FCP audio fades and gain
 

Hi folks,

I recently took the dive into the world of FCP and have been pondering how to do a few things. I'm a massive fan of Vegas (but oh, only if the rest of the world used this amazing NLE which has unparallelled audio editing facilities - I even prefer it to ProTools).

Anyhow, in FCP when keyframing audio fades either on the timeline or in the preview window the fade defaults to an inverse exponential curve - can I make exponential curves or linear fades? The only way I can do this about the moment is by making lots of keyframes and trying to correct the inverse exponential curve. I can make 'Smooth' or Bezier curve fades on the picture, but not for audio...

Also, can I alter the gain of an audio clip so that the amplitude of the waveform itself is actually increased? The only way I can see to increase the gain is via the envelope which doesn't actually affect the waveform and is limited to +12db. say I needed gain of 20db how would I do it without exporting into a 3rd party editor and back again...

Many thanks,

Baldwin

Have you tried sending your audio to soundtrack (one of the the other programs included with FCS2). It has the ability to choose your fade type, you can normalise in there and do a whole heap of things. Try sending it there and give that a try.

In terms of altering the gain, one can increase the individual clip gain by a factor of 12 dB, THEN use the Audio Mixer Tool to increase the TRACK gain (again by I believe 12dB), and FINALLY use the MASTER Gain slider in the Audio Mixer Tool to boost a FURTHER 12 dB.

Oh, and if you STILL need more <grin>, you can always export the audio from a clip which has been boosted by 12dB by right clicking on the clip, choosing Export as Quicktime Movie, selecting Audio only and re-importing the clip audio and replacing the associated Clip Audio with the Boosted clip.

It's ugly, but since v1.02 I've been using the boost/export trick if for SOME reason I just didn't have enough levels.