My Audio Management Process in FCPX

I doubt any of you will remember, but I spent the past few months doing a lot of workflow research and Ben B Suggested roles to manage audio.

I just started editing a short film where they recorded to a 4 track recorder. So here's what my process has been.

- Import audio
- Assign roles to audio tracks individually (D1, D2, D3, D4)
- Sync the audio tracks together
- Properly name the synced audio tracks
- Search for matching video
- Sync matching video
- Properly name synced audio and video file
- Reject and hide the original audio, synced audio, and original video.

This has been a very organized process, but it has been very time consuming with all these steps.

Once I finish editing and export individual roles to sound design, I'll update on how smooth the whole process went. But this totally seems like the way to go, I just wish the film makers would have given me the footage at the end of each shooting day so I could organize in smaller groups instead of having to do this to 400 takes over the weekend.

The new multichannel editing feature works best with synched polyfiles. So ask your sound person deliver multitrack files as polyfiles (ie. one file, that contains multiple tracks). If you get monophonic files (ie. one file per channel) you can use WaveAgent to batch combine monofiles to polyfiles. WaveAgent is a free application from Sound Devices.

What we still need is possibility to batch assign Roles to individual tracks in polyfiles just like we can batch rename those tracks now.

For what you're doing, the soon to be released "Lumberjack" being used on-set to log metadata will make things super fast and easy. Very much looking forward to its official release.

Yeah, anything to help this tedious process would be great. As I spend this week organizing this footage I'm getting a solid look at what I would be doing if I got a job as an editor's assistant.

I actually don't mind organizing all this footage though, it's a very different process than my creative mind is used to and I think it's good for me to have to sit and focus on something tedious like this as a brain exercise. The only problem is that it's such a quick turnaround I don't have that much time for all of this. But the more organized I am, the faster everything will edit together.

What is this "lumberjack" thing you speak of?

Here's a brief preview of Lumberjack by Intelligent Assistance.

I like this Lumberjack tool. Still trying to figure out why isn't there someone that can make a program that will send it with the footage right into the NLE. Skip the post work.
Something similar Atomos has for there hardware.

Will Lumberjack only work with Sync, Multiclips??

If you have a LOT of files to sync, you may want to get Plural Eyes, which can batch all of that.

BenB wrote: If you have a LOT of files to sync, you may want to get Plural Eyes, which can batch all of that.

What about assigning roles when using Plural Eyes? I know that having something do it automatically is much faster, but if it doesn't perfectly organize the footage then I'd rather spend the time doing it perfectly myself.

I also enjoy organizing footage and I think it's an important part of editing (as basically all of editing is just organizing the pieces into the right spot at the right time). But there are times when it would be nice to just dump everything into a folder and have it come out like I'd organized it on the other side.

Then do it all manually.

Just checked out Lumberjack. Holy Shit! That thing looks like it could make documentary work a million times easier. Of course it will help with other work, but it will be killer for documentary because of all the random stuff that can happen.

The future of editing is looking really awesome with all these cool new ideas people are coming up with.

Here's a workaround tip from the great Telekinesis guys about synching monophonic multitrack files in FCP X: