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Help with unwanted Final Cut Pro 7 mirroring left and right channels

Hal9000

Hal9000

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I feel like I’m going to have an emotional breakdown. DominicCobb pointed out a serious audio problem that I have confirmed to be present in every single one of my releases thus far. That problem is that in the front and rear channels, the left and right audio are identical. The audio will still pan forward and back, and in and out of the center channel, but there just is not distinction between the left and right channels. It is imperative this be corrected. I didn’t pour such an ungodly amount of care into these fucking prequel edits to let this stand. 
I have (still) been using Final Cut Pro 7 to do my editing. I have confirmed that the source audio files are good. (After all, if they were the problem, they’d have to have gotten the same problem across diverse methods of ripping them across projects.) When inside Final Cut, the waveforms on the individual channels show up as correct, with the left and right channels being different from each other when appropriate. (As someone talks while walking offscreen to the right, the right channel comes in on the waveform.) But, when playing or exporting the audio in Final Cut Pro 7, the left and right channels are the same. (When someone walks offscreen talking, the audio will pan from the center channel to both left and right channels, rather than just the right.) This is a chronic issue that’s been present the entire time I’ve been editing for the past 3 years. It’s like this across every project I’ve done. I’m not even using the same machine as before! When I got this one, I did a fresh install of everything! 
So far, I have tried alternating between stereo and dual mono options for the sound monitoring, project, and sequence settings. It makes no difference how it’s exported, because it’s like this when being played in the FCP7 timeline. I can’t find help through Google, and I’m extremely frustrated at this point. I’m really hoping some genius out there knows the answer and can help.
 
Hey there Hal.

Sorry to see that you're having issues, nothing worse than putting that much effort into something only to be foiled. The good news is I'm pretty sure that this is not going to be a waste of your time. The key is that the files are getting into FCP7 correctly since you can distinguish that each channel is appropriatey unique, so it's just a matter of exporting it correctly. It's been a few  years since I've edited anything, but I still have the process fairly well memorized. If you can list what your steps are going through I suspect that I can determine what the root problem may be. All of my edits were via FCP7 and never had that problem, so smart money is that this is a process issue, not software, which is of course a very good thing!

Stay Thirsty
 
You've ascertained that the waveforms are different where appropriate, so it sounds as if you don't have surround panning configured correctly within the NLE.  I don't know FCP or what terminology it uses when it comes to project settings, but it seems to me that there ought to be an option for surround, not just stereo and dual mono. Have you gone through a process in which you pan each channel by positioning a dot (or some other icon) in the right place within a circle/box that is surrounded by representations of the various speakers?

I'm sorry if this sounds condescending and you know all this already.  Just trying to help! :)
 
No, no, not condescending at all. Even if it were, I wouldn't mind anything that could possibly solve the problem!

No, I haven't seen a drag and drop configuration like you describe. There's just options for which channels go where, 1 and 2 being either stereo or dual mono, five and six the same, and three and four being separate mono. 
What you are saying makes sense, I think. But, no, I don't see anything like what you describe. But hopefully the path you're opening up is the right direction to take. It doesn't seem to differentiate between channels 1 and 2, and 5 and 6 when playing or outputting in any format (even sending to Compressor). 
It does not appear that switching these settings does any good, even when I ensure each track in the timeline is mapped to the correct channel.
 
i'm not familiar with FCP 7 (i use X), but maybe you could try exporting audio only and see if the problem persists. if it doesn't, then you can do a separate video-ony export, then mux the results.
 
Hal9000 said:
No, I haven't seen a drag and drop configuration like you describe.
Click to expand...

After some googling, I found this.  It envisages use of FireWave and was written some time ago, but that shouldn't matter: the basic setup should be the same.  I had in mind an icon like this

2z6sdj9.png


, which the guide gives for Soundtrack Pro rather than Final Cut Pro, but there you go.  The "alternative setup" sounds most like what other editors here do in their NLEs.  Have you configured the audio output for each channel?
 
Well, panning the L audio track to the left and the R to the right fixed the issue.
However, FCP7 only seems to allow me to do this one manually selected clip at a time (it only does the single clip the header is over at the time), with no clear way to do this for everything on one audio track in the whole sequence (let alone inside subsequences). It would take ages to comb through all the nested stuff that comprises my timelines. Anyone know how to force everything in one audio track (across clips and nested sequences) to be panned one direction? This would solve the problem. Or, more accurately, solve the new problem of having thousands of clips to meticulously select 18 channels of audio to pan and hope I haven't missed any. L8wrtr, you've been tagged!


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk
 
It sounds as if you're getting there.  There must be an option to pan the track rather than the clip. It's just a matter of finding it.
 
Yes, it's been diagnosed, and now in looking for the right treatment. Thanks very much; I'll try working on this tomorrow if I can't get to it tonight. I'm still apprehensive to get it solved.
FCP7 doesn't seem to let me export channels 1 and 2 or 5 and 6 as separate mono files, or I could solve it that way at the end of a given project.


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk
 
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