MUSIC VID / Help! Dying on the table here!
 

Okay, in trying to edit a music vid in FCP rather than Premiere, I:
1) Burned a CD track from the artist's CD.
2) Added a 1k tone at the beginning to use as a marker.
3) shot the talent singing to the CD, which was also lined into my Canon XL1 for a reference audio track
4) Brought the footage and the original CD w/tone into FCP for editing

PROBLEM: the reference audio track from the vid and the CD track won't line up - they're like a 1/2 frame off and I can't drag adjust them into alignment (never had this prob
in Premiere) PLEASE!!!! WHAT CAN I DO TO SALVAGE THIS PROJECT!!!???!!!

Perhaps load the CD audio into a sound editor and clip a very small amount off of the front. I usually use Sound Effects for OS 9 for this.

Is it consistently a 1/2 frame off or does it vary throughout the video? If it's consistent, where does the drift start, beginning, middle, end?

You might try importing the audio again (or several different times). It could just be a problem with importing and exporting the audio through QuickTime.

It seems to vary....
 

For each take of the singer, plus the
original soundtrack lifted from the CD,
the 1k tone 'marker' seems to start at a
slightly different spot inside the frame,
on the timeline

meaning, of course, that all the different takes
will be slightly out of alignment

is there any way to 'free slide' a track without
it snapping to the even frame confines?

You could have several things going on. One is that DV video is only accurate to +/- 1/3 of a frame. DV does not have locked audio like DVCAM (+/- 0 frame accurate). DV video will vary, but never more than the 1/3 frame, forward or back. Think of it as walking a dog. The dog speeds up and slows down, but is never ahead or behind more than the length of the leash.

The other possible problem could be an audio mismatch. Check the properties of the clip and verify that the audio is 16bit, 48KHz. If it is off, say 47.97, that will account for your drift.

Let me re-define my problem here...
 

the K-tone at the beginning of each take, as well as on the
CD track, is represented in the Timeline audio track as a big rectangle in the waveform.

When I have all my takes of the singer from different angles,
I line up all the rectangles in their respective audio tracks - this assures me, that no matter where i edit, all vid and
all music will always be together / then when I'm thru editing
I go in and delete all vid sound tracks except for the master
CD track

The problem I'm having is I can't get all the rectangles in
alignment at the beginning of each audio track / even though
I set the IN points at exactly the same spot in the viewer
before dragging them to the timeline

answers?

You can't split frames. Sure you go into peak or whatever and slice of a bit of audio to move the audio track + or - less then 1 frame but video doens't work like that (as far as I work out)

Is it really that noticeable? its only 1/30 of a second in NTSC land

i could be wrong but i have done a few music videos band miming and lots of different angles, some takes line up better then others.

i've done some a couple music videos now and even if it's a frame out of sync it's not even noticeable. the singers aren't always exactly in sync the whole way through a song anyway so worrying about half a frame won't make that much of a difference. just use that particular angle when it looks best.

Half a frame isn't noticeable. A lot of DV cameras are actually half a frame or more off and few people notice.

The DVX100's audio is off about 2 frames.