FCP audio level control

mainstreetprod

mainstreetprod

Veteran
In FCP 7, is there a way to control the overall volume of the audio timeline as opposed to rubber band controls in the individual clips?
 
Moved this to the FCP forum, but if you open the Audio Mixer in your Tools, there's a master fader.
 
I thought it was there somewhere. How about a way to "average" audio levels... let's say my dialogue ranges from -6 to -12db. Is there a way to make all the clips say -8db without going down the line and individually adjusting each?
 
What you do is set one clip to the level you want. Select the clip and copy. Then select all the other clips in the timeline, right click(or command click) and choose "Paste Attributes". A dialog box comes up where you can check audio "Levels" and hit ok. Then all the levels will match. This is also a great way to copy video filters to all clips. Great time saver.
 
Interesting, I've spent several hours today manually adjusting each clip level. I use copy/paste attributes all the time for filters, but assumed that if I set all clips at a particular level, it would be just like setting the rubber band setting on all to say the middle- which wouldn't really get me anywhere. So if I copy and paste to all clips, it would actually boost the level on a clip recorded at a low level to that of the one copied? And reduce the level of one recorded at a high level to that of the one copied? Sounds almost too good to be true!
 
If you have the "Toggle Clip Overlays" selected (a button in the lower left of the timeline) you can see a red line that shows the level of the clip. It defaults to zero. You can turn up a clip 12db, though FCP does not reflect the changes visually to show the waveforms get bigger. If a clip is still not loud enough after raising it 12db you can make a copy and paste it below the original to hopefully get you loud enough. But let's assume you want every clip in your timeline 6db louder. You grab the red line and increase a clip by 6db on the first clip, then select and copy that clip. Then you select all the other clips and command click to choose the option to "Paste Attributes" which will bring up a dialog box that allows you to check which attributes you want to apply to all the selected clips. Choose "Levels" under the Audio section, hit OK, and the new level is applied to all the clips. But if you have used the Pen tool to surgically adjust the level of the original clip with points, then those points will also be applied to all clips. So after you have applied the new levels to all clips, you can use the pen tool to turn down any parts that may have been brought up too high and are clipping.

This method is also good for copying motion attributes if you want to resize a bunch of clips.
 
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