Audio is hot?

It is approaching or reaching clipping levels - ie it's too loud.

x

Means your audio levels are too high.

Covered in the Final Cut Pro User Manual part II chapter 17.

Is there any other video slang that I should be familiar with?

A whole bunch.

Not just high, but high enough that it will distort when it comes out of the speakers. When you look at the audio it will be in the red zone.

If the file has a special effect like reverberation in it could this be mistaken for distortion or a hot audio track?

Not likely. "Too hot" means too loud; either recorded too loud (which may result in distortion/overmodulated) or played back too loud.

Distortion is totally different than reverberation or delay.

-DH

hot= loud. I think from the days of analog audio where we need to average the peaks so that they hit red region constantly, but not too hot- max peaks around 4-5 dBs on the VU meter.

Strypesx,

Please don't cloud the issue.

You are talking about analog audio metering where 0 db was not an absolute limit and +4-5 db was no problem. In digital metering (as in FCP/STP) 0 db is an absolute limit and anything beyond is clipped.

To the OP, if the project is going to broadcast, ask the station for their tech notes. They will tell you what audio and video standards to which your project should conform. If it's going to web or DVD, either -12 or -6 db are reasonable levels. The FCP manual has a good section on audio levels. Informative and easy to read.

x

Hot=too loud.
If you're told by the tracklayers or dubbing mixer that the audio is hot, it means that the audio is 'too loud' and is clipping (or in the analog world distorting). You would never aim to get your audio hot.
Hot is bad. Even in analog.