Audio Clicks and Pops appearing in clips

I'm wondering - has anyone tried to reinstall Final Cut X again on Lion to see if the problems go away. Snow Leopard to Lion may be the culprit with all of these very annoying bugs that are showing up - but I'm wondering if a reinstall, not of Lion, but of FCP X will do the trick.

I might give that a try over the weekend to see if I have any luck. I'll let everyone know what happens when I do.

Ray

I'll give it a shot. I mean, FCPX is its own enclosed application, so uninstalling and installing is just deleting it from Applications and copying it back. I'll try it anyways and see how it goes.

I'm uploading a video to youtube to show all you guys what exactly we're talking about here with the audio issues, I'll post it in a few...

Hmm, I think I had the audio issues sometimes before Lion, but just couldn't remember correctly. Usually they were intermittent and went away for no apparent reason. :s

That's good to know. I'd hate to blame Lion for this -- and it would save me the trouble of putting SL back on my machine.

I'm going to try to rerender, maybe changing the output makes a difference? I'd hate to put the finished file into Premiere and then edit the audio again.

God that'd be annoying.

Everybody if you could watch this video I just posted, it shows how FCPX mangles the audio, and what I think we're all having issues with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5ed3VB4QJ0

My theory is it can't handle H.264 properly. Anybody having issues with editing and exporting WITHOUT H.264 anywhere in the process? The above video was with an iPhone 4, but I was able to render videos just now that were shot with a Canon T2i and Screenflow movies without a problem.

So I think I figured it out! (I'm pretty sure FCPX + Lion has issues with compressed audio formats, ESPECIALLY AAC and Apple Lossless!) There's a video of my findings below:

1. I tried doing exactly the same thing I was trying to do on my machine on a co-worker's Snow Leopard MBP, and it worked out fine (it was just importing an iPhone 4 .mov and exporting it in FCPX). The output file was pretty much the same as what came in.

2. I found out that only movies from my iPhone 4 were coming out all crazy in the audio, yet my Canon T2i files were fine. Both are H.264, yet the Canon T2i records audio as Linear PCM, while the iPhone 4 records audio as AAC.

3. So I got an idea to use screen flow to record a youtube video and record the computer's audio. Then I decided to export with different formats, both as HD NTSC standards and as web standards with H.264.

4. I found out that both NTSC and H.264 standards were perfectly fine, SO LONG AS THE AUDIO WAS LINEAR PCM (or uncompressed!).

5. I then exported the same clip (both times as H.264) and ONLY changed how the audio was rendered (either Linear PCM/Uncompressed or AAC) and VOILA, I got click and pop artifacts ONLY in the AAC version. The ones that were output as uncompressed audio were totally fine!

CONCLUSION:

Final Cut Pro X on OS X Lion has issues with compressed audio, MAINLY AAC and Apple Lossless! Anything that is Linear PCM/Uncompressed should be fine! For example, MPEG 4 AAC Enhanced Low Delay at 320K came out 95% OK, one or two clicks.

So if any of us are working with material where the audio came to us already as AAC (like an iPhone 4), then we have to rip the audio out somehow first (like through VLC for example) and import it separately as an uncompressed file.

Here's a youtube video showing exactly what I'm talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDw4btShH0s

So last night I did a clean install (not an upgrade) of Lion, then installed FXP X, copied over my project from a backup, rendered, no audio problems.

My experience:

Install FCPX on SL then updated to Lion, audio issues.

Install FXPX on clean Lion install, no problems.

~max

This is going off topic a little, but many of us have had trouble moving titles around the Viewer since an upgrade to Lion (it only works with the transform tool turned on).

Do you find that you can now drag titles around the screen by clicking on the "target ball" underneath the title text. I'm curious if you're installation procedure fixes a lot of the other bugs people have been having, as well.

Thanks,

Ray

Whew... man that's tempting to do. I might have to back up my stuff to an external tonite and give this a go.

I'm hearing from others that people are experiencing it even after a clean install of Lion.

I'm wondering if Perian might have something to do with it? Just throwing out ideas...

Hmmm... I've got Perian installed. Let me get rid of it and see what happens.

Ray...I don't have any trouble changing the position of a title; also, FCP is yet to crash on me. A few nights ago I installed FCP on a fresh SL install and it was crashing like crazy. I would even get kernel panics just browsing through the fx menu. Running so much better on a clean Lion install.

Might have to go your route, mj. Too many bugs and other annoyances have surfaced, possibly because of the order I installed things.

Thanks,

Ray

Hmm, I've got Perian installed but don't see any reason why it would have anything to do with FCPX. Can anyone second that a fresh clean install of Lion alleviates these issues?

Unfortunately I'm in Spain doing an internship right now and won't be back until mid November so a fresh install if anything would have to wait until then. ;(

Also, would an archive and install do anything?