does the FCP voice-over tool support 24 bit recording?

[Josh Bass]

Here's a weird question I couldn't find info about on here, or googling. I just got an Apogee duet audio interface, which supports 24 bit 96khz recording. I am about to record voices for an animated short film, and my plan, since I will do the post in FCP, was to record into FCP using the voiceover tool. However, if the tool dumbs everything down to 16 bit, maybe that's not the way to go. I'm wondering if you can record 24 bit into FCP with the VO tool, and if so, are there extra steps I need to take as far as preferences/settings?

My other option is to use Logic to record these voices (which I KNOW supports 24bit), which is not a problem except that I then have the chore of exporting that stuff to make it FCP friendly. Rather save myself the step if I can.

[Shaun Roemich]

Have you thought about using Soundtrack that ships with FCStudio?

[Josh Bass]

Yeah, I realized that was an option after I posted. I played around with it for a little bit. People are always crapping on it with their words, callling it unstable, buggy, etc. Is it true?

[David Scattergood]

I tend to use Logic for voiceover Josh. I don't trust FCP for anything audio wise really (the fades are bloody awful). With *LOGIC Pro I can double up, add compression, reverb to my hearts content before bouncing the file back to FCP.
Of course, others may use different solutions.

[Shaun Roemich]

Originally Posted by Josh Bass

People are always crapping on it with their words, callling it unstable, buggy, etc. Is it true?

It certainly has it's issues but in MY experience, they are related to flying files back and forth between FCP and STP. I would certainly consider recording VO files in STP, cleaning them up, exporting them as whatever flavour of AIFF you want to work with (96KHz 24bit) and importing those into FCP. In other words, treat STP and FCP as completely different programs and export/import as such instead of using Send To (which is where I have MY issues with the process)

Your mileage may (and probably WILL) vary...

[Josh Bass]

Ok, well, between these three programs I will figure something out.


Apparently you can make a capture preset in fCP allowing 24 bit 96khz recording. So there's that.

People are always raggin' on FcP for it's sound utilities. . they seem fine to me. Between the FCP filters and the apple stuff, it certainly has me covered. And what's wrong with the fades? They don't bother me.

[Battle Vaughan]

I believe if you just change your audio settings in sequence>settings to 24 bit it will record in 24 bit. We do VO occasionally using FCP as we have to fit a VO or a spanish-to-english translation into a specific clip and it's much easier to do when you are at the console and can play the clip back in real time. I know you can dosey-doe with Soundtrack Pro, which has lots better tools, but we do it under deadline pressure when quick and straightforward is our only option, it works. That is, vo on the timeline works, our timelines are 16 bit, I have not experimented with the 24 bit option but it seems pretty straightforward to just change the bit rate as descibed above....Battle Vaughan/miamiherald.com video team

[Josh Bass]

Is it the sequence or capture settings that affect what the VO tool records? You can change sample rate and bit rate in the capture settings, and make a preset with 24 bit 96khz.

[Battle Vaughan]

Sequence settings, bottom right box of the window that opens... I suppose you can make a custom easy setup, if you choose, but this would be the quick way to accomplish it....you can then export that sequence using qt conversion as a aiff or wav, if you choose, or bring it into another sequence that uses a different bitrate, and just render it as needed...but, as I say, I didn't have opportunity to test this...but I can't see why it wouldn't work....BV

[Josh Bass]

That sounds like it should work fine. I'm not super familiar with FCP yet, so I didn't know exactly what settings determine how the vo tool works. Thanks.

[Josh Bass]

Okay, I just tried the suggestions you guys made, both with capture and sequence settings, and here's the thing, in the vo tool, where you can select sample rate, regardless of what I do in FCP sequence or capture settings, it won't let me select anything over 48 khz for the sample rate. If I made both my capture and sequence settings 96, shouldn't the vo tool let me select that? Anyway, I'm out of time here, so I"m gonna go with STP (*that's soundtrack pro, not Stone Temple Pilots, unfortunately) or Logic.

[Battle Vaughan]

Ahh, sorry, missed the 96khz part, my bad. No, as best I know FCP doesn't support that (I'm away from my FCP computer at the moment or would check.) If FCP does not, when you import the track it will render to the sequence setting of the track you are importing to....if you can set the seq to 24/96 you would be good to go..../bv

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Josh Bass

Okay, I just tried the suggestions you guys made, both with capture and sequence settings, and here's the thing, in the vo tool, where you can select sample rate, regardless of what I do in FCP sequence or capture settings, it won't let me select anything over 48 khz for the sample rate. If I made both my capture and sequence settings 96, shouldn't the vo tool let me select that? Anyway, I'm out of time here, so I"m gonna go with STP (*that's soundtrack pro, not Stone Temple Pilots, unfortunately) or Logic.

You may need to first go into Finder/Utilities/Audio Midi Setup. There, you can change the 'system' setting to record 24/96 and that might open up that option in FCP's VO tool. I haven't confirmed it yet, but will do so when I get back to my Mac.

A lot of folks don't realize that the OS and audio hardware line in port on the Mac can do 24/96 because it's not set up that way out of the box.

-gb-

[Michael DiLieto]

Its many years later from this post, but I have a similar question. My exact issue is that I found a small HD camera that when used with studio lighting looks and works pretty well here in my office. However, what to do with my audio? My audio are a few great lavs in XLR format.

Should I record my audio using my Presonus interface directly into my MAC Pro during the making of a video? Should I record into a software program into the MAC Pro, or should I record directly into FCP 7.0?

I have seen many positing where people in the field recommend shooting into a XLR hand held device like a Tascam. However, while inside and with access to my computer and an interface, I thought I may be in a different situation. My Mac Pro is an older 2009 and 1 post I read stated that the audio card is lower quality that my audio signals would pass through and so I am better off recording externally and then importing into FCP later.

Looking for best and cheapest advice!

Thanks!

[Gary Nattrass]

I would always try to record the audio to the same place as the video so if you are using a self contained camcorder record the audio to that.

If you are using FCP 7 to capture live video from your camera then I would also record the audio to the same place but you can probably not use the external audio interface as it may not allow multiple devices if you are inputting via firewire. Using an external recorder gets into a dual system and can bring other problems so if you are wanting the cheapest and best just keep your audio and video together and recorded to either the camera or straight into FCP via firewire using the camera as your audio interface.

As a side note from the older questions 16 bit 48k is ample for voice over recording and will be fine for such recordings in FCP I doubt if you will encounter any quality differences using 24 bit 96k and as that is not a format suited to video production you are better to use the 16 bit 48k setting in FCP. I don't think FCP supports 24 bit 96k anyway but you can still use an interface that has those capabilities.

I personally use a pro tools MBOX-2 with a rode NT2000 for my voice over recording to FCP but it is always at 16 bit 48k.