weird problem with audio keyframe and level edits undoing themselves constantly

Basically, out of nowhere, my FCP timeline for a very large feature-length project is acting like elves are living inside of it. Every time I adjust the audio levels, keyframes, or pan settings on a clip, elsewhere in the timeline my previous audio level / keyframe / pan edits get undone. This happens over, and over, and over again... seemingly in the same 10 places. At first I thought I was just imagining that I had made those edits when I hadn't... but I can see it happening - I fix one spot where the sound mix is all messed up, move on to the next trouble spot, manually save, then go back to the previous fixed spot and it is back to the way it was previously. I am wasting huge amounts of time and getting increasingly frustrated, making the same audio mix edits over and over again. What could be going on?

I've tried trashing preferences, quitting and restarting FCP, working with the same timeline in a new project, trashing my audio render files using render manager. None of these have helped.

I'm I'm on OS 10.6.8, FCP 7.0.3. I've been working on this project, with the same set up, for months. I've never seen this before.

Is it H.264 by any chance?

No H264. It's very very mixed in terms of sources, since it is mostly an archival / found footage project. But all non-prores video has been run through Compressor and converted to ProRes before moving into FCP.

Could it be related to mixed audio sample rates in one timeline? The "problem" clips are not 44.1, but there is some 44.1 audio in the timeline.

Do a test. Copy paste the entire timeline to a new timeline and remove all the 44.1 audio. Then do some adjustments and see if they stick. I've not heard of this before, but complicated timelines always throw up headaches eventually.

I did the test... the problem is still happening. There's two spots in particular, 6 minutes apart on the timeline. One clip should have the audio boosted all the way up to +12, the second is a series of short sounds that need to be low in the mix, pushed down to -7. Every time I push the low sounds down to -7, I go back to the +12 sound and see that it has been dropped back down to 0. I push it back up to +12, go to the -7 sound section again, and see that the short sounds now alternate between -7 and +12 - in other words sudden extremely loud sounds appearing out of nowhere.

Save and archive your project file, then try disconnecting all audio files with SHIFT-D (Leave All Files on Disk) and reconnecting them. Try the levels again and see if they still behave the same way. Also, what other audio files overlap these portions? You could be so obsessed with the clips exhibiting the problem that you don't realize it's something else underneath that's causing those problems.

Are these sync sounds? If not, rather than wrestle with a mysterious ailment, I'd just stick each part into a timeline, apply the level, and the re-export. Re-import and the levels will be built in. Also, if you need to re-adjust the levels on the re-exported versions, how they behave will tell you a bit more about what is wrong.

A corruption somewhere -- wrong file format, bad drive, corrupted software -- is more likely than a sample-rate problem.


www.derekmok.com

I'm guessing you might have linked some files at some point. Zoom out and select either set, and see if it auto selects the other audio.