10.1 audio. Are people satisfied?

Hi,

FCPX is starting to become quite a nice editing tool now, but how are peoples feelings about the audio features? Not much has happened here since 10.0 imo.

Just a quick example of one of my issues:
We shoot with four audiotracks in-camera. First two hand mics and lavs, last two stereo on-camera mic. There is no way to set this up in fcpx. It is either two stereo tracks or four mono. You have to set it to four mono to use the hand mic, but there is no way to set individual pan on the tracks, so to use the on camera stereo mic you have to switch it back to two stereo tracks.
In Avid you can set on import that track 3 and 4 should be linked as a stereo track and you're all set. All other apps also has individual pan on all tracks of course.

Anyone else find the fcpx audio features lacking?

I don't know if you're interested in Logic X but that is what I use for audio. I haven't tested it yet but I've heard people mention that importing xml in logic is now working better or properly. If so then it should be quite easy getting audio in and out of logic.

But, of course, that means buying another piece of software. (it's cheap for what you get though) I'm not a FCPX whiz like some people around here but I would have a very hard time doing audio the way I want to in FCPX alone. (would be impossible)

I love editing in X but use roles and logic to do the audio bit.

Going to different apps is usually not an option for me since I work mostly in news, and has to be able to do last second edit fixes. I can't really lock an edit until it is delivered.

I do a lot of multitrack dialogue editing right in in FCP X and find actual audio editing to be very good. Better than I found it in Legacy, Avid or Premiere. For larger projects I finish the mix in ProTools but most of the finishing could have been done right in FCP X.

AndersM: Does the import preference setting "Separate mono or group stereo audio" do any difference?
Edit: you can do this in the browser after import as well.

You can pan your tracks easily when they are "Expanded" (Expand Audio Components).

Soundwise wrote: I do a lot of multitrack dialogue editing right in in FCP X and find it very good. Better than I found it in Legacy, Avid or Premiere. For larger projects I finish the mix in ProTools but most of the finishing could have been done right in FCP X.

AndersM: Does the import preference setting "Separate mono or group stereo audio" do any difference?

You can pan your tracks easily when they are "Expanded" (Expand Audio Components).

"Separate mono or group stereo audio" doesn't really do much since you can't have two mono and one stereotrack at the same time. It's either four mono or two stereo tracks.

Panning after they are expanded works, but it is a whole bunch of buttons and menus that has to be clicked.
Expand audio components, select both tracks, set pan menu from "none" to "stereo left/right", select first track, set the pan to 100% left, select second track, set pan to 100% right.
To me it is easier to just set the track back to dual stereo.


One other thing is the lack of a audio only crossfade effect. I know you can use the workaround with an "empty" dissolve, but I still would like to see a simple crossfade for audio only that was easy to apply to all clips to get rid of pops ect. on edits. The way it is now it is easy to mess up existing dissolves and transitions if you add the "sound only" dissolve to all clips.

Yes, I see your point but I never personally have dealt with both stereo and mono audio on a same video clip. It's either or. Dialogue tracks are always mono. B-roll sometimes stereo.

Great Alex4D has made a Sound Only Transition Plugin:

blog.alex4d.com/2011/07/11/fcpx-transition-sound-only/

I have and use the sound only transition which is nice.
But you cannot add it to an entire sequence at once to remove pops if you already have used some video dissolves since these will be overwritten by the sound only transition.