Audio clip "checkerboarding" question

8string

8string

Well-known member
Larry Jordan talks about standardizing your layout of audio clips to video clips on page 166 of Final Cut Power Skills. One thing missing, is what if you record a master audio clip on a Zoom or other device? Should you usually start with that as track A1/A2 or put it on the bottom, after all the video tracks and their (soon to be deleted) audio tracks are layered on? should I use it as A5 (if two cameras are used and push a narrator track below if one exists?

not a big deal, but am trying to keep my work uniformed in FCP.
 
Are you talking about replacing camera audio with second-system sound?

In that case, you should sync audio and video clips together before you start editing.
 
Thanks. I think I'm more wondering about the next step. Larry recommends, for purposes of roundtripping, that we standardize on where things lay in the mix. So do folks lay the external Zoom like Master (the one you expect to be the final soundtrack) sound tracks in first Audio 1&2 all the time, or do they add them under all the tracks, which makes some sense to keep Video track 1 together with Audio tracks 1 & 2. Eventually, you can, I do, remove the unused audio tracks, leaving the external audio master as the only main audio track, beyond overlay narrations and sound effects. Maybe I've just answered my own question, but wanted to get a sense for what others are doing. Larry says it's worth caring about this because of possible export to Pro Tools and Soundtrack pro. Does this even matter to most folks?
 
Okay, still not terribly clear on what you're asking but I think I see where you might be going.

Audio organization matters, especially if you'll be sending the program down stream to a sound editor. But keeping A1 and A2 with V1, A3 and A4 with V2, and so on, does not help your sound editor. In fact, it gives the ProTools suite a few more hours of work just to clean up and organize the session.

Organize your audio by type of source. My basic layout is something like:

A1: VO
A2: Dialog 1
A3: Dialog 2
A4: Nats
A5: Mono FX 1
A6: Mono FX 2
A7 & 8: Stereo FX 1
A9 & 10: Stereo FX 2
A11 & 12: Stereo music 1
A13 & 14: Stereo music 2

That's just a starting point, and can be more or less depending on the project.
 
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