

harry323 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> My solution was to place my music in the track and
> then export it to QT immediately and then import
> it again and lay it in at the same place.
>

this is exactly what i did, exporting an aiff file as soon as I fixed the problem for the Xth time.

And it happens only to music?

Honestly, I haven't seen a single instance of this issue for well over a year since after I started converting all my music to aiff 48k/16 (now it's 24 bits, as most of my stuff goes out on 20/24 bit audio). I have a droplet on the desktop for conversion. This is aside from my recent foray into 44.1k in FCP. However, I'm still sticking with converting everything to 48k on longer form projects.

I had LOTS of issues when the music was 44.1k. There was a pilot where I had to export the audio twice (plus another time for a visual change) because something went wrong somewhere with FCP and 44.1k music (and that was maybe because I had around 16 or 20 odd active tracks partly because the levels were amazingly low, and I didn't know there was a gain filter hidden in FCP 5). Had everything from skipping beats, to silence when FCP shows waveforms in the timeline, to having it not play at the right spots even if I do a match frame (my workaround was to drag it from the browser, match back to where I inserted the audio, etc. Complete pain in the beejeezus. Everything looks alright, then you play the DVD, and the music to the bumpers is skipping a beat, or playing something else, etc..

In this case, I'm not sure what the issue may be.



www.strypesinpost.com