Hey guys,
I don't know how many people here are using Soundtrack Pro 2 in conjunction with Final Cut, but I thought I'd start this thread to see if I'm alone in the issues I'm having.
A little background:
I've been using Soundtrack Pro since version 1 to do simple audio mixing on projects I've worked on. My background in mixing mainly comes from a Logic / Pro Tools environment, but I've really liked the steps that Apple has taken with soundtrack to make a product specifically for mixing for video. Anyway, I'd used Soundtrack a bunch of times to mix simple projects, usually 10- 15 minutes long, that were shot in standard def DV. The program worked ok, although perhaps a little slower than I'd hoped.
So along comes Soundtrack Pro 2 when I upgrade to the new Final Cut Studio in June. I used the program once to mix a 12 minute piece shot in DV when I first got the program. Performed a bit better than Soundtrack Pro v1, and so I was excited. I also spent some time fooling around with the surround panner and such, and I was getting some very good results quickly.
So, here I am a few months later, attempting to do a temp mix on the first reel of my feature film. I wasn't looking to do too much, just a little noise reduction on a couple clips, and an overal eq, and compressor on the tracks. The feature was shot in HD, and the audio tracks contained 8 tracks of dialogue (2 stereo and 4 mono), 12 tracks of sound FX (4 Stereo and 4 mono) and 4 tracks for music ( both stereo) . The reel was roughly 14 minutes long. As I pulled the project into Soundtrack, it loaded very quickly, everything seemed good. This would not last.
Within a few minutes of working, the program froze up on me. I lost work several times, started saving every 2 minutes. Then after a few hours of painfully slow work (Soundtrack could not playback audio for more than 15 seconds without giving a disklimit error) I finally had my temp mix done. I go to export the mix to an AIFF file, and lo and behold it decides that an unknown error will prevent it from bouncing the mix to disk.
My real question to all of you, am I the only one finding this program completely inadequate? I'm running it on a Dual 2 ghZ G5, 2 Gigs of Ram, audio output through a Presonus Firepod. Final cut handles playback of the entire film absolutely fine, even with running Digital Cinema Preview. You would think Soundtrack would have alot less strain on it because the video requirements are so much less.
I really hope I'm not going to have to upgrade to a new machine to mix this film. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm willing to try anything to get this program running up to speed.
I don't know how many people here are using Soundtrack Pro 2 in conjunction with Final Cut, but I thought I'd start this thread to see if I'm alone in the issues I'm having.
A little background:
I've been using Soundtrack Pro since version 1 to do simple audio mixing on projects I've worked on. My background in mixing mainly comes from a Logic / Pro Tools environment, but I've really liked the steps that Apple has taken with soundtrack to make a product specifically for mixing for video. Anyway, I'd used Soundtrack a bunch of times to mix simple projects, usually 10- 15 minutes long, that were shot in standard def DV. The program worked ok, although perhaps a little slower than I'd hoped.
So along comes Soundtrack Pro 2 when I upgrade to the new Final Cut Studio in June. I used the program once to mix a 12 minute piece shot in DV when I first got the program. Performed a bit better than Soundtrack Pro v1, and so I was excited. I also spent some time fooling around with the surround panner and such, and I was getting some very good results quickly.
So, here I am a few months later, attempting to do a temp mix on the first reel of my feature film. I wasn't looking to do too much, just a little noise reduction on a couple clips, and an overal eq, and compressor on the tracks. The feature was shot in HD, and the audio tracks contained 8 tracks of dialogue (2 stereo and 4 mono), 12 tracks of sound FX (4 Stereo and 4 mono) and 4 tracks for music ( both stereo) . The reel was roughly 14 minutes long. As I pulled the project into Soundtrack, it loaded very quickly, everything seemed good. This would not last.
Within a few minutes of working, the program froze up on me. I lost work several times, started saving every 2 minutes. Then after a few hours of painfully slow work (Soundtrack could not playback audio for more than 15 seconds without giving a disklimit error) I finally had my temp mix done. I go to export the mix to an AIFF file, and lo and behold it decides that an unknown error will prevent it from bouncing the mix to disk.
My real question to all of you, am I the only one finding this program completely inadequate? I'm running it on a Dual 2 ghZ G5, 2 Gigs of Ram, audio output through a Presonus Firepod. Final cut handles playback of the entire film absolutely fine, even with running Digital Cinema Preview. You would think Soundtrack would have alot less strain on it because the video requirements are so much less.
I really hope I'm not going to have to upgrade to a new machine to mix this film. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm willing to try anything to get this program running up to speed.
