No Fade In Options

I just upgraded to FCP 5 and was playing with Soundtrack Pro. There is something seemingly obvious that will not work and it is driving me nuts. Went through the manual in both print and help form - no luck.

There are three buttons that are greyed out at the top of the window. "Fade In" "Fade Out" "Time Stretch." The manual indicates if I select my audio file or a selection of it - the fade in or fade out should work. But this is not the case. Nothing I can do will enable these buttons. I can use the envelopes, but my hope was to make some quick autofades.

Can someone give me a tip on what to do to make these buttons work in a way that the manual does not state it?

Just in case someone else looks for this answer.... those options only become available when you are working on an audio file outside of track mode.

As an audio editing application this is a huge oversight. There is no easy way to add multiple fades all at once. When designing ambient sound - you need to fade in or out multiple tracks all the time. For background editing this would be essential and that's just one of many times it would come into play. ProTools did not have this easy at first either, but I think from version 2 on they did. Hopefully Apple will realize what they've skipped here.

Hi, I was interested to read your issue with the fade options in FCP5/Sound Track Pro. Did you resolve this problem any further, or is this option to Fade in Track mode the only solution? I'm a Sound Designer who works with back ground atmospheres all the time...and this problem may render Sound Track Pro pretty useless for track laying purposes.

I'd appreciate any feedback you have on this.

Many Thanks,

Kieron.

There are a few things making STP pretty useless which is a shame because it has the potential to be awsome. I've been told the programmers read these forums and I can only hope they "hear" the things we've been pointing out.

But, for now, yes - a little thing like the ability to add fades to all your track (specified to a certain frame number) in one command is not there. It's these little things which really determine an application's usefulness in a professional environment.

My friend who is an emmy winning sound editor won't even touch sound track pro because of some of the issues that I've brought up in these forums. When they are resolved, I'm sure she would love to try it.

Now, I'm not sure how big a deal my problems with the program are in the industrial professional workflow, but I'm focusing on the entertainment industry workflows - and their insurmountable. Seems like the only thing entertainment pros are doing with STP is cleaning up individual audio clips.

I'm very curious to see what STP 2 will hold for us.