audio fluctuations in multicam clip

[Jim Newberry]

I've got a multicam clip in my timeline. After doing a lot of editing on it, there are 2 or 3 spots where the audio volume significantly goes down or up. The multicam clip consists of one audio track and many video tracks. I have the audio track set for active audio angle. This is a stereo project.

When I open the multicam in the angle editor, and play the audio track, the volume fluctuations are definitely not there. The volume level (horizontal line) over the multicam clip is at 0db all across, including where the fluctuations occur.

Can anyone think of what could be causing the audio to do this? Anything I could check, other than the original audio track?

The last time this happened, I retraced my steps with undos, and traced the problem to a blade cut on the multicam clip in the timeline. I could go back and forth and create the fluctuation and then undo it, by a simple blade cut on the multicam clip. All my other cuts and switching is fine. Any ideas?

[Ben Fullerton]

I assume that you are making blade cuts to switch camera angles? Is the audio drop happening at the place where the clips switch angles?

I ran into a problems similar to this which comes from copying and pasting effects from one clip to another. The problem with doing this in FCPX is it copies everything, and doesn't give you any choices. As a photographer, I'm used to the control you get in Adobe Lightroom. You can sync photos together, and a dialogue box come up and give you options to check or uncheck any and all of the possible options to sync. If you want to sync all attributes, check all. If you only want to sync the crop, or the saturation, or the sharpening, no problem.

So, again, the problem with FCPX as far as I can tell, is it sync everything, all the time, no matter what. Color, retiming, audio levels, and worst of all, audio fades. I've run in to any number of problems with this. Pretty much I only even want to sync coloring. but if one clip is retimed, and the other isn't, it will copy that too. Audio level will get changed. And worst of all, especially in Multicam, which brings us back to you original question...

If you have a timeline with a multiclip dropped in, and you have already sliced and diced it up with angle changes in place; if you then copy effects from a clip that has audio fades on it to any/all of the multiclip segments, it will copy the audio fades to all the segments. And what's worst of all, they won't show up at all visually, and there's nothing you can do to take them away, except re-paste those segments with a clip that doesn't have audio fades on it. The clips will look totally normal, but you'll herar the audio dip around all the cut points, but you won't see any evidence of the fades, or any handle to remove them. It's totally weird. I banged my head on this problem for quite some time before I figured it out.

Unless I'm hugely missing something, this seems to be a pretty big bug that can be tremendously annoying. They really need to give you the option of what characteristics you would like to sync, and which to leave alone.

Don't know if this is at all similar to your problem, but thought I would share it anyways.

[Jim Newberry]

Ben: Thanks for the reply. Yes, I was using blade cuts to cut camera angles. This started happening before I added any effects (I'm pretty sure). I have more details on the problem along with screengrabs here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/18189008#18189008

I'm 99% sure I didn't do any copying and pasting of effects before this problem occurred. That's a bummer about audio fades not showing--that sounds like trouble.

[Mike Watson]

Different problem, but similar. Does this solution help you?

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