Baffling Audio Drift

1. I create a sequence with desired settings and media on the main box
2. I copy these exact same files (manually) to assistant's HD
3. She does rough line up while I work on other things
4. I copy the sent sequence back to my HD and reconnect original media
5. I get a FILE ATTRIBUTE MISMATCH - Media start and end (confusing as it's an exact copy, no destructive edits performed on it)
6. sure enough, audio starts out fine, but starts to drift a few minutes in, losing 8 or nine frames off the end of each chunk of edited audio.

No issues with video. Only with audio (44.1/16 BTW)
I even recopied her version of the audio file and reconnected to that - didn't fix it
The project file is an identical copy - same settings.

Main box is intel, Ass't on PPC

Oh yeah - Both running same version of FCP: 6.0.4

Your audio is 44.1...FCP doesn't like that. Needs to be 48k in order to sync up properly and not drift.


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1. on ass't machine - changed sequence settings to 48/16
2. resampled 44.1 audio to 48/16 in sound studio and saved as newaudiofile
3. reconnected sequence to newaudiofile - PLAYS FINE ON THAT MACHINE
4. transfer new project file (with 48 settings) and newaudiofile back to main intel
5. reconnect everything - same problem - file attribute mismatch - drift

FCP's sequence settings for (external) audio don't have any influence on the import handling of external audio. During re-connect unknown audio files will be re-interpreted upon the project settings (at least with FCP 6.x) and this in your case will lead to this error message.
Make sure you do have the same project settings. Try it with a new project - make sure to close all other open projects. Then do the same project setup as your assistant, maybe copy her project to your machine.
The problem is once you imported the audio into a "bad" project FCP will remember this interpretation and you can't change it anymore. The "bad" project must be closed forever and a fresh "good" one has to be created.
If you only have a few audio files you can export as QT audio only (NOT as audio) on the assistant's machine in advance. This will create a QT container with the original audio and an added timecode track. These files will be interpreted like videos and will behave same way on any machine.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]