Firewire on = no sound in FCP6

[Daniel Alexander]

Ive been editing fine on final cut pro 6.3 for a while now and always monitored my footage via my vtr deck and my audio was coming through my line out of my mac pro. Now for the first time i decided to give soundtrack pro a try and i noticed that while i had my preview set to my firewire vtr deck it wouldn't play any audio but it would play the audio fine when i disconnected my deck.

Now after going back to final cut pro it is acting exactly the same way as soundtrack pro, it will not play my audio out my mac pro output while my final cut project is set to output a display via firewire, as soon as i disconnect my deck and set the settings back to play just the internal preview screen it plays the audio fine.

Since then, i have tried to scrap my preferences, open new projects, conform all sorts of audio setups and recently did a complete re-install, but still no audio when i have my output to firewire. I haven't installed anything new, haven't deleted anything and haven't changed any system preferences, I just don't get it. Does anyone have any idea?

[Tim Dashwood]

Have you plugged speakers into your deck?

Sound will output to firewire instead of internal speakers if that's what you have selected for your sound output. (you can manually change it by unclicking "audio follows video" on view-->audio playback menu in FCP.) This is the best thing to do if your preview monitor output is coming from the DV deck. Using DV audio will avoid any sync/latency issues.

[Daniel Alexander]

Thanks for the quick response. I can connect speakers up to my deck and get audio that way no problem, it's just strange that i managed to have it working directly from my mac output before and I'm certain i had the audio to follow video option selected. But it sounds like the normal way of monitoring audio when outputting via firewire is to monitor it from the deck, is this right?

[Edward Carlson]

Originally Posted by Daniel Alexander

But it sounds like the normal way of monitoring audio when outputting via firewire is to monitor it from the deck, is this right?

It's preferable because there's a slight delay between the video on your computer and the video outputted via FireWire. The sound, therefore, is out of sync if you view the video via FireWire and the sound via the computer.

[Daniel Alexander]

Great stuff, so if i monitor video via firewire i should also make sure i monitor audio via firewire. Thanks