FCPX 10.3 Audio Sidebar for Sound Effects

So, I tried putting all my sound libraries into the "Final Cut Pro Sound Effects Folder", but it's not a feasible option.

Unlike the last version of FCP which would only load a folder when you clicked on it. FCP now tries to open every folder at once when you click on the sound library. And, with so many sounds, it is taking over a minute to load any sounds.

Additionally, I have everything organized into nice subfolders. But FCP expands every folder by default (and there is no way to collapse them), so this makes scrolling through the folder list a nightmare.

I just have to hope that FCP comes up with a better way to manage sounds in a future release.

New in 10.32 - "- Ability to add custom folders of audio files to the Sound Effects browser"

But, has anyone figured out how this new feature actually works?

No.

That's strange - that they would list this feature as the first amongst the changes in the new version and yet, they don't release any documentation explaining how it works.

I love FCPX and I teach it at my school. But, it wouldn't hurt if Apple actually had someone who could/would interact directly with the FCP community.

As far as I can tell it works as it did previously by putting folders inside the Sound Effects folder in the system library. Can't see any other mechanism to do this.

As far as I can tell it works as it did previously by putting folders inside the Sound Effects folder in the system library. Can't see any other mechanism to do this.

I can't find anything different either.

Maybe the Ripple twins can point us in the right direction?

You still can't navigate to a folder using the SFX browser, but you can link to an external stock folder by putting an alias in the Final Cut Pro Sound Effects folder:


HardDrive\Library\Audio\Apple Loops\Apple\Final Cut Pro Sound Effects

Now any sub folder in the linked stock folder is navigable through the folder filter on the upper right side of the Effects browser.

This is still stupidly difficult and counter-intuitive, but at least it works now. Why the hell did Apple list this first as a fix and provide zero documentation is beyond me.

The ability to add an alias folder into the library is a slight improvement, but it sure doesn't sound like that's all they did when they write: "- Ability to add custom folders of audio files to the Sound Effects browser"

Additionally, as a teacher, telling people to mess with the root library is a terrible idea - one that Apple even normally discourages - so I'm surprised they haven't come up with a way to do it inside FCP (maybe it is there, but it would be cool if they could tell us what they intended).

CMessineo wrote: The ability to add an alias folder into the library is a slight improvement, but it sure doesn't sound like that's all they did when they write: "- Ability to add custom folders of audio files to the Sound Effects browser"

It's almost as if they wrote the description but didn't include the feature.

One thing folks should note is that if you add your own SFX in this manner (alias in the Final Cut Pro Sound Effects folder), it will take several minutes each time FCP starts up for this material to be visible.

At first, the SFX area will appear to be empty but eventually, this material will show up. But the next time you restart FCPX, you will have to wait all over again.

For comparison on waiting, my 165GB library shows up just about 15 seconds after FCPX is restarted. I'll live with that. This is based on an alias to the custom music folder located on another drive. It also works by copying directly to the Final Cut Pro Sound Effects folder but you'll have that large library of music on your system drive. The alias seems to maintain the integrity of all the folders and subfolders so this is workable for me.

For me the waiting time hasn´t really changed, still about 15-20 seconds, but now 100% is shown and made available. I use 80% aliases, all original files on external Thunderbolt drives. Basically as far as my workflow´s concerned we´re back to how it was originally and everything´s fine again.

I have a bunch of large libraries and it's taking over a minute to load mine.

Additionally, one of my libraries has over 500 subfolders, which makes navigating the current system (where all the folders are auto-expanded) practically impossible.

I realize for many small users the current system might be fine, but I would imagine large shops must be feeling this pain now too.

And whats especially frustrating is this used to work just fine - why did they change - I haven't seen any improvements in the sound library management.

It seems like an early April Fools prank.

So are we 100% sure this process with aliases in the System Library is what the release note was talking about? I can't find any details in the online docs or others talking about how to do this.

I sent a question about this via feedback. The more feedback they receive the more likely an answer will be forthcoming.

I've not watched it yet, but Steve at Ripple Training has a 5 minute video:




Edit: it is the alias of your fx folder dropped into that Library location, as commented upon in earlier posts.

Ripple Training is just telling people to use Aliases in the Library Folder.

While this will work for some, it has three major issues:

1. The Sound Effects library now loads every sound effect at once (it used to just load the library you were using). This can take load times over a minute.

2. All libraries now load expanded (and you can't close them - you used to be able to do this). This makes navigating large libraries very difficult).

3. It advises users to go into (and modify) files in their root library (which is normally a big no no and not something you had to do in the past).

And, as a fourth issue, they still haven't fixed "reveal in finder" for sounds.

And one more, you can't assign roles in advance, so all music files load as sound effects.

Sorry, I'll stop complaining about this now. I really do LOVE FCPX. I teach it and use it every day, but this new change has really made working with sounds effects much more difficult.

While the video from Ripple confirmed the stealth approach to getting this to work, Apple gets a D-minus for promoting a hack as a "new" feature without any explanation or documentation. Especially sorry because this feature worked perfectly well before 10.3.
In the old version, it was intuitive to add a custom folder location to the list of sound effects locations without a lot of jiggery-pokery. Now , it's a mysterious half-assed hack.

WTF! Apple?