Help needed! FCP-Pro Tools-OMF strangeness!

[swirlyd]

I am hoping someone can help me here : I have just mixed a documentary film. I received an OMF and a DVD (asked for a direct DV export, but they couldn't handle that). I converted the DVD to a QT movie and extracted the guide audio from the DVD, imported it into PT and it all synced up with the audio in the OMF - everything seemed to be in sync and I mixed the whole film in Pro Tools. Everything I have is at 25fps and 48K. I bounced out a first mix for feedback, but when it was placed in their FCP timeline, it was not in sync. It starts drifting after a few minutes and eventually goes very out-of-sync, as if the film was NTSC, but it's not (they promise me). As a test, I had the video person export their guide audio from their FCP project for me to an AIF - and when I put it back in my Pro Tools session, it IS in sync with my project. Does anyone have any suggestions as to *what* could be causing this? I am trying to determine if it's my problem or their problem. When I import my mix into their FCP project, can something be affecting it - their settings appear to be at 48K...can some setting in my PT be causing a problem?? If anyone has suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it - there's a huge deadline looming and I wanted to use this time to make the mix better, not stressing out to get it in sync! TIA

[SurveillanceP]

going to go out on a limb here and say that while this problem is definately your problem (cause offline editors are so useless) its also almost definately not being cause by you.

Final cut is so bad with reimporting audio- it has no set sample rate per session and 'converts' stuff. are they seeing the red line in their session?

[SurveillanceP]

yep just reread your post, this is not a pro tools problem its a final cut one. Don't let them make you waste time problem solving at your end because it won't fix it. Help them at their end. Its the bane of being in audio- you have to know more about video than the video guys do.

There's alot of people here who know way more about this than me and if this post is wrong i'm sure they will correct me.

Edit: I'm sure I've reads posts from Geo and other knowledgeable people around here who know soup to nuts how final cut works. There are definately some issues. Searching some of those threads might help you pin it down faster.

[swirlyd]

Thanks - I am pretty sure it's something with FCP - I did find this film and sent it to them=

TechSmith | Screencast.com, online video sharing, Solving the Audio Drifting Problem

Import mix into FCP using "import XML" (not just dragging into timeline as they seem to do)

Import XML- set the "sequence settings" which are correct...

UNCHECK the "Override with settings from XML"!

I am really hoping this will solve the problem and am waiting to hear back from the editor - I am pretty sure, like you said, that FCP is doing something to my mix when being imported. I took their FCP audio bounce and my mix and put it in a brand new PT session and they were in sync! But of course there is a "blame game" going on and they were discussing going somewhere else to get the mix re-done after I had spent days working on it, thinking it was something on my end!

Originally Posted by SurveillanceP

yep just reread your post, this is not a pro tools problem its a final cut one. Don't let them make you waste time problem solving at your end because it won't fix it. Help them at their end. Its the bane of being in audio- you have to know more about video than the video guys do.

There's alot of people here who know way more about this than me and if this post is wrong i'm sure they will correct me.

Edit: I'm sure I've reads posts from Geo and other knowledgeable people around here who know soup to nuts how final cut works. There are definately some issues. Searching some of those threads might help you pin it down faster.

[Smallbudgetguru]

wow so many FCP nightmares lately. Its not pleasing to hear. I really hope you guys get this sorted out. Im sure some more experienced folks will chime in here. Probably during the work week though.

[swirlyd]

I'm off the hook - seems their FCP rig is crashing when trying to export things and there's some known problem with their configuration, so they need to move the whole project to a different system!..... still sucks that I will have less time to tweak the final mix but relieved I have no blame...

At least I came across that XML tip for future reference...

[philper]

With current FCP systems you have to be very careful to match all aspects of the metadata of your mix files to their project settings, or FCP will helpfully play your mix at the wrong speed. There is a thread in Geo's sticky (and on the DUC) about getting around this by delivering the mix as a QT file, if all else fails. BTW, this settings issue is a problem for post syncing field audio in FCP too.

phil p

[swirlyd]

Originally Posted by philper

With current FCP systems you have to be very careful to match all aspects of the metadata of your mix files to their project settings, or FCP will helpfully play your mix at the wrong speed. There is a thread in Geo's sticky (and on the DUC) about getting around this by delivering the mix as a QT file, if all else fails. BTW, this settings issue is a problem for post syncing field audio in FCP too.

phil p

Just checked out the sticky and found another thread on the digi forum and determined exactly what happened and it's like you say - the editor had, before importing my audio mix, captured some NTSC video for a different project. Apparently, if the editor does not change the capture settings back to PAL before importing the audio mix in the PAL project, FCP will actually convert the sound mix to 29.97 even though the whole project is 25! I find this pretty bizarre - surely FCP could have some sort of warning window about this ("your project is 25fps and you are importing 29.97fps - proceed??" - or something like that) - video editors don't really know about this because FCP will normally see the frame rate in video files and adjust - but for audio, it's not so obvious.... good info to know for the future, at least....