Voice Over Issues

I was having to edit on the go yesterday and was editing on a little portable Western Digital drive (USB 2 and 5400 RPM). Obviously not the best situation, but it was all I had with me and I needed to pass it off to someone. I was recording a voice over in FCP X and every time the recording failed. It would appear to be recording, but when I would stop, no waveform would generate and nothing I had just recorded was there. I was just getting empty audio clips in the timeline and browser .I realized that the write speed of the drive must be too slow to record a voice over in FCP X. I also tested the drive on my Mac Pro tower with the same results, just to make sure it was the drive. I ended up recording straight to my CPU and it worked fine. Just a heads if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Um, you do not record straight to your CPU (a chip that process data) but to your Internal Drive (media that stores data). Semantics, but they're important.

Yeah, I've done lots of mobile audio recording of bands, voice, etc, and yeah, you need a fast hard drive for it. Or an iPad with an Apogee, iRig, or some other compatible i/o device.

That drive of yours, nope, not good. Thanks for posting, as I have had former students ask about this in the past. The importance of drive throughput speed is vital.

On a related note I've noticed some drop out on recording VO - second or so being cut out in the middle at different places - which is obviously not good. Recording to USB3. No warning either. This coincided with recording through an h5n on a new Retina iMac which I hadn't done before so tricky to isolate. My Scarlet Solo I used to use doesn't work via the new mac which is a bit of a bummer.

I'll try some tests at some point.

I do tons of voice work, daily, and I've never had drop outs. I'm using an Apogee Quartet.

As for the H5n, you're using that as an I/O device? I know the newest version has an audio USB I/O mode, but I've also ready things about the preamps not being very good. Anyway, can you verify you're not overloading or underloading the signal? Most important, what drive type/connection are you recording to? Could be more than the I/O, or it could just be that. Are your drivers for the H5n up to date?

Hi Ben,

Yes, using it as an I/O device through USB. Not sure about the preamp situation. I was recording to a USB3 external drive. I'll check the drivers - it's relatively new.

Thanks for the info

HHHmmm... OK, so both are on the USB bus. Problem is, I believe the H5n is recognized as a USB 2 device, which will cause your Mac's USB port to gear down to that USB 2 speed. Thus, your USB 3 hard drive is performing at USB 2 speeds. I don't know your specific setup, but could that be an issue?

As for your Scarlet Solo (I'll keep my personal experiences with Focusrite to myself), does Yosemite simply not recognize it, or does it have issues? Have you contacted Focusrite about it running with OS X 10.10?
global.focusrite.com/answerbase/using-a-...on-osx-109-mavericks

Hi Ben,

The Scarlet wasn't even recognised. It's a new retina iMac with Yosemite and at the time I was in need of fixing the VO problem so I jumped n the h5n. I have some downtime next week so I may do a few tests. I'll post results here so others may benefit if I work out anything. Thanks for the link - I'll see if I can get the Scarlet running as well.

I was in the middle of doing several ADR recordings for a film project, when suddenly the red button would no longer respond when I clicked on it. I checked all the I/O settings, rebooted, etc., to no avail. Is there a cache that could have gotten full somewhere? Any ideas what the problem is?