Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Thinking of moving back to FCP from Premiere

C

Craigy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 14, 2003
403
48
New Zealand
Hi - I'm running Premiere CS6 on a 2013 cMBP and all going fine. The latest FCP 10.1 has me tempted as I've just ordered a new Mac Pro, but there's one important workflow I have in Premiere that I can't see a simple way to do in FCP. Wondered if anyone could let me know how they do it.

I do a lot of short documentary / interview stuff and I like to have good control of my audio without going out to post / logic / Protools.

An example project in premiere would have Audio track 1 as the main dialogue, Audio 2 as background / FX and Audio track 3 as music bed. I have the audio mixer set up with an EQ > Compressor > Limiter on track 1 and a similar set up on tracks 2 and 3 but with different settings. I have a limiter on the master output and an instance of Izoptope Insight for Loudness metering.

I can't see any audio mixer in FCP - or any way to replicate this workflow.

Am I missing something?
 
F

floh

macrumors 6502
Nov 28, 2011
460
2
Stuttgart, Germany
Craigy said:
I can't see any audio mixer in FCP - or any way to replicate this workflow.

Am I missing something?
Click to expand...

I don't think you are. The problem is that FCPX has completely gotten rid of track based editing, and I don't think they will ever turn back. This has some great advantages (I love the magnetic timeline), but comes with some disadvantages. The thing that irritates me most is - you managed to clearly put your finger on this - the sound mixing. This might be out of habit, because sound engineers are very used to thinking in tracks and buses, as they are present in mixing consoles. But there certainly is a reason why this is the preferred way to do sound mixing.

While I love the magnetic timeline for video editing, I am most irritated by it when it comes to sound.

The workaround I use to mix in third-party applications (Pro Tools or Logic Pro X) as well as within FCPX is to use "roles". You can assign roles (or types of audio, like "music" or "dialog" to your audio files. FCPX will even do that automatically and is pretty good at guessing. You can then export all audio (mixed) of a certain role (or multiple on different channels if you like) to use in an external application. Or you can just mark all clips of a certain role and either add an effect to all of these or (this is what I do) combine them into a compound clip. Then you can edit the compound clip and easily apply effects or changes to single files or the whole clip.

This is not perfect, but it's a workaround that's not too much work. Maybe it helps.
 
C

Craigy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 14, 2003
403
48
New Zealand
floh said:
I don't think you are. The problem is that FCPX has completely gotten rid of track based editing, and I don't think they will ever turn back. This has some great advantages (I love the magnetic timeline), but comes with some disadvantages. The thing that irritates me most is - you managed to clearly put your finger on this - the sound mixing. This might be out of habit, because sound engineers are very used to thinking in tracks and buses, as they are present in mixing consoles. But there certainly is a reason why this is the preferred way to do sound mixing.

While I love the magnetic timeline for video editing, I am most irritated by it when it comes to sound.

The workaround I use to mix in third-party applications (Pro Tools or Logic Pro X) as well as within FCPX is to use "roles". You can assign roles (or types of audio, like "music" or "dialog" to your audio files. FCPX will even do that automatically and is pretty good at guessing. You can then export all audio (mixed) of a certain role (or multiple on different channels if you like) to use in an external application. Or you can just mark all clips of a certain role and either add an effect to all of these or (this is what I do) combine them into a compound clip. Then you can edit the compound clip and easily apply effects or changes to single files or the whole clip.

This is not perfect, but it's a workaround that's not too much work. Maybe it helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. That will work, but if there's no picture lock and something slight changes, what would be a 30 sec fix in Permiere becomes and 10 min chore from what I can see.

I use multiple instances on Izotope Insight on audio busses and the master output for broadcast loudness etc and I don't think you can do this to different roles in FCPX from what I can see?

Oh well, I'll have a play around with it and see how I get on.

Do you think it would make immense sense if you could have an audio mixer in FCPX, but with each channel controlling 'roles', with the ability to have Audio unit inserts on each channel? - This combined with a master output would solve the issue. Can't be that difficult to do surly? - I've just dropped this suggestion on Apple's FCP feedback page.
 
F

floh

macrumors 6502
Nov 28, 2011
460
2
Stuttgart, Germany
Craigy said:
Do you think it would make immense sense if you could have an audio mixer in FCPX, but with each channel controlling 'roles', with the ability to have Audio unit inserts on each channel? - This combined with a master output would solve the issue. Can't be that difficult to do surly? - I've just dropped this suggestion on Apple's FCP feedback page.
Click to expand...

That would be awesome! And it is not completely far-fetched. This might even be possible via third-party plugin... It would be the reason for me upgrade to Mavericks.

You are right, at the moment I only do the compound clip when the edit is completely locked. You can mark all clips of one role though and then apply an effect or change parameters for all at once. Not perfect, but at least workable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom