Audio always imports at Pan -1

[francheezie]

Weirdest thing, everytime I open a clip or just an audio file in the Viewer, it always defaults to "Pan -1". Shouldn't it automatically be set to 0?

 

[stevesherrick]

Are you using stereo audio or mono file?

If stereo, left is represented by -1 and right is 1. 0 is if you want it mono.

If it is a mono track just make sure it is set to 0 unless you are intentionally panning to left or right.

Steve

 

[patrickj]

Trying to think of a good way to explain this.. not coming up with one.

It's the way Final Cut recognizes audio and how it 'thinks' about tracks/channels, etc.

When you import a stereo clip (ie: plane jane .aiff music file), it's treated as 1 clip with 2 audio channels: Left and Right. The -1 Pan is saying that A1 (Left) is panned to -1 (left). It doesn't bother to report the A2 (Right) position as it's infered by the pan of A1 AND the fact it's a stereo file. Hope that makes sense.

Panning a stereo clip to 0 middlizes (hehe - blends?) both channels to end up with the same sound playing back via both tracks.

I've not seen anywhere where this is explicity stated, but in practice this is how it works. If you ever import a sound file with a single channel (not just a stereo file with recorded audio in 1 only channel - you still have a stereo clip) you'll get the 0 pan.