FCP/Soundtrack Pro question/frustration

[Nick Weeks]

OK, I've imported all my tapes info FCP as full length clips. I'm editing a wedding ceremony, so I drag cam1 and cam2 clips for the ceremony on the timeline and sync them up.

Now I break them up into different cuts, so I have a bunch of alternating clips cam1-cam2-cam1-cam2 etc.

The audio is mostly taken from cam1 with the wireless mic, so I export that into soundtrack pro, no problem.

Now, let's say I put a small 2 min clip from cam2 on the timeline and I need to edit the audio on just that clip. So I right click the audio track that relates to the video and "send to soundtrack pro"

Now, soundtrack pro has markers for the 2 min section I've selected and I want to edit, but it stuck the entire cam2 audio track that's on that tape in soundtrack pro! So now I'm sitting here with a 6GB audio file only to edit one small portion of it.

I must be missing something, please help... I've been dealing with this for a while, and I can't seem to make it work properly. I've even tried "make independent clip" but that seems to open a whole different can of worms.

Thanks

[Greg Boston]

Nick, that's because your original master clip is that big. You have set your in/out markers for a 2 minute section and put it in FCP timeline. Now you open in STP and it shows you the portion of the audio that you are currently using in your timeline. Just edit that portion and save it back.

It's not really adding anything to the filesize because that's the size of the master file to begin with.

-gb-

[Nick Weeks]

So are you saying I can take that 2 min section Soundtrack is showing me, cut out the rest of the audio that I'm not using in that clip, and save the file?

Also, maybe my workflow is wrong, but should edit the audio before I edit video? Think this would make it easier?

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Nick Weeks

So are you saying I can take that 2 min section Soundtrack is showing me, cut out the rest of the audio that I'm not using in that clip, and save the file?

Also, maybe my workflow is wrong, but should edit the audio before I edit video? Think this would make it easier?

No, just make your edit within the active portion and save it. Don't change the length of the audio file or it won't match up with the video anymore. Even though you are only using a 2 minute section of that video/audio in the timeline, the rest of it is still present on the master file residing on disc.

If you are certain you no longer need the rest of the audio/video outside of the portion in your sequence, you could, before export to STP, select that clip in the bin, then use media manager to 'remove unused media', leaving a few seconds of handles on each end for transitions. However you should note that this permanently removes that media from your drive. If you needed it back, you'd have to go back and re-ingest it from your tape.

-gb-