Audio issues - FCP vs Adobe Premiere Pro 6

T

ToTheBack

Active member
Hey everyone,

So on a recent short I directed, we ran a separate audio mic from our main camera (a Red Epic) using a Rode NTG-1 mic connected to my old Panasonic DVX-100b. It's worked well in the past to get good audio when I've edited in FCP but on this short, I'm using Adobe Premiere Pro. I have both programs but they're on separate computers because my new mac, where Premiere is, doesn't have the old 1394 Firewire connection for me to capture footage from my DVX. So I captured through FCP on my other computer (where it does have the connection) and it sounds fine in that program. But I imported the files into Premiere and now there's almost no volume to the clips. I've cranked it up all the way and it's barely above a whisper.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to salvage it? It's not a short with a lot of dialogue luckily but some other projects were captured this way and I don't want to run into a bunch of snags.

Thanks!
 
Once the audio is recorded, it's all 1s and 0s. The volume shouldn't change at all, unless 1) you had something wonky in your capture settings, or 2) you exported audio from FCP and the levels were adjusted there.

How was the audio recorded: one mic routed to both channels, or only recording to one?
if recording to both, did you have the second channel set as a safety (lower record level)?
What were your capture settings in FCP?
How did you get the audio into PPro after capture to FCP?

As a side note, it may be time to invest in a portable recorder. While the DVX had pretty remarkable audio as far as cameras go, having to capture your audio real time via FW is a real hassle. Simply transferring files from SD/CF directly to your NLE will expedite your workflow and minimize the possibilities for something to go wrong. Plus, prices for functional recorders have gone way down in the last few years.
 
The problem with your question is that all your talking about is how loud you "hear" it. That only relates to how loud the sound is if everything is calibrated between the two systems.

So get a sound person to look at the files, or get some tool/ plugin in Premier to give you an actual reading of how loud the sound file is. That at least will tell you if it's a settings issue or a file issue.

If I had to guess I would first look at your system playback level. As in what is the computers speaker level set at? If your on a newer Mac book something then you also have the possibility of premier (or the system) of routing your main tracks to the "surrounds". Apple laptops now all have four speakers and I have heard of folks who for some reason had their tracks sent to the "surrounds" which are much lower on volume. My first guess though is that you have the system speakers turned down.

the first three rules of sound trouble shooting...
1) is it plugged in?
2) Is it turned on?
3) Is the level turned up?

The answers to hose three will solve 90%-99% of all "it's not working" sound problems.
 
I rechecked my capture settings in FCP and here's what settings I had:

In log and capture:

-Device Control - Firewire NTSC
-Capture/Input: DV NTSC 48 kHz Advanced Pulldown (a default option that's set since most of my captured footage is 24pa squeeze footage from back in the day)
-Input Channels: 2

On the "Get Info" tab when highlighting a clip:
Codecs: Linear PCM, Timecode
Audio channels: 2

When my Rode mic was plugged in, I plugged it to Input 2 since it's closer to where I stand when booming and on my other computer, the audio sounds fine.

When it finished capturing in FCP, I took the drive the files were saved on (currently Quicktime files still even though I had it only capture the audio) and copy/pasted the folder of audio onto my computer. On my other project, I just imported the folder into Premiere and that's where it was coming out very quiet.

I'm not the best sound person so hopefully this provided more information
 
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