Soundtrack Pro Questions

B

bentramer81

Well-known member
I'm going through the interactive Soundtrack Pro training book/DVD and I have not found how to move an item from FCP to Soundtrack Pro. Hopefully some of you can help answer some simple questions.

1. How do I get a clip from FCP to Soundtrack Pro? and back to FCP.

2. Does the clip become a quicktime file, thus causing problems if you bring it back to FCP with being able to make adjustments to your sequence from that point forward?

3. Using Soundtrack Pro is probably that last step in making a film right? Because of the concern in question 2.

4. Any other helpful things to know about Soundtrack Pro? I noticed I couldn't easily add a crossfade to the end of an independent sound.

:(
 
Well, you highlight the clip in final cut pro, and select the menu item that says, send to soundtrack. Your clip in final cut becomes a soundtrack reference file, so every time you change it in soundtrack, it updates immediately in final cut pro. Pretty simple. Doesn't always work perfectly though, as final cut sometimes loses the link to the soundtrack file and needs to be reconnected.
 
Don't get me wrong,.. I love Apple software, but Soundtrack Pro is worthless. It has a mind of it's own. I had to go out and buy Logic Studio because Soundtrack was too buggy for me.

Hope you have a better experience.

(And for the record I'm not a noob to audio apps, I know what I'm doing)

- G
 
My dirty little secret is that I do most of my audio mixing in final cut pro. I only go to soundtrack if I have to process out a hiss or use space designer.
 
Soundtrack ignores the volume and pan envelopes half the time,.. it's ridiculous. I've experienced this on 3 separate computers. I also thought it was funny that Soundtrack pro was included in the Logic Studio package,... Thanks Apple,.. now I have two copies of this turd. They just can't give it away fast enough.

- G
 
Dewy-dB said:
Soundtrack ignores the volume and pan envelopes half the time,.. it's ridiculous. I've experienced this on 3 separate computers. I also thought it was funny that Soundtrack pro was included in the Logic Studio package,... Thanks Apple,.. now I have two copies of this turd. They just can't give it away fast enough.

- G
Click to expand...

Now I am not STP's biggest promoter but I did spend some time with it this year on a project. Just to be clear I use Pro Tools for virtually everything I do.
STP isn't as bad as you make out in my experience. For instance in four months of pretty heavy use I did not have automation go away. It is pretty stable and with in it's limits works well. It also integrates well with FCS and is very FCP user friendly (PT isn't).

Now as a general work flow, yes, traditionally picture -> audio post -> final mix and output. There is often a loop area where picture keeps changing and audio post keeps "conforming" to the new picture but traditionally there is no point where multi tracks are sent back to the picture dept. I don't think STP can automatically send it's multi track project back to FCP, though that may have changed?
The FCP / STP workflow would normally be to do the picture edit. Then do a "send to STP". In STP tweek stuff, you will be playing against your picture so it's pretty much like working in FCP except that you have a lot of audio control and no picture control. If you need to make picture changes you go back to FCP make the changes and do another "send to STP". In STP you open your tweeked version and "conform" it to the new cut. If you have followed this work flow the conform should go smoothly and your new "conformed" project will match the new picture but have kept all your STP work intact. You will probably have to fix a few things but most of the work was done with the conform function. When everything is done you either output from STP or send the final mix back to FCP and mute all your original tracks and out put from there. If you are doing both picture and sound on the same machine this work flow is pretty smooth and works quite well. If your on seperate machines for picture and sound it's more complicated (you have to move a lot of media around) but it still works pretty well.
This may seem klunky at first but actually you will probably find it works better to focus on one thing at a time (pix VS sound).
Hope that helps.
 
bentramer81 said:
4. Any other helpful things to know about Soundtrack Pro? I noticed I couldn't easily add a crossfade to the end of an independent sound.

:(
Click to expand...

Do you mean fade? How would you cross fade at the end of a clip?
Also you can not (of course) fade something that isn't there. So you can't fade or cross fade past the end of an audio file. If you are sending clips (actually sub clips, a clip would technically be the whole file) to STP then rendering them as independent audio files and bringing them back into FCP you can't fade past the end of the clip. When it was still a subclip you could because the clip had "handles". That is why you should use the work flow described by the other poster as it keeps the subclip a subclip and doesn't render it into a file.
 
Yikes, I was really loving the program for all the loops it offers and sound effects... now I'm a bit scared to use this.



Can a single clip in FCP be moved to STP and worked on with out having your sequence done, or will this mess things up? I tried to send to STP and it keeps stating there is a general error.
 
Last edited:
Logic Studio is Apple's recording software. It'd like garage band without the training wheels. It's still kind of got a cartoony interface though.

You can't simply click "send to" in FCP but you can export an .omf file and quicktime file then import those into your project. Right now I'm mixing my short in 5.1. It's pretty neat, but I'm still learning how to use it.

If I could have got STP to work right I would have used it. Maybe there are evil wizzards somewhere that hinder my STP usage.

- G
 
Dewy,
If Logic supports AAF it's probably a better choice than OMF because your clip names will stay intact and not turn into the OMF obtuse garbage names. You might also be able to do an XML output to Logic? That would create the session but reference the original media, of course that might also be a problem... Not sure but if you have some time to kill one day, it would be a faster flow.

Brentamer,
I never did a sent to for a individual clip so I'm not sure how that works. Also things changed between FCS 1 and 2. In the old (pre FCP 6) FCS I don't think you could send the multi track project to STP. When ST (pre STP) got included it was a single file utility that was used like you are using STP. But that work flow has changed and I don't know how much of the "old ways" work anymore. The work flow I described above is the flow that works best for FCP <-> STP. I think you can still send a clip to STP but I suspect it's not with the send to STP command which is really to send the whole project. You may be getting errors because you don't have a sequence selected and that is what it wants to send to STP. I would look under clip functions or hey use the manual? Not being snide but if I had the manual handy I would have looked it up and sounded smart..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top