Audio organisation fcpx

@Mikeybouchereau
Here is the complete path.
Drop your music folders into:
Startup Drive/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Apple Loops For Soundtrack Pro/

(likewise you could put your sound effects in:

Startup Drive/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Final Cut Pro Sound Effects
or
Startup Drive/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/iLife Sound Effects

and I expect you could drill down from there if wanted specifics placed in things like Foley, ambience, etc.









And good news...symbolic links also work. I made an alias to an offline drive for media with a test folder (symlink.alias) and it comes up in the media browser and the songs play. I have included some screen shots.
Picture 2 shows the symbolic link folder selected and its' enclosed tunes.
Picture 1 shows the "Licensed Music" folder (which I made) and and one directory of songs.
Clicking the disclosure triangle reveals all the enclosed themes.

EDIT: I originally posted the same picture twice...hopefully this now shows two different screen shots.

EDIT2: Also notice my Licensed music folder includes a directory for cue sheets. Obviously the media browser won't do anything when this folder is selected. I just forgot to remove the cue sheets folder that was contained within my custom licensed music folder.

One thing about mp3 and m4p that if the bit rate it high enough you will have a lot of trouble telling from an AIF. Mostly all production music I use these days is sourced as high bit rate mp3s and then converted to AIFs or WAVs. The only reason for conversion is that it reduces the overhead on the processor.

So don't feel you need to source all your music as uncompressed AIFs or WAVs.

I tried a method of creating an event and then importing (but not copying) all my soundfx.
It worked perfectly but I found the overhead on FCP X was too irksome.

So I went back to other method which is an alternate library in iTunes. (Hold Option as you fire it up then select the different library.)

I have an iTunes plug in that takes the track selected and converts it to an AIF.
Or I just drag them to a Compressor Droplet that does the same thing.

"One thing about mp3 and m4p that if the bit rate it high enough you will have a lot of trouble telling from an AIF."

STRONGLY disagree. Those highly compressed formats throw away way too much fidelity information to ever compare to AIFF.

not sure if this was said already, but you can drag and drop folders from the finder into FCPX's music media browser and it will create a folder that you can search through. Really great if (like me) you don't want to muck up your iTunes library.

fcpguru wrote: not sure if this was said already, but you can drag and drop folders from the finder into FCPX's music media browser and it will create a folder that you can search through. Really great if (like me) you don't want to muck up your iTunes library.

Haha, that was too easy!

BenB wrote: STRONGLY disagree. Those highly compressed formats throw away way too much fidelity information to ever compare to AIFF.

Sorry what I'm talking about here is music for TV shows.
Most Production music in OZ is delivered to production houses on USB Drives. All the music is mp3 320kb/s it's then converted to AIF or WAV and used this way.

Just want to allay any fears that the OP might have had thinking that he HAS to use AIF or WAV in his project. It's not the case. That's all.

There's no doubt uncompressed is better than compressed. Just like Uncompressed video is better than say HDV. Still doesn't stop it from being broadcast though.

Yep, and we witness television content quality spiral down the drain even more... Oh well, what can you do?