Sync problem (frame rate related?)

Hello all,

We just finished a 9 minute short for The BBC. Getting out to sound was painful. There could have been a couple of issues with the project... mixed frame rates and a mix of 44 and 48.

@Jesus did you find a solution that worked? We had to export a guide track of stems, our sound eng. spent hours fixing the mess.

I also think this would also be a very welcome feature.

Until ProTools supports multiple frame rates and different confirming settings, the conversion is mandatory and needs to happen somewhere else.

For instance, Avid Media Composer supports mixed frame rates for a long time now, but when you export an AAF from a MC sequence with mixed frame rates, it converts not matching to the timeline's frame rate automatically, so you don't end up with audio getting out-of-sync in ProTools.

In today's day and age, editor's are expected to be able to handle different frame sizes and frame rates. The problem is ProTools can't. So until this is resolved, the only solution for FCP X editors is to have X2Pro automatically convert all conformed audio clips to the Project's frame rate.

Hi Maarten,

I have created an internal ticket here and have assigned it to the Product Manger so he can discuss it with the developers if this is something possible to be added to X2Pro.

We've got this problem too. We get a lot of mixed frame rates. It would be great if there could be at least the option to 'force conform' to the timeline's frame rate, much like the 'force to 48 kHz' option solved a lot of headaches for us. Thanks for understanding.

Hi Alan,

Just so you are aware a warning that conform rates have not been applied is now generated in the next release of X2Pro.

Daniel

Thanks Graham. I shall pre-convert from now on then.

Cheers

Alan

When you export the project as an fcpxml, FCP doesn't do any rendering so If X2Pro were to put retimed/conformed audio in the AAF at the speed that it play in FCP, it would have to do some processing of the audio. At present, X2Pro does as little processing of the audio as possible in order to keep the quality of the audio as high as possible. The only processing of audio it does is to convert compressed audio (e.g. MP3) to PCM (because that is what Pro Tool requires), and also recent version also have the option to force the sample rate to 48kHz.

If you converted the frame rates of the clip to match your project before you used them in FCP, then FCP wouldn't have to conform the clips when you use them in your project, and there would be no sync issues in the AAF after you convert your project in X2Pro.

Thanks Graham. I just figured that since FCPX does the conforming so that we don't have to convert prior to importing, the conformed audio would be the audio referenced when making the AAF... i.e. the audio in FCP would be the audio in the AAF. If I converted the frame rates before importing to FCP would the audio be in sync?

When you mix frame rates like that, FCP silently "conforms" the clip (it speeds up or slows down the clip so that 1 frame of the clip covers the same duration as one clip in the sequence.

X2Pro will not adjust audio in this manner, so it includes it in the AAF at it's original speed, which will cause the clip to gradually go out of sync. It should have shown you a warning explaining that there were conform rates that were ignored, but the warning appears to be missing in the latest versions of X2Pro.

We will try to get the warning back in, but that won't stop the audio from going out of sync. For conformed clips, you will need to adjust the speed of the clip in Pro Tools.

Hi Graham, sorry for the delay. Yes... first clip put in the FCPX event was 24 fps so that was the project frame rate. Extra material added was 25 fps. XML attached....

Thanks!

Alan

Was your project set to a different frame rate to the clips that it used? Please attach your fcpxml

Hi,
I cut a film this week made of two parts. Part one was shot 25fps, Part two was 24fps. They asked for them as separate films, so I created two sequences and exported two QT files and two XMLs. The second film (24fps) was fine... the AAF matched the QT guide audio. The first film (25fps)... the AAF clip boundaries were in the right place, but the audio clips were running fast, so the sound slipped out of sync as each clip progressed. I tried a new export and the same issue. Is there a setting I cam change to make this work?

Thanks!

Alan