Issues after changing edit timebase

Hi Durk,

In your fcpxml, I can see that your project is 25 fps, but you have a mix of two clip framerates (25 & 23.976).

When you put a 23.976 fps clip in a 25 fps project, FCP X conforms the clip (it plays the clip at 25fps, a speed increase of 4.27%). It doesn't tell the user that it is doing this, or give you an option not to, it's just what it does. This means that the audio will play faster in the 25 fps project that it would in a native 23.976 fps project.

X2Pro does not do any retiming/conforming, it just extracts the audio from the source clips, and puts it in the AAF (you can probably even see/hear the difference if you just play a 23.976 clip in an event, then play the same clip in a 25 project). This is why the audio is going out of sync with some clips - the audio in Pro Tools will be playing at the original speed it was recorded at, not 4.27% faster like FCP X does.

X2Pro warned you about this when you converted your project when it listed 1192 instances of conform effects that were ignored.

A couple of solutions that I can think of would be:

1. Speed up all the audio from clips that were recorded at 23.976 fps in Pro Tools, but there are 1192 of them, so it's not a small task
2. Change all the 23.976 fps clips to 25 fps and replace them in FCP X before converting it again using X2Pro. This is probably even more work.

Sorry that I can't be more help, but hopefully I've explained why it's happening and given you some ideas of how to remedy it and avoid hitting this issue in future.

Hey,

I am in the process of finishing an episode. Episode 5 to be precise. 1-4, we have had no big problems using X2PRO to get audio over to pro tools. Its been great.

Now, Episode 5 - The original project timebase was set to 23.9 by the editor who started it. We needed it to be 25 (I know, its a pretty bad position to be in)

We identified this issue just before it went to online. So I created a new project in 25p. Copied and pasted the other project into the new one. Fixed a few inherent problems, a frame extra here and a frame less there. And all seemed well. Our guide play out works fine, no audio sync issues.

When we handed over the AAF to the audio guy, it all started to go a bit wrong. Specifically, audio going out of sync over time and clips starting late and finishing early.

I just need a bit of help figuring out where this is going wrong. It all seems fine in FCPX. Quicktime works fine too.
Hoping that I don't have to rebuild the entire thing as its 45 mins long...

In short - Video frame rate seems fine (25p). But the audio seems to be stuck in 23.98

XML is attached


Thank you