Loud "Fog Horn" Like Noise

Question

Level 1

4 points

Loud "Fog Horn" Like Noise

While I was playing back a portion of HDV video I had captured into Final Cut Express, a loud "fog horn" like noise (one that wasn't recorded from the camera) started playing back covering up the audio. I had previously worked on this section and no unusual noise occurred. I checked the source footage on my external hard drive and there was nothing wrong with the audio.

I have FCE HD 4.0.1 running on an Intel iMac 10.6.2

Any ideas as to the cause?

Thanks.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Jan 10, 2010 5:44 PM

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Answer 1

skalicki

Level 5

4,448 points

Jan 10, 2010 6:07 PM in response to skalicki

Just to make sure, but what do you have the "Real-Time Audio Mixing" preference set to in your FCE Preferences? If the amount of tracks you have there is under the amount in that section of your timeline you may be hearing the beeping that FCE produces if it can't play back all the tracks at once.

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Answer 2

skalicki

Level 5

4,448 points

Jan 10, 2010 5:46 PM in response to ekom

Hi there,

Is this happening in the viewer, or only when played in the Canvas from the timeline? If it is only in the timeline, is the audio fully rendered? Try hitting Option-R to render everything out and see if that makes a difference.

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Answer 3

ekom Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 10, 2010 6:11 PM in response to skalicki

Maybe that was it. I had it set to 8 tracks, but I had 10 in the timeline. Still, tracks 9 and 10 were empty. Anyways, I had a song playing in tracks 7 and 8. After isolating each track, I found out that the beeps were coming from the music. I deleted it from the timeline, added it back, and now it works fine, with no noises. Thanks for your help.

Any idea what caused it though, for future reference?

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Answer 4

skalicki

Level 5

4,448 points

Jan 10, 2010 6:21 PM in response to ekom

Did the music come from iTunes or another program that may have put DRM (Digital Rights Management) code on it? If so, you'd need to go through this process to use it in FCE, assuming it is only for home viewing:
http://fcpbook.com/Audio4.html

If it wasn't from iTunes, it may have been that the music you were using did not match the settings of your sequence. FCE only really likes audio files that are AIFFs at 32 or 48kHz. If this was the case, you could've gone through this process to convert the file to an AIFF that FCE likes:
http://fcpbook.com/Audio1.html -- In this case rendering should've worked as well.

Finally, it may have been that your preferences for real-time listening were set to the amount of tracks you were listening to!

As you can see, there are always multiple things that could go wrong, but it's great that it's working for you now. Good luck with your future projects!

Message was edited by: skalicki`

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Answer 5

ekom Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 10, 2010 5:50 PM in response to skalicki

It is only happening in the timeline. I tried hitting Option-R, but the noise was still there.

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Answer 6

skalicki

Level 5

4,448 points

Jan 10, 2010 5:55 PM in response to ekom

So, just to be clear, what is the color of the bar above the media in the timeline? Also, is this only happening for one section or for the whole thing?

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