Audio Problems in FCP3 "the beeps"

[Mark Austin]

a walk in the park? (just kidding) I have already worn out my patience rendering everything everytime I do anything. If I go get a cup of coffee, I'll probably have to render somthing again.... I guess I should take a class to learn the basics, it'll probably save me tons of frustration. And I may be able to avoid learing to do everything the slow way. Maybe I'll call pixar and see if they have a few unused SGI's I might borrow to render my 3 1/2 minute video...
Mark

[Charles Papert]

This has worked many times for me in this situation, and it's painfully simple:

Go into the Preferences and lower the Audio Playback Quality a notch (if on High, go to Medium etc.). Sometimes this is all it takes to eliminate "the beeps". When doing final print to tape, you then perform your final audio render.

[Mark Austin]

I'll try it now.
Mark

[Paul Sedillo]

<<<-- Originally posted by Ken Tanaka :
Also, in my opinion, Apple hobbled standard audio input by eliminating the audio-in jack from their 2002 models. I use a Griffen iMic USB adapter for audio input (voice-overs, mainly) but why should such a basic facility on a premium-priced system be left to 3rd parties?
-->>>

Ken,

That was one of the first things that I noticed when I got my Mac. It amazed me that there were no audio input jacks. My question is why would Apple leave this critical option out?

[Jeff Donald]

Mark,

This is from my first post <<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Donald : You can render the audio, or use QuickTime to fix the audio before you import. Drop the audio into QT and export at 48kHz and then import it into FCP. -->>>

Charles' solution works. It is one of the fixs for slower machines (like mine). I set mine to medium. Reducing the number of RT audio tracks (even if your not using them) will cure it also. But with the speed of your machine, you've got other issues (audio mismatch).

Jeff

[Jeff Chandler]

I got the answer to my problem from one of Ken's posts. I had imported some footage that I had captured with iMovie before I got FCP. Rendering solved the problem, and there is no problem with footage that I capture through FCP. I have a lot to learn coming from a PC background and having very little experience on a Mac. I get to learn the OS and FCP all at the same time:) I will confess that my prejudices against the Mac (except for what I feel is overpriced hardware, although I may reconsider that one too!) are evaporating, I like what I have experienced so far, especially the interfaces. Thanks for all the help. Now if I could just talk my school into gettin me a lab ful of iMacs for my students...

[Mark Austin]

<<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Donald : Mark,

This is from my first post <<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Donald : You can render the audio, or use QuickTime to fix the audio before you import. Drop the audio into QT and export at 48kHz and then import it into FCP. -->>>

I guess I'll have to get QTP 6 and give it a whirl, I did reduce the resoultion of my audio so I'll see how that works next time.

At least my audio is complete before I bring it on board, I have spent lots of time with the audio tracks, recording & mixing etc. so once it's rendered I don't have to touch it again (I hope) I have all my fades & levels set in advance.

One weird thing: once I figured out I need to render it, the AIFF I copied from the CD sounded fine, but the files I monkeyed with (ProTools export) were way too quiet? I had to raise the levels to +14db of thier input level, and that was as far as I could go, the other tracks (CD import) were a little too loud so I had to back them off a tad.

<<< No audio input on the Mac?>>>Every Mac I own including my ten year old LC has audio inputs, so I was surprised when I discovered the lack of any on my "Quicksilver" box. I believe that Apple may have actually done us a favor though by not putting crappy converters in the system. It sort of forces use to use any one of a number of firewire or usb based converters. Now if one of them actually worked with Apple software that would be way cool eh? (iMic excluded) I guess the day when all software and hardware plays nice is still in the future, but it's a whole lot better now than it has been and way better on the Mac than the PC (I gave up hope on anything for the PC playing nice years ago).
My 2 cents.
Mark

[Guy Pringle]

Just to add to the resounding bleeps (sorry).

I've just finished editing a 10 minute behind the scenes piece for Runner's World Magazine, but had a similar problem when it came to digitizing. I think my problem was related to timecode breaks. I would often get the error msg, but when checking the footage frame by frame, there was no timecode break. My settings were all OK but I noticed that the audio was digitized at a weird rate, 48.01kHz or 48.03kHz. The audio was recorded from a Sennheiser ME-66 at 16 bits and played fine in QT but, randomly, when dragged into FCP3, dem bleeping bleeps. Took me 3 days to digitise 6 hours of footage!!

Well, it's done now and everyone is thrilled. can't wait to see it on the national Sports channel, M-net Supersport.

[Jeff Donald]

In preferences do you have sync adjust set? If not, check the box and set the time to 5 minutes. when the audiois off you do not need to recapture the clip. After capture look at the clips properties. If the audio is not a perfect 48.000 then go to your scratch disc and find the captured file. Move the movie out of the original folder and re-import the file. Audio should be perfect 48.0000 and no need to capture footage again. If you ever lose sync between the picture and sound, this will fix that too.

Jeff

[Guy Pringle]

Thanks Jeff, I'll try that next time. I had my capture time set to 10 minutes, but even while I was having problems, I would capture a few seconds and then check, sometimes it was good and sometimes it was beeping?

I think I will also get my tapes black and coded beforehand.